Germany charges Ukrainian with war crimes over Nord Stream sabotage

Nearly four years after underwater blasts tore open the Nord Stream gas pipelines beneath the Baltic Sea, Germany has filed the first criminal charges in the case — and, for the first time, named a suspect. Federal prosecutors accuse a Ukrainian former soldier of war crimes, a framing that turns one of Europe's most consequential acts of sabotage into a test of how wartime law applies far from any front line.

The Federal Public Prosecutor General's office in Karlsruhe said it had indicted a Ukrainian national, identified in the proceedings as Serhii K. and named in reporting as Serhii Kuznietsov, over the explosions of 26 September 2022 that destroyed three of the four Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipeline strings near the Danish island of Bornholm. The charges were brought under Prosecutor General Jens Rommel, in office since March 2024, and the case now rests with a court in Hamburg.

Prosecutors allege the suspect, a former military officer reported to be about 50, coordinated the operation from on board a chartered sailing yacht — the team leader rather than one of the divers. He has been held in Germany since late November 2025, after being arrested in Italy and extradited.

The charges — and why Germany calls them war crimes

According to the prosecutor's office, the indictment lists three offences: attacking civilian energy infrastructure, classified as a war crime under Germany's Code of Crimes Against International Law; causing an explosives detonation; and the destruction of structures under the ordinary criminal code. The war-crimes designation hinges on timing — the sabotage took place during the active international armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine — and on the German view that the pipelines were civilian, not military, assets.

The indictment has been filed with the State Security Senate of the Hanseatic Higher Regional Court in Hamburg, which must decide whether to admit it and open a trial. Prosecutors describe the evidence as overwhelming, pointing to self-incriminating telephone calls the suspect is said to have made from Italian custody and to mobile-phone data placing him at the scene.

A yacht, six accomplices and a forged charter

Investigators have reconstructed an operation of striking modesty for its geopolitical reach. On their account, a small crew rented a recreational sailing yacht — the Andromeda — using forged identity documents, then sailed into the Baltic to plant explosives on the seabed. The team is said to have numbered around half a dozen:

• a skipper and the on-board coordinator, the role prosecutors assign to Serhii K.;
• an explosives expert;
• four deep-sea divers, who allegedly fixed timed charges to the pipelines at depths of up to 80 metres.

The whole undertaking is estimated to have cost around $300,000. Serhii K. was arrested near Rimini in August 2025 and staged a hunger strike in an Italian high-security jail before Italy's Supreme Court of Cassation cleared his extradition in November; he was flown to Germany on 27 November 2025.

He is not the only name in the file. German investigators have identified up to seven suspects. A second man, named as Volodymyr Z., was detained in Poland but released after a Polish court refused to extradite him, and at least one alleged participant is reported to have died. Denmark and Sweden wound up their own inquiries in 2024, leaving Germany the last state still pursuing the case.

A test for wartime law

The defence intends to fight on the terrain of international law. Serhii K. says he was a serving member of Ukraine's armed forces, present in Ukraine at the time, which his lawyers argue should give him functional immunity from foreign prosecution. Germany's Federal Court of Justice rejected that argument earlier this year, finding that the pipelines were civilian assets and that a covert operation cannot count as a lawful act of combat.

His lawyers reject the case outright. “I believe this is a political case, and there is no direct evidence of Serhii's involvement in these events, nor can there be,” said Mykola Katerynchuk, one of his Ukrainian counsel. His Italian lawyer, Nicola Canestrini, said after the extradition ruling that, “however great the disappointment, I remain confident in an acquittal after the full trial in Germany.”

What it means for Kyiv — and for Europe

Ukraine has consistently denied any state role in the attack. Asked about the charges at a news conference in Dublin, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was careful not to be drawn.

We do not yet know all the details of this process. We have not officially received all the details, at least I have not seen them.

The prosecution lands at a delicate moment for relations between Berlin and Kyiv, two governments still bound together by German military and financial support for Ukraine's war effort. A public trial that examines whether Ukrainians blew up German-Russian infrastructure risks handing political ammunition to those in Germany already sceptical of that support.

The energy stakes are as much symbolic as physical. Neither pipeline was actually pumping gas when the charges were laid: Russia had throttled Nord Stream 1 to a halt weeks earlier, and Nord Stream 2 was never certified after Germany suspended its approval on 22 February 2022, two days before the invasion. Yet the blasts severed the last physical tie of the Russia-to-Germany gas era and exposed how vulnerable Europe's undersea cables and pipelines are to a determined crew with a rented boat — a lesson that has since driven up NATO patrols in the Baltic and hardened the EU's resolve to stay off Russian gas for good.