Germany Charges Ukrainian over Nord Stream Sabotage

Serhiy K. denies any wrongdoing and says he was in Ukraine when the explosions took place. His defense lawyer, Nicola Canestrini, has previously described the evidence as weak and said he believes his client will be fully acquitted by the German court.

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The Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines were hit by massive explosions in September 2022, seven months after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Built to carry Russian gas directly to Germany while bypassing Poland and Ukraine, the pipelines had long been at the center of geopolitical controversy.

In the immediate aftermath, some Western officials speculated that Russia may have staged a false-flag operation to worsen Europe’s energy crisis. Danish and Swedish investigations, which closed in 2024 without identifying specific perpetrators, established only that the blasts were deliberate acts of sabotage.

Germany’s Federal Court of Justice (BGH) later said the attack was, with a high degree of probability, carried out on behalf of a foreign state, specifically Ukraine. That assessment appeared in a 10 December 2025 ruling on Serhiy K.’s pretrial detention, which was published earlier this year.

According to the court, the pipelines served civilian rather than military purposes, and their destruction affected Germany’s sovereignty because they were intended to help secure the country’s gas supplies. The court also described the attack as a covert intelligence operation in which the suspect did not act as a combatant.

The ruling supports several findings previously reported by Der Spiegel, according to which the 2022 attack was carried out by a Ukrainian commando unit. The saboteurs allegedly used a chartered yacht and placed explosives on the seabed.

(Reuters, Max)