Germany has issued arrest warrants for 6 Ukrainians in the case of undermining the Nord Streams.
German investigators have established the identities of all members of the group, which is believed to be involved in blowing up the gas pipelines “Nordic Streams” in 2022. The German Federal Police, the BKA and the Prosecutor’s Office have issued arrest warrants for six Ukrainian citizens, reports ZEIT.
According to the investigation, the saboteurs operated from the Andromeda yacht rented in Rostock. The group included the coordinator Serhii K., four divers (among them a woman – an instructor of the Kyiv diving school), an explosives technician and a ship captain from Odesa. They laid four charges with hexane and octogen, equipped with timers, on the bottom of the Baltic Sea, as a result of which three of the four strands of the pipeline were damaged.
The Ukrainian military Vsevolod K., who, according to the media, could die at the end of 2024 at the front, is considered to be another possible participant. His DNA, collected during training in the Bundeswehr, matched traces found aboard the Andromeda. 49-year-old Serhiy K., who is considered by the investigation as the head of the operation, was detained in Italy last week. He denies all charges and is awaiting a decision on extradition to Germany.
Law enforcement officers are also checking whether the group had ties to Ukrainian special services or the army. There is currently no direct evidence of state involvement, but the collected facts may indicate high-level support. Journalists add that although individual participants may have acted out of patriotic motives, the operation itself looked like a professionally organized special operation. The Federal Prosecutor’s Office of Germany has not yet brought official charges, the presumption of innocence applies.
Recall that at the end of September 2022, seismological stations in Sweden and Denmark recorded powerful underwater explosions on the routes of the “Nordic Stream-1” and “North Stream-2”. In Germany, then, they announced a possible sabotage, and a Russian operator described the destruction as “unprecedented”.
The Nord Stream AG company reported that the damage affected three offshore gas pipelines at the same time, and noted that the scale of the destruction is unprecedented, and “recovery dates cannot be estimated yet”. The EU and NATO called the explosions in the Baltic Sea a “deliberate act” sabotage, while Poland and Ukraine blamed Russia.
