Germany Issues Warrant for Ukrainian Diver for Nord Stream Attack
Officials in Germany have issued an arrest warrant for a Ukrainian national in connection with the attack on the Nord Stream pipeline system in 2022. The development confirms longstanding reports that German investigators were looking into a Ukrainian connection to the blasts, which damaged and disabled three out of the four massive pipes in the Nord Stream complex.
Nord Stream 1 and the recently-completed Nord Stream 2 were a set of large-diameter subsea gas pipelines connecting Russian state producer Gazprom with the German market. At the time of construction, low-cost Russian gas powered the German industrial economy, and Nord Stream offered Russia a way to export its energy to German consumers without relying upon the terrestrial pipelines through Poland and Ukraine. Two days after the scheduled startup of Nord Stream 2, with extra buffer capacity for gas transport nearly in hand, Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine.
Under heavy diplomatic pressure from the U.S., the German government withheld final permits for Nord Stream 2's startup. Gazprom shut down virtually all its terrestrial gas pipelines to Western Europe, and it tapered off Nord Stream 1 deliveries to zero by September 2022. It offered to restart - but only if Germany issued permits for Nord Stream 2 and began using the subsea pipeline system, cutting out any transport role or revenue for Poland and Ukraine.
"The bottom line is, if you have an urge, if it's so hard for you [Germany], just lift the sanctions on Nord Stream 2, which is 55 billion cubic meters of gas per year, just push the button and everything will get going," said Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2022.
On September 26, 2022, four separate blasts hit the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipeline complexes in close succession. Three out of four pipes were ruptured, leaving one single pipe of the Nord Stream 2 complex intact. All were full at the time of the damage, and the gas took about one week to drain out. The incident is believed to be the largest manmade methane release in history, and the damage has still not been repaired.
More than a few observers have suggested that the results of an investigation could point to a Western ally, and might prove to be politically uncomfortable. Poland and Ukraine alleged that the attacker was Russia, the pipelines' owner - and Russia has the most sophisticated subsea sabotage capabilities in the region. However, multiple independent investigations pointed towards Ukrainian involvement, and American national security officials have said that they were aware of a Ukrainian plan to stage an attack. Sweden and Denmark closed their investigations into the blast in early 2024 without publishing a definitive conclusion, leaving Germany as the sole nation with an active inquiry.
On Wednesday, Polish security officials told media that they had received a warrant from German officials for the arrest of a Ukrainian national in June. The man - identified as Volodymyr Z. - was in Poland at the time, but he departed before he could be arrested, a spokeswoman for the Warsaw prosecutor's office told the New York Times. According to German media, the suspect is a professional diver and dive instructor.
Kyiv has denied any knowledge of a plot to attack the pipelines. The suspect himself, in a phone interview with Suddeutsche Zeitung, denied that he was aware of the plot or the warrant.