Germany seeks arrest of Ukrainian diver for Nord Stream sabotage

Germany has issued a European arrest warrant for a Ukrainian diving instructor over his alleged involvement in the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea, according to German media.
German investigators believe Volodymyr Z was a member of a team that in September 2022 planted explosive devices on the pipeline route carrying natural gas from Russia to Germany, German media reported on Wednesday. German law does not allow publication of the suspect’s surname.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has repeatedly denied his country was behind the sabotage, which disrupted Russian gas exports to the European Union, hitting Moscow’s energy revenues hard.
Volodymyr Z was last known to have lived in Poland, according to a report by the Suddeutsche Zeitung and Die Zeit newspapers and the ARD public broadcaster, which quoted unnamed sources.
The Polish prosecutor’s office confirmed on Wednesday that it had received a German arrest warrant for a Ukrainian man who is a suspect in the Nord Stream attack named “Volodymyr Z”.
It said it received the warrant in June, but the suspect left for Ukraine last month. It said also that the authorities failed to prevent him from leaving because the relevant information had not percolated down to the country’s border guard.
Germany’s investigation has identified another man and a woman who like Volodymyr Z are also Ukrainian diving instructors. However, no arrest warrants have been issued for them for the time being, according to the German media report.

Several explosions on September 26, 2022 damaged the two gas pipelines, Nord Stream 1 and 2. The explosions were registered near the Danish island of Bornholm in the Baltic Sea. Four leaks were discovered shortly afterwards.
Russian natural gas had previously flowed to Germany through Nord Stream 1, which had a capacity of 63 billion cubic metres (82.4 billion cubic yards) per year. The similarly sized Nord Stream 2 was not yet in operation.
The route was built to divert Russian gas exports to the EU away from Ukraine’s pipelines, on which they were previously heavily reliant.
Russia’s gas sales to the EU were by far the country’s most lucrative until the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and ensuing political disputes all but wiped the trade out.
Russia and the West accused each other of being behind the Nord Stream blasts. Each has denied involvement, and no one has taken responsibility.
Authorities in several countries investigated the case, but Denmark and Sweden halted their investigations without noting any conclusion.
In January 2023, Germany raided a ship that it said may have been used to transport explosives and told the United Nations that it believed trained divers could have attached devices to the pipelines at about 70 to 80 metres (230 to 260 feet) deep.
In March last year, The New York Times reported that US officials had seen intelligence indicating a “pro-Ukrainian group” was responsible for carrying out the blasts without Zelenskyy’s knowledge.

Whether the finding that Ukrainians were behind the attack on the pipelines might have any ill effect on Germany’s support for Ukraine is yet to become clear.
“The level of resources, of money, of military hardware that has been channelled from Germany, from Poland to Ukraine is very considerable,” said Al Jazeera’s correspondent Dominic Kane in Berlin.
“The current German government says that these developments will have no effect whatsoever on their relationship with Kyiv. But clearly it’s a very serious issue.”