Italian police have arrested a main suspect in the attacks on the Nord Stream pipelines in September 2022.
Germany’s prosecutor general announced the news on August 21.
The arrested man, a Ukrainian identified as “Serhii K”, is suspected of allegedly coordinating the planting of several explosives on the Nord Stream gas pipelines, leading to their destruction and additional environmental damage.
According to the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), the alleged saboteur was involved in “intentionally causing an … explosion” and “anti-constitutional sabotage”.
Nord Stream is a network of pipelines that runs under the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany to provide western Europe with natural gas.
Serhii K reportedly was arrested by the Italian police in the province of Rimini on the basis of a European arrest warrant.
He will be transferred to Germany to appear before the investigating judge at the Federal Court of Justice.
In 2024, Germany issued a first arrest warrant for the Ukrainian diving instructor Volodymyr Z, who was suspected of allegedly placing explosives on the pipelines.
He was residing in Poland at the time but left the country before German authorities could make a move. It was suspected that Polish authorities tipped off the Ukrainian authorities, Der Spiegel reported.
Germany, which suffered serious economic damage because of the sabotage of the pipelines, has been investigating the explosions since 2022.
It was suspected that Serhii K allegedly led a group of commandos who executed a sabotage mission.
Initially, many in the media pointed to Russia as the possible culprit but this made little sense to observers, as Moscow could simply switch off gas flows into Europe.
Profits from gas exports to Germany reportedly played a major role in funding Russia’s war against Ukraine.
Several intelligence services in Europe have strong suspicions that the pipeline attack was orchestrated from Ukraine. The attack damaged the Russian economy and forced the rest of Europe to move away from Russian energy.
German media have reported on claims that Ukrainians allegedly rented a boat named Andromeda to carry out the attack, using forged identity documents in Poland and equipped themselves in the German city of Rostock.
“All the evidence points to Kyiv” regarding the destruction of Germany’s Nord Stream gas pipelines, a joint investigation has reportedly found. https://t.co/37KGkBjrfM
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) August 29, 2023
