Ukraine authorities ordered Nord Stream sabotage: German prosecutors

BERLIN: Ukrainian state authorities were behind the 2022 sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipeline linking Russia with Europe, German prosecutors charged Thursday, a move that complicates close relations between Kyiv and its key military backer Berlin.

The explosives attack in the Baltic Sea destroyed three of four seafloor pipelines of the major energy link to Germany and released record amounts of methane into the atmosphere.

In a statement detailing the charges brought against one suspect, German prosecutors said that he and other members of the Ukrainian military had acted “on the orders of state authorities in Ukraine”.

The case is awkward for Germany and Ukraine at a time Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, has emerged as the biggest military backer of Ukraine in its war against Russia

The suspect in question was arrested in summer 2025 in Italy and extradited to Germany the following November, and was named at the time as Serhii Kuznietsov.

In Thursday’s statement prosecutors said he was “an officer in the Ukrainian army” and that following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, “he and other members of the military… developed a plan to destroy” the pipeline” in order to deprive Russia of gas revenues.

They say that Kuznietsov led a team “consisting of several professional divers, a skipper, and an explosives expert” who chartered a yacht in the German Baltic Sea port of Rostock using forged identity documents.

“Using this vessel, the accused and his accomplices transported large quantities of high-performance explosives suitable for military use through international waters to an area near the Danish island of Bornholm,” prosecutors say.

The explosives were then allegedly attached to the pipelines, together with timed detonators. The explosions took place four days later.