Poland has arrested a Ukrainian man targeted by a German warrant for his alleged involvement in the 2022 bombing of the Nord Stream gas pipelines, prosecutors said Tuesday, September 30. "A Ukrainian citizen has been detained, against whom the German authorities have issued a European arrest warrant accusing him of causing an explosion on the Nord Stream gas pipeline," Piotr Skiba, spokesman for the Warsaw prosecutor, told Agence France-Presse.
The suspect's lawyer, Tymoteusz Paprocki, confirmed his client's arrest, but did not identify him by name. "In the morning hours, my client was detained in one of the towns near Warsaw as a result of a European Arrest Warrant, which was issued by the German side and pertains to matters related to Nord Stream 2," he told broadcaster TVN24.
In September 2022, seven months after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a series of blasts under the Baltic Sea damaged three of four Nord Stream pipelines designed to carry Russian gas to Europe. While some in the West were quick to accuse Russia of sabotaging its own export route, German investigators now believe they have identified a Ukrainian cell of five men and one woman as the perpetrators.
Polish media reports named the suspect as Volodymyr Z., not giving his complete last name. Last year, German prosecutors issued a warrant for a Volodymyr Z. – describing him as a diving instructor based in Poland. He was suspected of being one of the divers who planted the explosive devices in an operation that also involved a married couple who ran a diving school, according to public broadcaster ARD and other media.
The case is diplomatically awkward for Germany and Ukraine, as Berlin and its NATO allies have backed Kyiv with cash and weapons in its fight against Russia's invasion. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said his government knew nothing about any plan to blow up the pipelines, but both Kyiv and Washington were at the time pushing Europe to reduce its dependence on Russian energy.
Paprocki, the lawyer, argued that, given that Russia is at war with Ukraine and that the pipeline could be said to finance Moscow's war effort, the defense could argue no Ukrainian should be held criminally responsible for destroying it.
Earlier this month an Italian court ordered that another Ukrainian arrested over the sabotage – 49-year-old Serhii Kuznietsov – should be extradited to Germany to face charges. German prosecutors said Kuznietsov had used forged identity documents to charter a yacht, which departed from the German city of Rostock to carry out the attacks.
Nord Stream had long been controversial for allowing Russian gas to bypass eastern European transit routes and for leaving Germany overly reliant on cheap energy from Moscow. After Russia launched its Ukraine invasion in February 2022, Western powers imposed sanctions on Moscow, which then switched off the gas flow in Nord Stream 1, while Nord Stream 2 never started operations.
Then, in September, seismic institutes reported underwater blasts and four gas leaks were discovered off the Danish island of Bornholm, as gas spewed to the surface. Two of the leaks were in Denmark's exclusive economic zone and two in Sweden's.