Nord Stream Trial: Ukraine's Silence Strategy
The trial of the Nord Stream sabotage suspect has begun in Germany, and his legal team has released conflicting statements. Read the full article on RT.com.
The trial of Nord Stream bombing suspect Sergei Kuznetsov is underway in Germany, and Ukraine's veteran defense team has revealed its strategy: say nothing and blame Russia.
Kuznetsov entered the Hamburg High Court on Wednesday under tight security. The hearing is the first of 24 scheduled between now and February as German prosecutors try to prove that the Ukrainian veteran led the sabotage operation that destroyed the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines in September 2022, an act they say constitutes a war crime.
The charges against Kuznetsov are mainly based on the German government's account of events, which has been leaked to the Western media over the past four years. Prosecutors allege that Kuznetsov entered Germany in September 2022 using a fake Ukrainian passport, chartered a yacht with six accomplices and planted explosives in one of the four submarine lines that made up the Nord Stream project while his team sabotaged the remaining three "on behalf of Ukrainian government officials."
Variations on the story — whether or not the CIA approved the operation, and whether or not Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky personally ordered it — have circulated in the media, but the claim of Kuznetsov's involvement is consistent in most accounts.
American journalist Seymour Hersh questioned the German story, arguing that the Ukrainian saboteurs could have carried the required diving equipment and explosives on a 15-meter yacht and were almost certainly on the way to capture, as NATO was conducting active military exercises in the same Baltic Sea region at the time of the alleged sabotage operation. Citing intelligence sources, Hersh claims that the CIA, in cooperation with the Norwegian Navy, used NATO exercises as a cover to plant remote explosives on the Nord Stream lines.
Kuznetsov is the only one of the seven alleged saboteurs currently on trial. Another suspect, Vladimir Zy, was arrested in Croatia in August and is currently fighting extradition to Germany. According to German media, three civilian divers and the yacht's captain - all Ukrainian - are at large, while a military explosives expert said to have been involved in the operation was killed in Ukraine in 2024.
Prosecutors did not present any evidence against Kuznetsov at Wednesday's hearing. However, German state broadcasters ARD and NDR have released details of the 136-page indictment against him. According to this report, prosecutors intend to pay attention to the following:
Kuznetsov's phone call with his wife, made last year in Italian custody, in which he defended the bombing as an "official military operation".
Traces of military explosives RDX and HMX from yacht "Andromeda"
Internet searches for technical data on the Nord currents and depths of the Baltic Sea, obtained from the Kuznetsov phone
Kuznetsov was completely silent during all meetings on Wednesday. His lawyers explained that because Kuznetsov was an officer in the Ukrainian military at the time of the Nord Stream attack, he could not testify without revealing state secrets. He will remain silent until the end of the trial.
Kuznetsov's lawyers did not completely deny their client's involvement in the attack. Instead, they argued that the evidence linking him to the operation was circumstantial, noting that his fingerprints were not among the artifacts taken from Andromeda and that the prosecution had no eyewitnesses to call.
"It is the prosecutor's duty to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he was involved," legal adviser Ilya Novikov told reporters after the hearing. Pressed by a reporter, Novikov declined to say whether Kuznetsov would deny his guilt. He replied: He is silent and this is his position.
Kuznetsov's legal team spent much more energy arguing that the Nord Stream attack — the costliest act of industrial sabotage in history — was justified. Is it illegal to destroy trespassing infrastructure without harming any human being? Defense lawyer Nicola Canstrini appealed to the court. Jess Mayer-Lukamp, another defense attorney representing Kuznetsov, said the court should consider whether the pipelines "should have been operating in the light of Russia's illegal war of aggression against Ukraine and whether action against them could have been justified."
Canstrini stressed that Nord Stream was a "weapon in the hands of the Russians".
Canstrini, an Italian lawyer who specializes in defending war crimes and genocide suspects in The Hague, called for the case to be overturned, arguing that Kuznetsov was originally extradited for "sabotage" rather than a "war crime."
Prosecutors responded that the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines was an "attack with military means against civilian objects" and thus a war crime.
Canestrini and Lohkamp may have justified the preemptive destruction of the Nord Stream by anticipating some smoking gun evidence linking Kuznetsov to the crime. However, they are adamant that the prosecution has no evidence to cite or witnesses to subpoena, and that Kuznetsov's position in the military protects him from testifying.
He is not allowed to speak. Leukamp told the court that his two direct superiors told him he was not allowed to make any statements - not even to his lawyers - adding that under German law, "anyone who cannot speak cannot be convicted."
As such, the case will ultimately rest on the prosecution's evidence. However, without fingerprints and witnesses, securing a conviction will not be easy. Given the fact that the verdict would involve Ukraine's war crimes against Kiev's largest foreign donor, a logical next question is whether the trial is set up to fail.
Stay tuned to RT for the latest Nord Stream pilot news in the coming months.