BERLIN, August 27. /TASS/. Some crew members of the sailing yacht Andromeda which was presumably used for the sabotage on the Nord Stream gas pipelines "clearly had ties" with Ukraine’s secret services or military at that moment, ARD television reported, citing a joint probe conducted by Die Zeit and Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspapers.

According to the TV channel, the probe confirms suspicions that the team of saboteurs acted with support from Ukraine. The suspects travelled across Poland, using authentic Ukrainian passports, albeit under fake names. Last summer, one of the suspects was taken from Poland to Kiev in a car of a Ukrainian military attache, possibly to avoid being arrested, the TV channel said.

Some Andromeda crew members, ARD wrote, clearly had ties with Ukrainian special services or military. However, investigators say, whether the sabotage "was, indeed, an operation conducted by Ukrainian authorities" has yet to be proven, the TV report said. Moreover, the TV channel added, that team might as well be made of hired specialists acting on instructions from third parties. "However, there are signs that some of the accused are very close to the Ukrainian government and express certain patriotic sentiments," ARD concluded.

Earlier, Die Zeit newspaper reported that German investigators had reportedly identified all the saboteurs behind the explosions that damaged the Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 pipelines. Arrest warrants have been issued for six Ukrainian nationals, while the seventh individual, the newspaper said, died in December 2024 during military operations in eastern Ukraine. According to the German Federal Prosecutor’s Office, the sabotage team included a skipper, a coordinator, an explosives expert, and four divers. These individuals are believed to have arrived at the crime scene in the Baltic Sea aboard the sailing yacht Andromeda, coming from Rostock.

On Nord Stream sabotage

On September 26, 2022, three strings of the Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 offshore gas pipelines sustained enormous damage. The latter had not yet been put into operation. According to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Moscow is certain that the Nord Stream sabotage was carried out with US support. The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office has opened an investigation into an act of international terrorism.