Italian police detained a Ukrainian national suspected by Germany of being one of the leading protagonists in the sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines in 2022.
The man, identified as 49-year-old Serhii K., was taken into custody overnight in the eastern province of Rimini under a European arrest warrant, according to an emailed statement from the German Federal Prosecutor’s office in Karlsruhe.
He is suspected of being part of a group that used explosives to blow up the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines near the Danish island of Bornholm in September 2022 and was allegedly one of the coordinators of the operation, the prosecutor said.
“He and his accomplices used a sailing yacht departing from Rostock for transport,” they added. “The yacht had previously been rented from a German company through intermediaries using forged identification documents.”
Speculation has swirled about the origin of the attack on the two pipelines, installed to deliver natural gas from Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea.
The incident triggered a wave of accusations, with Russia blaming it on sabotage by the US, Ukraine and Poland and calling them “beneficiaries” of the blasts.
A year ago, Sweden dropped a related probe, saying they had no jurisdiction given that nothing indicates the attack involved Sweden or its citizens.
According to an Italian police statement, the suspect was spending a few days with his family at tourist accommodation in the town of San Clemente.
After cordoning off the bungalow in the early hours of Thursday morning, officers launched a raid and the suspect surrendered without resistance.
German Justice Minister Stefanie Hubig praised investigators, saying they had identified and apprehended a “suspected mastermind” behind the attack.
“This arrest demonstrates once again that we have excellent investigators in Germany who can handle even the most difficult challenges,” Hubig added.
Following his transfer from Italy, the accused will be brought before the investigating judge of the Karlsruhe-based Federal Court of Justice, the German prosecutor said.
The Nord Stream 1 undersea link to Germany was the main route for Russian pipeline gas flows before the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, while the second pipeline was completed but never went operational.
In 2021, the year before the war started, it delivered more than a third of Russia’s total gas exports to Europe.
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