Second suspect in 2022 Nord Stream blast arrested: German prosecutors

Berlin: A second Ukrainian suspect has been arrested in Croatia in connection with the 2022 sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines, Germany’s Office of the Federal Prosecutor announced on Wednesday.

The suspect, identified as Ukrainian national Volodymyr Z, was detained in the Croatian coastal city of Pula according to a European arrest warrant.

Prosecutors alleged that the suspect, a trained diver, belonged to a team that used a rented sailing yacht to plant explosives on the Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea in September 2022, Xinhua news agency reported.

The first Ukrainian national, identified as Serhii Kuznietsov, was arrested in Italy and then indicted by German prosecutors in June.

The prosecutors said that he acted on behalf of state authorities.

The Office of the Federal Prosecutor said Kuznietsov was an officer in the Ukrainian army in 2022. After the escalation of the Russia-Ukraine conflict in late February that year, he and other military personnel allegedly developed a plan on behalf of Ukrainian state authorities to destroy the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines.

Kuznietsov is suspected, as a co-perpetrator, of committing a war crime by attacking civilian objects, causing an explosive blast, destroying buildings and disrupting public utilities, the prosecutors said, adding that the suspect led the plan and a group formed by several professional divers, a skipper, and an explosives expert.

The prosecutors said Kuznietsov and his accomplices used a yacht to transport large amounts of high-performance explosives, which could be used for military purposes, to international waters near the Danish island of Bornholm.

On September 26, 2022, the group detonated several explosive devices, which they had placed on the gas pipelines on the seabed, causing large gas leaks.

Kuznietsov was arrested in Italy in August 2025 and was transferred to Germany the following November, the prosecutors said.

IANS