Germany charges Ukrainian with bombing Nord Stream pipelines

Four years after the attacks, Serhii K will appear in court on charges of conspiring to sabotage Russian gas pipelines to Germany.

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

Four years after one of the most dramatic acts of sabotage in modern European history, a Ukrainian man will stand trial in Hamburg on Wednesday for blowing up Russia's Nord Stream gas pipeline to Germany.

Serhii Kay, as identified by German prosecutors, is accused of conspiring with other Ukrainian military personnel to destroy pipelines and prevent Russia from financing its war with gas revenue.

The case is highly sensitive in Germany, which has been seen as one of Ukraine's closest allies since Russia launched its full-scale offensive in February 2022, seven months before the attacks.

Serhii K, who was extradited to Germany last year, will be the first suspect to stand trial for the blasts.

He denies the charges, as does a second suspect who is fighting extradition from Croatia.

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 cut the gas flow to Germany a week before the attack on Nord Stream, 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 and blamed 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".

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

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 relations 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.

"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. It's not a political case. So they tried to depoliticize it," he explained.

In August 2025, Serhii Kay 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.

After several weeks of extradition court battles, Serhii K - identified in court documents as Serhii Kuznetsov - was transferred to Germany late last year.

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

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."