Ukrainian man arrested in Italy over Nord Stream pipeline attacks

BERLIN/MILAN — A Ukrainian man was arrested at a holiday bungalow in Italy on suspicion of coordinating attacks on three Nord Stream gas pipelines in 2022, officials said on Thursday, a breakthrough in an episode that sharpened tensions between Russia and the West.

Described by both Moscow and the West as an act of sabotage, the explosions largely severed Russian gas supplies to Europe, prompting a major escalation in the Ukraine conflict and squeezing energy supplies on the continent. No one has taken responsibility for the blasts and Ukraine has denied any role.

The arrest comes just as Kyiv is engaged in fraught diplomatic discussions with the United States over how to end the war in Ukraine without giving away major concessions and swathes of its own territory to Russia.

“Politically we are firmly on Ukraine’s side and will continue to be so,” said Justice Minister Stefanie Hubig when asked if the arrest would affect Berlin’s ties to Kyiv. “What is important for me is that Germany is a country of law, and crimes in our jurisdiction are fully investigated.”

The suspect, identified only as Serhii K. under German privacy laws, was part of a group of people who planted devices on the pipelines near the Danish island of Bornholm in the Baltic Sea, a statement from the prosecutor’s office said.

He and his accomplices had set off from Rostock on Germany’s northeastern coast in a sailing yacht to carry out the attack, it said. The vessel had been rented from a German company with the help of forged identity documents via middlemen, it added.

Authorities acted on a European arrest warrant for the suspect, who faces charges of collusion to cause an explosion, anti-constitutional sabotage and destruction of important structures.

An official in the Ukrainian president’s office said he could not comment as it was not clear who had been arrested. The official reiterated Ukraine’s denial of any role in the blasts.

Russia’s ambassador to Germany, Sergei Nechayev, told the state TASS news agency that Moscow continued to demand “an objective and full-fledged investigation of the terrorist act”, and he also criticised what he called the “meagre” information on the case provided by German authorities.