Germany Puts Ukrainian on Trial for Nord Stream Pipeline Bombing

Four years after the attacks, Serhiy Kuznetsov appears in court charged with conspiring to sabotage Russia's gas pipelines to Germany.

By Jessica Parker, Berlin-Hamburg Correspondent and Paul Kirby, Europe Digital Editor

A Ukrainian man has gone on trial in Hamburg for blowing up Russia's Nord Stream gas pipeline to Germany, four years after one of the most dramatic acts of sabotage in modern European history.

Prosecutors say Serhiy Kuznetsov played a leading role in a team of saboteurs who destroyed the pipelines and charge him with war crimes. His defense has requested the rejection of this case.

The case is particularly sensitive in Germany, one of Ukraine's closest allies since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, seven months before the attacks.

Kuznetsov, who was extradited to Germany last year, denies the charges, as does a second suspect who is fighting extradition from Croatia.

Kuznetsov was the first suspect to go on trial for Wednesday morning's blasts, and a packed public gallery appeared as he entered the courtroom looking calm.

He even smiled at times, including during initial exchanges where he spoke to confirm personal details such as name and place of birth.

Earlier, German prosecutors had identified him only as Serhii Kei and pictured him with his face blurred before a court lifted the anonymity order on Wednesday.

Kuznetsov, 50, wore a pair of headphones and appeared to be listening intently to a Ukrainian translation of articles. Prosecutors charged him with ordering divers and an explosives expert to attack civilian infrastructure.

The defense outlined its case, telling the court that in the four years since the Nord Stream explosions, only circumstantial evidence has been obtained.

Italian defense lawyer Nicola Canstrini told the BBC outside court: "[Prosecutors] conducted a thorough four-year investigation." "They didn't find a single witness, they didn't find any forensics, no DNA, no fingerprints - nothing!"

Canstrini and his colleagues argued that the defendant was bound to secrecy as a soldier and therefore could not have a fair trial because he was unable to defend himself.

"Let's say he has the facts, he was on another covert operation, how can you prove that if he [can't] tell us as the defense attorney where he's been and which witnesses we can subpoena?"

Prosecutors argue that the case falls under Germany's Crimes Against International Law as a war crime, as an "attack with military means against civilian objects."

The defense told the court that his extradition to Germany was incomplete because there was no mention of war crimes at the time.

In the months after explosives destroyed three of four gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea near the island of Bornholm on September 26, 2022, Western suspicions have looked to Moscow without assigning direct blame.

Russia had already cut gas to Germany at Nord Stream a week before the attack, and Nord Stream 2 had never been turned on. Berlin had suspended the multibillion-dollar project shortly before the invasion, and there were reports of suspicious Russian naval movements before the explosions.

As investigators from Sweden, Denmark and Germany tried to figure out who carried out the attack, Vladimir Putin blamed Russia, the US and its allies in Britain, blaming the "Anglo-Saxons" - which they denied.

Eventually, after Denmark and Sweden dropped their investigations, German prosecutors focused on a group of deep-sea divers who had chartered the yacht Andromeda in the northern German port of Rostock.

They later said that "traces of undersea explosives were found in samples taken from the boat".

Despite strained relations with Kiev, German prosecutors continued the case, and in January 2025 the German Federal Court ruled that the case was within German territorial jurisdiction, that foreign prosecutors and prosecutors had a responsibility to act because it "undermined [Germany's] internal security."

Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskiy has always said that Ukraine had "nothing to do with [the Nord Stream explosions], although German prosecutors have claimed in their indictment that the saboteurs carried out the plot "at the behest of Ukrainian state agencies".

Nord Stream Trial: How German Police Followed Evidence - To Ukraine

The case has highlighted the differences between the Kiev and Berlin courts.

Oleksandr Merzhko, who heads the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Ukrainian Parliament, notes that the explosions occurred during the war with Russia and that "Nord Stream 2 was nothing more than a tool used by Russia to prepare for war."

He told the BBC they had no confirmation of the German account: "It's one of the versions."

However, Stephan Meister, of the German Council on Foreign Relations, says successive chancellors in Berlin have done their best to remove politics from the case.

He explained: "They tried not to make a big story out of it, not to draw too much attention to it, to give the institutions, the judiciary, to deal with it. This is not a political case. So they tried to depoliticize it."

In August 2025, Kuznetsov was arrested by police under a European arrest warrant issued by federal prosecutors in Germany after checking into a hotel near the Italian Adriatic resort of Rimini.

Kuznetsov was extradited to Germany late last year after weeks of extradition court battles when his last name was revealed in court documents.

German prosecutors allege that in 2022 he was a foreign officer serving in the Ukrainian army and led a group of professional divers, a boat captain and an explosives expert.

While his legal battle continued in Italy, another Ukrainian man, Volodymyr Zhuravlov, successfully challenged Germany's extradition request in a Polish court.

In a very different ruling from the Italian Supreme Court, a Polish judge ordered Zhuravlov's release in October 2025, saying the attack on the pipelines was not illegal and that it would have been "justified, rational and just" if Ukraine had organized an armed mission.

Although he was released by a Warsaw court, he was arrested in Croatia last August on suspicion of "participating in essential diving" for sabotage.

Last month, Croatia approved his extradition, although it is unclear when that will happen and whether his case could become part of the Hamburg trial.

Despite the difficult nature of the case for Kyiv and Berlin, Ukraine's representative Oleksandr Merzhko does not believe it will damage relations because "it is in Germany's national interest to continue to support us."