Poland Opposes Extradition of Ukrainian Diver to Face Nord Stream Charges
Poland's prime minister has signaled that his government has no interest in extraditing a Ukrainian national to stand trial on charges of sabotaging the Nord Stream pipeline system in 2022, and suggested that the politicians who approved the pipeline's construction in the first place should be the ones facing blame.
Germany has asked Polish authorities to arrest and hand over a Ukrainian diver, identified as Volodymyr Z., on criminal charges of sabotage. The German security services believe that he played a role in the attack on the Gazprom-led Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 systems on the bottom of the Baltic. The 2022 subsea sabotage operation destroyed three out of four pipelines in the network, which had a combined capacity of 110 billion cubic meters per year. At the time, all were inactive due to a combination of German and Russian political positioning linked to the invasion of Ukraine.
Both Poland and Ukraine had long opposed the construction of Nord Stream 1 and 2 on security grounds, arguing that the subsea pipeline system would give Russia a license for aggression in its near abroad. Nord Stream circumvents the onshore gas pipelines that run through both these nations. The Russian-controlled subsea pipelines allowed Russia a wholly independent means of delivering gas to German customers uninterrupted, with no loss of revenue if Moscow initiated a military conflict with its neighbors. When the sabotage event occurred, the physical damage to the lines ensured that the flow to Germany would not be easily restarted.
Under the circumstances, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said that he saw no advantage in extraditing the Ukrainian suspect.
"It is certainly not in Poland's interest to charge or hand over this citizen to another state. The decision will be made by the court," Tusk told Polsat News. "The problem of Europe, Ukraine, Lithuania, and Poland is not that Nord Stream 2 was blown up, but that it was built. . . . Russia, with money from some European states and German and Dutch companies, built Nord Stream 2 against the vital interests not only of our states, but of all of Europe, and there can be no ambiguity about that."
His statement has been interpreted as a swipe at former Chancellor Angela Merkel, who greenlighted the project and has defended her record of engagement with Russia. Merkel recently attracted the ire of Polish and Lithuanian governments for appearing to suggest that they bore some responsibility for allowing the Russian invasion to proceed by opposing direct talks between the EU and Putin in the months before the war.
"I wanted a new format where we, as the European Union, could talk directly with Putin. This was not supported by some. It was mainly the Baltic states, but Poland was also against it," Merkel claimed in a recent interview. "In any case, it didn’t happen. Then I left office, and then Putin’s aggression began."