By Kirsti Knolle<\/p>\n
BERLIN, July 1 (Reuters) – Germany’s top prosecutor has indicted a Ukrainian national over the 2022 explosions that crippled the Nord Stream gas pipelines \u200cunder the Baltic Sea, moving one of Europe’s most politically sensitive sabotage \u200ccases closer to trial.<\/p>\n
The indictment against the man, identified under German privacy rules only as Serhii K, was \u200bserved on Wednesday, Berlin law firm Menaker, which represents him, told Reuters. It gave no details of the charges.<\/p>\n
German public broadcaster ARD and media outlets Sueddeutsche Zeitung and Die Zeit, which first reported the move, said prosecutors accuse him of attacking civilian energy infrastructure, causing an \u200cexplosion and destroying structures. The \u2060federal prosecutor’s office declined to comment.<\/p>\n
BALTIC PIPELINE SABOTAGE<\/p>\n
According to arrest-warrant documents, earlier press releases and a December 2025 detention ruling by the Federal \u2060Court of Justice, prosecutors allege that Serhii K helped coordinate a team that used a sailing yacht, the Andromeda, to place explosive devices on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines \u200bnear \u200bDenmark’s Bornholm island in September 2022.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors and the \u200bcourt suspect the Andromeda’s crew consisted \u200cof a coordinator, a skipper, four deep-sea divers and an explosives specialist. They say Serhii K is suspected of acting as the on-board coordinator and team leader, not as a diver or bomb expert.<\/p>\n
Serhii K has denied involvement.<\/p>\n
The blasts, which Russia and Western countries have both described as sabotage, knocked out key routes for Russian gas to Europe months \u200cafter Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, deepening an \u200benergy crisis that hit Germany especially hard.<\/p>\n
German courts have \u200btreated the case as falling \u200bwithin German jurisdiction because the damaged pipelines end at Lubmin in the state \u200cof Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and their loss affected Germany’s \u200benergy security and \u200binternal safety.<\/p>\n
Court records cited by the ruling describe the suspect as a Ukrainian national who was an officer in a Ukrainian special forces unit at the time.<\/p>\n
He \u200bwas arrested in Italy last \u200cAugust and transferred to Germany in November, where a judge activated a \u200bGerman arrest warrant.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Kirsti Knolle, writing by Miranda Murray and Maria Martinez; \u200bediting by Thomas Seythal and Kevin Liffey)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Kirsti Knolle BERLIN, July 1 (Reuters) – Germany’s top prosecutor has indicted a Ukrainian national over the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46858,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[676,39525,39526,5,21125,39524,6894,656],"class_list":["post-46857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-germany","tag-federal-prosecutor","tag-gas-pipelines","tag-german-arrest-warrant","tag-germany","tag-nord-stream","tag-serhii-k","tag-sueddeutsche-zeitung","tag-ukrainian-national"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46857\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}