German law enforcement believes it has identified all members of the “sabotage group” behind the explosions on Russia’s Nord Stream gas pipelines.
Source: European Pravda, citing a joint investigation by German broadcaster ARD and newspapers Süddeutsche Zeitung and Die Zeit
Details: The investigation has found that Germany has preliminarily identified seven individuals, all Ukrainian citizens, as responsible for the Nord Stream blasts in 2022.
One of them, Serhii Kuznetsov, was arrested in Italy last week. German investigators believe he coordinated the “sabotage group”. The suspects also include four divers, an explosives expert, and the skipper of the vessel Andromeda, which was used to reach the Nord Stream pipelines.
The seventh suspect is Ukrainian serviceman Vsevolod K., who received training in Germany. According to some reports, he was killed in action in Ukraine, the investigation says.
The joint investigation has revealed few details about the suspects. One of the divers under suspicion is reportedly a Ukrainian woman from a private diving school in Kyiv, while a sailor, said to be from Odesa, was identified through fingerprints he had provided on a previous trip to the Netherlands, later found on the Andromeda.
German investigators are also reported to have discovered certain indications of links between the Nord Stream suspects and “Ukrainian special services or the military”. These include, among other things, the suspects’ possession of forged Ukrainian passports (Kuznetsov supposedly had two).
However, it has not been proven whether the explosions were sanctioned by Ukrainian authorities, the joint investigation said.
Background:
In late September 2022, after explosions near the Danish island of Bornholm in the Baltic Sea, a total of four leaks were detected on two pipelines.Politicians and the media initially assumed that Russians were behind the explosions. German federal police and prosecutors eventually tracked a sailing yacht and uncovered links to Ukraine.In 2024, federal prosecutor Jens Rommel obtained the first arrest warrant against one of the suspected divers – a Ukrainian citizen. However, the suspect left his home in Poland before he could be arrested.Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Kyiv had not been involved in the explosions and suggested analysing who might have sought to spread such claims in the media.
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