BERLIN, August 28. /TASS/. A member of the Bundestag and foreign policy expert for the Alternative for Germany faction, Steffen Kotre, believes that the German government will do everything possible to suppress the investigation into the sabotage of the Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines.

"The German government will now do everything possible not to track down those behind this," he told a TASS correspondent. "The German government will make every effort to bury the investigation as much as possible." "It is surprising, however, that there are still employees and responsible persons in law enforcement agencies who are doing their job," he added.

"But we will see that the true culprits, perhaps in the Ukrainian government, perhaps in the US administration, will not be identified and held accountable," the MP believes.

On August 27, ARD television reported, citing a joint probe conducted by Die Zeit and Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspapers, that 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. Last week, a 49-year-old Ukrainian man, Sergey Kusnetsov, was arrested in Italy on suspicion of complicity in organizing the attack on the Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines. Some reports indicate that Kuznetsov worked for Ukrainian intelligence.

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 September 26, 2022, three strings of the Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 offshore gas pipelines sustained severe 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.