Ukrainian to stand trial in Hamburg over Nord Stream case — BBC News
The trial of Ukrainian national Serhii K. will begin in the German city of Hamburg on Wednesday. Germany’s prosecutors accuse him of planning the bombing of the Nord Stream gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea in September 2022. He is the first suspect in the case to stand trial. Serhii K. denies the charges, BBC News reports.
German prosecutors’ version
According to the prosecution, Serhii K. was an active officer in the Ukrainian army in 2022 and led a group that included professional divers, a vessel captain and an explosives specialist. Investigators believe the group planned to destroy the pipelines in order to deprive the Russian Federation — the aggressor state — of revenue from gas sales used to finance the war.
The indictment materials state that the alleged perpetrators acted on the orders of Ukrainian state bodies. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy previously said that Ukraine was not involved in the explosions.
German investigators linked the case to the yacht Andromeda, which was rented by a group of deep-sea divers in the port of Rostock. Traces of underwater explosives were later found in samples taken from the vessel.
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Extradition and other suspects
Serhii K., identified in court documents as Serhii Kuznetsov, was detained in August 2025 near the Italian city of Rimini under a European arrest warrant. After several weeks of court disputes over extradition, he was handed over to Germany at the end of last year.
German prosecutors classify the case under the code of crimes against international law as a war crime — an attack by military means on civilian objects. In January 2025, Germany’s Federal Court ruled that the case falls under German territorial jurisdiction. The court said prosecutors had to act because the case concerns an undermining of the country’s internal security.
Another Ukrainian citizen, Volodymyr Zhuravlyov, secured Poland’s refusal to extradite him to Germany. A Polish court released him in October 2025, but he was later detained in Croatia on suspicion of involvement in the dives required for the sabotage. Last month, Croatia approved his extradition, though the timing of his transfer to Germany has not been specified.
The explosions on September 26, 2022, damaged three of the four Nord Stream pipeline strings near the Danish island of Bornholm. At that time, Nord Stream 1 was no longer supplying gas to Germany, while Nord Stream 2 had never been put into operation.
