German Arrest Warrant for Suspect of Explosion Sabotage

German prosecutors trying to solve the mystery of who blew up the Nord Stream gas pipelines under the Baltic Sea in 2022 have issued an arrest warrant for a Ukrainian diving instructor.

The suspect was identified as Volodymyr Z by the German media, who treated the sabotage as a sensationalized crime drama.

Ines Peterson, a spokeswoman for the German prosecutor general, refused to confirm the arrest warrant, telling the BBC that her office never released a statement so as not to jeopardise the investigation by giving the suspect a chance to escape.

But the spokeswoman for the Polish prosecutor general, Anna Adamiak, in Warsaw told the BBC’s Adam Easton that a European arrest warrant had indeed been passed to them by German prosecutors.

When Polish officials visited Volodymyr Z’s home in early July, he had already left the country for Ukraine, he said.

According to German media, until then he had lived in a quiet residential area of ​​Pruszków, a town near Warsaw.

According to an investigation by three German media outlets, including public broadcaster ARD, Volodymyr Z was part of a team of experienced Ukrainian divers who in September 2022 chartered a German yacht, sailed into the Baltic Sea and planted explosives, blowing up three of the four Nord Stream gas pipelines.

A Ukrainian man and woman are also suspected to be involved.

If the latest media reports are true, that a group of Ukrainian divers blew up the pipelines, it still wouldn’t solve the larger question of who ordered the attack.

So far there is no public evidence linking him to the Ukrainian or Russian state or any other individual country or group.

Conspiracy theories about the attack have circulated for years, with unconfirmed rumors that the governments in Kiev, Moscow, or Washington were behind the attack.

It has also been speculated that the perpetrators could be Ukrainian or Russian military groups, acting without the knowledge of the Ukrainian government.

The Nord Stream pipelines transported gas from Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea and were a controversial and unpopular symbol of Europe’s energy dependence on Moscow. In other words, it’s easy to imagine the motives for such an attack.

For years, Eastern Europeans have warned Berlin that this dependence on Russian gas made Europe vulnerable.

But successive German governments, from Gerhard Schröder’s left-wing coalition to Angela Merkel’s conservative administrations, have argued that tying Russia to Europe through energy and trade ties would help both countries economically and ensure peace.

Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 shattered this hope, and leading politicians across the political spectrum in Germany have now admitted they were wrong.