A German court has issued the first arrest warrant in the case involving the sabotage of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines. The suspect, Volodymyr, is a Ukrainian citizen who formerly lived in Poland. Volodymyr was not detained in Poland, where he lived at the time. He denies being involved in the bombs. Several German media publications, including Spiegel, stated that in June 2024, the Federal Supreme Court issued an arrest warrant for Volodymyr, a Ukrainian citizen and diving instructor. Recently, he lived in Pruszków, Poland. In accordance with German protocol, just the suspect’s first name and surname initials are revealed, however these initials differ between German and Polish reports. German media referred to him as Wladimir S., while Polish

Reporters uncovered that Volodymyr formerly worked at a diving school in Kyiv that specialized in deep-sea dives. Aside from him, two other suspects are apparently implicated in the case: a couple named Svitlana and Yevhen, who supposedly run a diving school in Ukraine where Volodymyr worked as an instructor. Svitlana has already told journalists that she does not know Volodymyr and had no information of the Nord Stream attack because she was in Bulgaria when it occurred. Volodymyr, with whom journalists communicated, denied any involvement in the explosions, which German authorities have characterized as “acts of unconstitutional sabotage”.

The arrest warrant was issued based on witness testimony, saying Volodymyr J. was a passenger in a white Citroën that brought a crew to the yacht Andromeda on September 8, 2022. Radar images captured near the German island of Rügen owing to a speeding violation allegedly show a man resembling Volodymyr. “The vehicle carried diving equipment utilized for the operation at the bottom of the Baltic Sea. “The driver recognized the wanted Volodymyr as one of the passengers,” Spiegel said.

Despite the fact that he had a European arrest warrant, the suspect was not arrested in Poland. Onet stated, citing a statement from Polish prosecutor’s office spokesman Anna Adamczak, that Germany has filed a European arrest order for the suspect. However, Berlin did not enter his information into the Schengen search database, which allowed him to cross the Polish-Ukrainian border. Adamczak stated that Germany had merely issued a European arrest warrant for Volodymyr, but he was not included in the search database utilized by border guards. As a result, the Germans did not enter his data.

The Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines near Denmark’s Bornholm Island went out of service at the end of September 2022 owing to depressurization. A seismograph on the island detected two explosions before the gas escapes from the pipes. The incident was quickly deemed sabotage. Spiegel revealed that in June 2022, some months before the attack, Dutch military intelligence notified the Federal Intelligence Service of a possible attack on the pipeline. In 2023, Polish intelligence services offered Germany with evidence of Russian participation in the Nord Stream pipe explosions, but German officials remain suspicious. At the time, the pipelines were filled with technical gas but were not in operation—Germany had never certified Nord Stream 2, and Nord Stream 1 had been turned off by Gazprom for claimed

The Nord Stream pipelines run from the Baltic Sea to Germany. They are currently not operational. The only working gas pipeline from Russia to Western Europe now runs via Ukrainian territory, after the Ukrainian army seized Gazprom’s gas distribution station in Sudzha, Kursk region.