Germany Puts Ukrainian Ex-Officer On Trial For Nord Stream “War Crime” As Defense Says Pipelines Were Fair Game

Four years after the largest act of infrastructure sabotage in postwar Europe, Germany finally has a defendant. Just one.

Serhii Kuznietsov, a 50-year-old former Ukrainian army officer, went on trial Wednesday at the Hanseatic Higher Regional Court in Hamburg, accused of leading the seven-person team that blew up three of the four Nord Stream lines on September 26, 2022. Prosecutors charge him as a co-perpetrator of a war crime, namely an attack on civilian objects, along with causing an explosion, destroying structures and disrupting public utilities. Around 30 hearing days are scheduled, running into February.

The prosecution’s version is about as cinematic as it gets: a crew of four professional divers, an explosives expert and a skipper set out from Rostock on the chartered yacht Andromeda, rented through intermediaries with forged identity papers, and planted devices packed with HMX and RDX at roughly 80 meters near the Danish island of Bornholm. Kuznietsov, a former SBU officer, allegedly ran the show from the deck. German investigators also say he incriminated himself by chatting about the operation with friends and relatives while in Italian custody, which in hindsight may not have been the best use of his phone privileges.

Most notable, however, is who Berlin says was behind it. The federal prosecutor’s indictment states plainly that Kuznietsov and fellow servicemen were acting on behalf of Ukrainian state authorities, with the aim of permanently halting gas flows and cutting off Russia’s revenue to fund the war. In other words, Germany is prosecuting an ally’s officer for an operation it says the ally’s state ordered, against German energy infrastructure, while continuing to bankroll that same ally. Kyiv, for its part, maintains it had nothing to do with it; Ukraine’s prosecutor general said in July it had found “no evidence” of state involvement. Awkwardly, Ukraine’s own human rights ombudsman had already confirmed to an Italian court that Kuznietsov was serving in the armed forces at the time.

On day one, the defense declined to let Kuznietsov speak and moved to dismiss all charges. His lawyers argued that war crimes prosecutions would be better aimed at Russian forces (citing Bucha and the deportation of Ukrainian children), that his fingerprints were never found on the yacht, and that no witness placed him aboard. His Ukrainian counsel go further, arguing the pipelines were a legitimate military target regardless of who hit them. The court has already rejected his claim to combatant immunity, ruling that it does not cover covert operations in which soldiers cannot be distinguished from civilians. The BBC reports the defense plans to submit written testimony from two of his former commanders, one of them reportedly the alleged mastermind of the entire operation, which should make for an interesting exhibit.

Then there is the matter of who wants a seat at the table. Gazprom-owned Nord Stream 2 AG has applied to join the case as a co-plaintiff, and Kuznietsov’s Ukrainian lawyers warn that a conviction could hand Moscow a legal basis to claim compensation, potentially from the roughly $300 billion in frozen Russian assets that Europe has been trying to earmark for Kyiv. A guilty verdict, then, could put Brussels in the unusual position of having established a Russian damages claim against money it already promised to Ukraine.

The diver who keeps getting away

Kuznietsov is the only person currently on trial because Germany’s second suspect keeps slipping through European courts. Volodymyr Zhuravliov, the alleged diver, was arrested in Poland in September 2025, only for a Warsaw court to refuse extradition a month later, ruling the act had been committed in the context of Russia’s war. Prime Minister Donald Tusk was blunter, saying handing him over would go against Poland’s interests and that those who built Nord Stream 2 “should be ashamed and remain silent.”

Germany, whose energy costs have exploded – no pun intended – after the pipeline sabotage, and refuses to be ashamed or silent now that its entire manufacturing sector is imploding as a result, tried again in August when Croatian police picked up Zhuravliov in Pula, where he was reportedly working on, of all things, a Hollywood dramatization of the Nord Stream attack. Berlin upgraded its warrant to include the war crime charge, and on September 18 a Pula court approved extradition. His lawyers are appealing to Croatia’s high criminal court and say they will go to international bodies if needed, so his arrival in Hamburg is anything but assured. According to ARD, investigators have identified seven suspects in total, one of whom has since been killed fighting Russia.

The question nobody in Hamburg will ask

The trial also formally enshrines the “six guys on a sailboat” thesis that first surfaced in March 2023 and was fleshed out by the WSJ in August 2024, when the Journal reported that Zelensky initially approved the plan before calling it off at the CIA’s request, only for then-commander Valery Zaluzhny to proceed anyway. Zaluzhny, now ambassador in London, called it a provocation. The court is unlikely to spend much time on Seymour Hersh’s February 2023 account, which pinned the operation on the US Navy, or on Joe Biden’s February 2022 promise that if Russia invaded, “we will bring an end to it.”

Meanwhile, the pipelines remain at the bottom of the Baltic, Nord Stream 1 having moved nearly 60 billion cubic meters in 2021, and Germany continues to pay up for LNG. The AfD has campaigned on restarting Russian gas flows, which means the verdict, due sometime next year, will land squarely in German domestic politics. Expect a long, carefully narrow trial in which a court determines whether one man captained a yacht, while the question of who sent the yacht remains politely unexamined.