Pipes at the landfall facilities of the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline in Lubmin, Germany, 7 September 2022. Photo: EPA/HANNIBAL HANSCHKE
A Ukrainian citizen suspected of involvement in the 2022 Nord Stream gas pipelines explosion has been arrested in Poland, Polish radio station RMF FM reported on Tuesday.
The suspect, referred to by investigators as Volodymyr Z., was detained in the city of Pruszków, near Warsaw, and is currently being questioned by police in the Polish capital.
Leaks occurred on the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines in Denmark’s exclusive economic zone in late September 2022, with German investigators subsequently suggesting that the Ukrainian military could have been involved in the explosions.
According to German investigators, Volodymyr Z. is a diving instructor who sailed from Rostock, a city in northeastern Germany, out into the Baltic Sea on a yacht in September 2022, before diving into the water and placing explosive devices on the undersea pipeline.
Volodymyr Z.’s lawyer, Tymoteusz Paprocki, told reporters that his defence team would fight against his transfer to Germany, arguing that the attack on the Nord Stream infrastructure targeted one of its owners, Russian state gas giant Gazprom, and that Volodymyr Z. had not committed “any crime to the detriment of Germany”.
In August, German investigators identified all suspects in the September 2022 sabotage operation on the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines, including diving instructor Volodymyr Zhuravlev, for whom an arrest warrant was issued in June 2024.
Another suspect, Serhiy K., was detained in Italy in August, and is expected to be extradited to Germany, where a criminal case has been opened against him for complicity in causing an explosion, sabotage and destruction of property.
Nord Stream is a network of offshore pipelines under the Baltic Sea via which Russia provided western Europe with natural gas. Though completed, the €9.5-billion Nord Stream 2 pipeline did not get certified by the German authorities following the start of the war in Ukraine, and never went into operation.
