A Ukrainian national has been arrested in Italy in connection with explosions, carried out in 2022, that damaged the Nord Stream gas pipelines.
The suspect, whose arrest was confirmed by Italian police, was identified by German prosecutors only as Serhii K, in accordance with German privacy laws.
German federal prosecutors said he is accused of belonging to a group that allegedly planted explosive devices on the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines on the Baltic seabed near the Danish island of Bornholm on September 26, 2022.
Serhii K and his accomplices transported the explosives on a sailing yacht that departed from the German port of Rostock, according to German prosecutors. The vessel had been rented from a local company through intermediaries using falsified identity documents.
Nord Stream, majority-owned by Russia's state-controlled Gazprom and co-financed by major European energy companies, was constructed to deliver Russian gas directly to Germany, bypassing transit states such as Ukraine and Poland, which have had strained relations with Moscow.
The suspected sabotage and subsequent gas leaks caused the pipelines to become inoperable and came seven months after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Western governments originally accused Russia of carrying out the blasts, while Moscow rejected the allegations and instead blamed the United States, Britain, and Ukraine.
Germany has investigated the incident as its companies were part of the consortium that owned the Nord Stream project. In August 2024, German investigators wrapped up their initial probe and formally issued an arrest warrant for Volodymyr Z, a Ukrainian citizen investigators believed was the mastermind behind the plot.
Various news reports since the attacks have pointed the finger of blame at Ukrainian operatives, possibly acting independently of the Ukrainian state.
Germany's former intelligence chief, August Hanning, told Die Welt in August 2024 that he believed there were agreements between the presidents of Poland and Ukraine to carry out the attack -- an accusation that was denied by the office of the Polish president. The Ukrainian government has also repeatedly denied responsibility for the attack.
Both Denmark and Sweden, in whose waters the explosions took place, ended their investigations into the incident in 2024. While the Danish police said the explosions were due to "deliberate sabotage of the gas lines," they did not identify any suspects and said there was "no necessary basis to further pursue a criminal case."
A new report by the International Institute for Strategic Studies has found that Russia has dramatically increased sabotage operations throughout Europe, with the number of attacks targeting critical infrastructure nearly quadrupling since 2023.
