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Evening Standard
Evening Standard
World
Anthony France

Ukrainian man suspected of being behind Nord Stream gas pipeline blast arrested in Italy

A Ukrainian man was arrested at a holiday bungalow in Italy on suspicion of blowing up the Nord Stream gas pipelines under the Baltic Sea, in 2022, officials said on Thursday.

German prosecutors say the suspect, identified only as Serhii K, was part of a group who planted devices near the Danish island of Bornholm several months after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Described by both Moscow and the West as an act of sabotage, the explosions largely severed Russian gas supplies to Europe, prompting a major escalation in the Ukraine conflict and squeezing energy supplies on the continent.

No one has taken responsibility for the blasts and Ukraine has denied any role.

The arrest comes just as Kyiv is engaged in fraught diplomatic discussions with the United States over how to end the war in Ukraine without giving away major concessions and swathes of its own territory to Russia.

Justice Minister Stefanie Hubig, when asked if the arrest would affect ties to Kyiv, said: “Politically we are firmly on Ukraine’s side and will continue to be so.

“What is important for me is that Germany is a country of law, and crimes in our jurisdiction are fully investigated.”

The suspect and his accomplices had set off from Rostock on Germany’s northeastern coast in a sailing yacht to carry out the attack, prosecutors said.

German justice minister Stefanie Hubig delivers press statement (REUTERS)

The vessel had been rented from a German company with the help of forged identity documents via middlemen, they added.

Authorities acted on a European arrest warrant for the suspect, who faces charges of collusion to cause an explosion, anti-constitutional sabotage and destruction of important structures.

An official in Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s office said he could not comment as it was not clear who had been arrested and denied any role in the blasts.

A satellite image shows gas from the Nord Stream pipeline bubbling up in the water (via REUTERS)

Russia’s ambassador to Germany, Sergei Nechayev, told the state TASS news agency that Moscow continued to demand “an objective and full-fledged investigation of the terrorist act”.

He also criticised what he called the “meagre” information on the case provided by the Germans.

Successive Ukrainian governments have seen the pipelines as a symbol of, and vehicle for, Russia's hold over European energy supplies that Kyiv argued made it hard to act against Moscow ever since Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the suspect was a retired captain in Ukraine’s armed forces and previously served in the security service SBU, as well as in an elite unit that defended Kyiv in the early months of the Kremlin’s war.

The officer purportedly headed a team of two soldiers and four civilian divers covertly recruited by a special Ukrainian military unit to lay explosives that damaged the undersea pipelines, the WSJ said, citing investigators.

German prosecutors declined to comment on the WSJ report.

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