Federal Public Prosecutor charges Ukrainian over Nord Stream explosion; Polish court rejects extradition of another suspect
The Federal Public Prosecutor's office in Karlsruhe has brought the first charges in the Nord Stream pipeline explosion case. Charged is Serhij K., who allegedly led the entire operation. A Polish court has meanwhile rejected the extradition of another suspect.
Federal Public Prosecutor charges Ukrainian over Nord Stream explosion; Polish court rejects extradition of another suspect
The Federal Public Prosecutor's office in Karlsruhe has brought the first charges in the case of the explosion of the Nord Stream gas pipelines in September 2022. Charged is Ukrainian national Serhij K., who allegedly headed the entire operation – according to the Interia portal.
The man was arrested in August of last year while on holiday near Rimini in Italy. At the end of November he was extradited to Germany and has since been held in investigative custody in Hamburg.
The indictment comprises approximately one hundred pages – according to Süddeutsche Zeitung. Investigators have accused Serhij K. of an attack on energy infrastructure, which is considered a war crime. German media report that prosecutors possess strong evidence against the suspect, including audio recordings of conversations in which he allegedly confessed, as well as materials recovered from his mobile telephone.
The Ukrainian faces up to ten years imprisonment. The trial is scheduled to begin in autumn.
According to German authorities, seven people were involved in the operation: six men and one woman. Serhij K. allegedly led the sabotage group and operated the sailing boat "Andromeda", which was used for the attack. Other suspects include three civilian divers certified to depths of eighty metres, a captain with experience in ocean racing, an explosives expert, and a soldier of a special forces unit. The latter is said to have been in Germany for military training. Unconfirmed information suggests that he died in the war in Ukraine.
German authorities believe that the sabotage operation was carried out on behalf of the Ukrainian government and approved by the former Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, who is now Ukrainian ambassador to the United Kingdom. Zaluzhnyi denies these reports, however.
The Federal Public Prosecutor's office also issued an arrest warrant for Volodymyr Zhuravlov, whom investigators identified as one of the divers who allegedly attached the explosive charges to the pipelines. The man was arrested in Poland in September last year, but a Polish court rejected his extradition to Germany. The judge justified the decision, among other reasons, on the grounds that sabotage acts during a war do not constitute criminal offences. He also pointed out that the explosion of the pipelines took place not on German territory but in international waters, and that Nord Stream itself is not German property.
Zhuravlov pleaded not guilty. His lawyer claimed that the man had neither served in the military nor been present on the Baltic Sea. The court's decision received support from the Polish government. Prime Minister Donald Tusk commented: "The Polish court rejected the extradition of the Ukrainian suspected of blowing up Nord Stream 2 to Germany and released him from custody. Rightly so. Case closed."
Source: Interia