MOSCOW, August 14. /TASS/. The Ukrainian national that Germany suspects of involvement in the explosions of the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines left Poland for Ukraine, said Anna Adamiak, spokeswoman for the Polish prosecutor general.

"Vladimir Ts., a Ukrainian diver suspected by German security services of involvement in the explosions at the Nord Stream pipeline, left Poland for Ukraine in early July," she told the Onet news website.

She said the suspect’s name had not been added to the border service database, which allowed the Ukrainian to slip out of the country. Polish Interior Minister Tomasz Siemoniak said the country’s law enforcement agencies "actively cooperated and continue to cooperate with agencies from foreign countries, such as Germany" in the investigation into the blasts at the underwater natural-gas pipeline.

Earlier, the Suddeutsche Zeitung newspaper reported, citing a joint investigation by ARD television and Die Zeit newspaper, that the German Federal Public Prosecutor had issued an arrest warrant for a Ukrainian diving instructor suspected of having played a role in sabotaging the Nord Stream gas pipelines. The Suddeutsche Zeitung identified the suspect as Vladimir Ts, who most recently resided in Poland.

German prosecutors are also investigating two other Ukrainian diving instructors, the newspaper said. Together, the three are suspected to have formed the crew of the yacht Andromeda, which is at the center of the German investigation.

German news media accused Poland of failing to cooperate with the investigation into the explosions. According to the German investigators, the Polish authorities were not ready to cooperate from the very beginning. The Suddeutsche Zeitung reported that Warsaw had still not responded to Berlin's request for legal assistance in the arrest of Vladimir Ts.

The explosions

The Nord Stream AG company reported on September 27, 2022, that three threads of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 offshore gas pipelines had suffered unprecedented damage. Swedish seismologists recorded two explosions along the Nord Stream pipelines on September 26. The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office started an investigation into the incident as an act of international terrorism. US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh later published an article asserting that US Navy divers, with the assistance of Norwegian specialists, had planted explosive devices under the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines in June 2022. The New York Times reported, citing US officials, that the sabotage attack was the handiwork of a certain "pro-Ukrainian" group that acted unbeknownst to Washington.