NEW YORK, November 10. /TASS/. The outcome of a three-year-long investigation into the act of sabotage against the Nord Stream gas pipelines threatens to splinter Europe’s support for Ukraine, the country that German detectives hold responsible, the Wall Street Journal writes, citing sources.
According to the newspaper, "any legal hearing appears certain to further strain relations between Ukraine and Germany, Kiev’s largest financial backer and the supplier of some of its most sought-after military hardware, especially air defense systems."
The sources point out that German police, prosecutors and other people familiar with the case developed "a clear picture of how an elite Ukrainian military unit carried out the attacks under the direct supervision of Ukraine’s then-supreme commander, General Valery Zaluzhny."
By tracking boat rental companies, phones and license plates, investigators "laid the groundwork for German authorities to issue arrest warrants for three soldiers from the special Ukrainian military unit and four veteran deep-sea divers," the paper points out, citing people familiar with the case. According to them, "the saboteurs’ goal was to cut both Russia’s oil revenues and its economic ties with Germany."
According to earlier reports, German investigators identified all saboteurs behind the explosions that damaged the Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 pipelines. They issued arrest warrants for six Ukrainian nationals, while the seventh individual died in December 2024 during military operations in eastern Ukraine. According to the German prosecution authorities, the sabotage group comprised a skipper, a coordinator, an explosives expert, and four divers, who arrived at the intended crime scene in the Baltic Sea aboard the yacht Andromeda from the German city of Rostock.
Italian judges are expected to make a decision by December whether to extradite Ukrainian national Sergey Kuznetsov, who is believed to be the commander of the sabotage unit, to Germany. "German police have already prepared a dedicated aircraft" to pick him up in Italy and bring him to Hamburg for trial, the Wall Street Journal notes.
Berlin also sought the extradition of another suspect, detained in Poland. However, a Warsaw court refused to extradite the man, also a Ukrainian citizen, to Germany.
Unprecedented damage to three strings of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 offshore gas pipelines was recorded on September 26, 2022. The Russian Prosecutor General's Office opened a case into an act of international terrorism.