Octogen Fragments Led to Alleged Nord Stream Saboteurs

German prosecutors have charged 50-year-old Ukrainian Serhij K. with leading the crew that allegedly blew up the Nord Stream gas pipelines in September 2022.

According to the weekly newspaper Die Zeit, forensic evidence secured by investigators on the sailboat Andromeda at a winter storage facility on the island of Rügen played a key role in identifying the suspected seven-member group.

On board the yacht, which the alleged saboteurs had rented, investigators recovered fingerprints, a thermos, several used coffee cups, a baseball cap and a black T-shirt with traces of hair. The most important findings, however, were fragments of the military explosives octogen and hexogen.

Analysis showed that the hexogen fragments matched samples taken from the destroyed Nord Stream pipelines on the seabed of the Baltic Sea, where divers had allegedly attached explosives at a depth of about 80m.

Another breakthrough in the investigation was a speed-camera photograph from the island of Rügen in early September 2022. The image led investigators to the alias of one suspected Ukrainian crew member and, later, to the identification of the entire team.

On the basis of this physical and biological evidence, Germany’s federal prosecutor obtained arrest warrants for all Ukrainian suspects, including diving instructor Volodymyr Z. The accused, Serhij K., has been in pretrial detention in Germany since November.

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