Germany’s federal prosecutor has filed the first formal charges in the September 2022 sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines, indicting Ukrainian national Serhii Kuznetsov on counts of causing an explosion, destroying infrastructure, and attacking civilian energy facilities—an act classified as a war crime under international humanitarian law. Kuznetsov, who was arrested in Italy in August 2025 and extradited to Germany in November, is being held in pre-trial detention in Hamburg. The indictment, confirmed by his legal team and reported across German media, alleges that he led a seven-person commando that used the sailing yacht Andromeda to plant explosives on the seabed near the Danish island of Bornholm, rupturing three of the four pipeline strings.

According to German investigators, the evidence against Kuznetsov is “overwhelming,” including self-incriminating statements he made during monitored telephone calls from Italian custody and forensic traces of the military-grade explosives octogen and hexogen found on the yacht and matching samples from the damaged pipelines. The suspect has denied involvement; his lawyer, Nicola Canestrini, stated he expects a full acquittal. The broader probe has identified six other Ukrainian nationals as alleged accomplices, one of whom is believed to have died in combat. A second suspect, diving instructor Volodymyr Zhuravlev, was detained in Poland in September 2025, but a Warsaw court refused his extradition, with the presiding judge suggesting the attack could be viewed as a legitimate act of self-defence against “a bloody genocidal war.”

Viewed from Berlin, the prosecution places the German government in a delicate position: it is Kyiv’s largest European supplier of military aid, yet its judiciary is now pursuing a case that many Ukrainians regard as the heroic disabling of a key Russian revenue stream. Ukrainian officials have consistently denied any state involvement, and the question of who ordered and financed the operation remains unanswered in the public record. Moscow, which opened its own criminal case for “international terrorism,” has repeatedly pointed to the investigation as evidence of Western complicity, while the operator Nord Stream 2 AG has separately challenged EU decisions on gas imports in the European Court of Justice. Within Germany, some political figures from the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party have called for the pipelines’ restoration, citing the country’s energy needs.

At the time of the blasts, Nord Stream 1 had been shut down by Russia amid the escalating energy standoff, and Nord Stream 2 had never entered service after Berlin suspended its certification just before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Sweden and Denmark closed their own investigations in 2024, leaving Germany as the sole state pursuing criminal accountability. The Hanseatic Higher Regional Court in Hamburg must now decide whether to admit the indictment and set a trial date, which German media suggest could come as early as autumn 2026. The proceedings are expected to rekindle debate over the legal and political boundaries of covert operations during wartime.