German prosecutors said on Thursday that they had charged a Ukrainian man with leading the sabotage of two undersea gas pipelines in 2022 that directly linked Russia to Germany.
Prosecutors said the man, identified only as Serhii K. in keeping with German privacy rules, was a Ukrainian army officer. They said Ukrainian officials had commissioned him to place bombs on the pipelines in the Baltic Sea, known Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2, in order to permanently halt Russian gas flows to Germany, a key source of revenue for Russia.
The man oversaw a team of divers who plunged into the sea in September 2022 from a chartered sailboat to plant timed explosives on the pipelines, prosecutors said. The explosions led to severe damage in three of the four gas pipes targeted (each pipeline consists of two parallel pipes).
The attack came months after Russia invaded Ukraine as Ukrainian officials were trying to find ways of weakening Russia’s economy and restricting the money that Moscow needed to fund its war effort.
He was extradited to Germany after being arrested in August in a small seaside resort town in Italy. He is now accused of committing a war crime, causing an explosion, destroying structures and disrupting public utilities, the prosecutors said. He will be tried in the highest court in Hamburg, Germany’s biggest port city.
At time of the explosion, neither pipeline was in use, but for technical reasons they did contain gas, which patrol aircraft spotted bubbling to the surface shortly after the attack. Germany, a key ally of Ukraine, had refused to use the newest pipeline, seeking to punish Russia in the weeks after its invasion of Ukraine. Months later, Russia cut off the older pipeline — in order, European officials concluded, to pressure European leaders to stop their support for Ukraine.
