German prosecutors charge Ukrainian suspect over Nord Stream explosions
Prosecutors allege a yacht was used in the sabotage of pipelines, with the suspect leading the operation. German federal prosecutors have filed charges against a
Prosecutors allege a yacht was used in the sabotage of pipelines, with the suspect leading the operation. German federal prosecutors have filed charges against a 50-year-old Ukrainian national over a series of explosions that destroyed two Nord Stream underwater gas pipelines linking Russia to Europe in 2022. The federal prosecutor’s office declined to comment on the specifics of the indictment on Wednesday against the accused, who is identified only as Serhii K in court documents under German privacy rules. Serhii K is accused of attacking civilian energy infrastructure, causing an explosion, and destroying structures, according to the German public broadcaster ARD. The underwater explosions damaged both the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines so severely that no gas could be transported through them, knocking out the key routes for Russian gas to Europe for months after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
In a December 2025 detention filing by the Federal Court of Justice, prosecutors allege that Serhii K helped coordinate a team that used a sailing yacht, the Andromeda, to place explosive devices on the pipelines near Denmark’s Bornholm Island in September 2022. According to those documents, Serhii K is suspected of acting as the on-board coordinator and team leader, not as a diver or bomb expert. The Berlin law firm Menaker, which is representing the accused Ukrainian, has not provided any details on the indictment. Federal prosecutors confirmed to the AFP news agency that Serhii K was the same suspect who was arrested in August 2025 in Italy and extradited to Germany the following November, and who was named at the time as Serhii Kuznietsov.
At the time of his arrest, German prosecutors said Kuznietsov had used forged identity documents to charter a yacht, which departed from the German city of Rostock to carry out the attacks. Kuznietsov has denied being part of the sabotage operation. He said he was a member of the Ukrainian armed forces and in Ukraine at the time of the incident, a claim his defence team has said would give him “functional immunity” under international law. Answering a question from Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine during a news conference in Dublin on Wednesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said it was too soon to comment on the charges against Serhii K in detail.
“We have not officially received any details; at least I have not seen them”, Zelenskyy said. “It is too early to say yet,” he added. Ukraine’s government has previously denied any involvement in the sabotage or knowledge of the plot to bomb the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines.
The BriefWire