Paris
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It was a late September evening when muffled blasts and a stream of bubbles broke the floor of the Baltic Sea. Explosions had ripped through the 2 Nord Stream gas pipelines, Russia’s gas freeway into Europe, months after Moscow’s full invasion of Ukraine. Years later, shockwaves from that evening are still rippling throughout the continent.
The 2022 assault on the vastly controversial pipelines triggered a global whodunnit, with suspicion falling instantly on Russia and even the US being compelled to deny involvement.
Today, intrigue continues to swirl across the blasts at the same time as Germany readies a prosecution towards the suspected Ukrainian saboteurs. And Poland’s efforts to stymie the case – seemingly to defend its ally Ukraine – has thrown up new tensions in Europe.
Germany appears decided for Nord Stream to will get its day in court docket, submitting arrest warrants for 2 Ukrainian males – Volodymyr Zhuravlov, who was detained in Poland, and Serhii Kuznietsov, who was detained in Italy – suspected of involvement within the blast.
Leaders of different nations have forged doubt on whether or not prison proceedings must be introduced towards these allegedly accountable.
A choice by a Polish court docket in mid-October to free Zhuravlov, after slow-balling the person’s extradition, has severely undercut Berlin’s hopes of a prosecution. In the eyes of the decide, if the Nord Stream blasts had been a Ukrainian act of sabotage, that can be a justified response to an unprovoked invasion.
“If Ukraine was indeed the organizer of this act of aggression, then only Ukraine can be held responsible for this event,” Judge Dariusz Lubowski mentioned in his verdict halting Zhuravlov’s extradition to Germany, NCS affiliate TVN24 reported.
The 49-year-old Ukrainian claims he had nothing to do with the assault and that he was in Ukraine on the time it occurred, in accordance to TVN24.
German prosecutors allege Zhuravlov, a “trained diver,” was “part of a group of individuals who placed explosives on the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines near the island of Bornholm in September 2022.” The group allegedly used faux identities to lease a yacht to ferry them and their gear to the blast website.
Serhii Kuznietsov, a 49-year-old former Ukrainian soldier and an alleged coordinator of the operation, was detained on a German warrant in Italy in late August.
Kuznietsov’s protection lawyer Nicola Canestrini advised NCS that the Ukrainian denies any wrongdoing and he’s presently interesting Italy’s Supreme Court’s resolution to extradite him to Germany.
“Europe’s problem, Ukraine’s problem, the problem of Lithuania and Poland, is not that Nord Stream 2 was blown up, but that it was built,” Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk advised journalists in early October.
“It is certainly not in the interest of Poland, nor in the interest of decency and justice, to prosecute or extradite this citizen to another state,” he added.
Tusk’s stance displays long-standing considerations over the pipelines inside Europe and past.
As far again as 2007, Poland’s then-defense minister Radek Sikorski railed towards the proposed Nord Stream 1 pipeline as, “the most outrageous attempt by Mr Putin to divide and damage the EU.”
Europe’s dependency on Russian hydrocarbons has confronted opposition from US administrations going again to the White House of George W. Bush. That feeling has lengthy been bipartisan: as Republican Senator Ted Cruz advised senators in 2019: the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, “if completed, would make Europe even more dependent on Russian energy, even more vulnerable to Russian blackmail.”
In Europe, the Polish stance uncovered divisions in Europe.
“Shocking” was how Peter Szijjarto, international minister of Hungary – considered one of Russia’s few allies on the continent and the current recipient of a US exemption permitting them to proceed shopping for Russian oil and gas – described Tusk’s stance.
“One thing is clear: we don’t want a Europe where prime ministers defend terrorists,” he wrote on X.
For many in Europe’s north, the eye on who blew up Nord Stream is a distraction from remembering the way it was constructed within the first place.
Lithuania’s former international minister Gabrielius Landsbergis advised NCS that, should you take the authorized case in isolation, “it might force us to forget how we got there.” The Polish authorities’s place “has quite a lot to do with their internal politics, their president being from a very nationalist party,”
Helga Kalm, deputy director of Estonia’s International Center for Defence and Security, advised NCS. “It’s their sign of showing Germany that they’re doing the wrong thing” in pursuing a prosecution that might hurt Ukrainian pursuits.
Many in Europe’s post-Soviet international locations, Poland chief amongst them, lastly really feel vindicated after many years of warning towards the push from European powers like Germany to heat ties with Russia.
Both Denmark and Sweden – whose waters sit astride the Nord Stream pipeline – declined to pursue instances into the blasts, with Sweden citing a scarcity of jurisdiction.
Yet Germany has solid forward.
“It’s a rule of law state,” Stefan Meister, an skilled on Eastern Europe from the German Council on Foreign Relations, advised NCS
“I think this is particularly for domestic purposes,” he added. With right-wing populists the AfD difficult the credibility of state establishments, permitting German justice to comply with its course is about, “the credibility of the system and the institution and the ruling political elites,” he mentioned.
Germany was the driving power in Europe behind the Nord Stream pipelines.
And it reaped the advantages. In 2016, almost 30% of German gas wants had been met by Russian suppliers, funnelling gas through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, in accordance to German government figures.
Germany’s chancellor between 1998 and 2005, Gerhard Schroeder, went on to strive to be a part of the board of Russian vitality large Gazprom and have become chairman of Russia’s oil large Rosneft after leaving workplace.
Likewise, the pipelines turned totemic of the dependence on low-cost Russian hydrocarbons that critics felt Europe traded for a principled stance on Moscow’s aggression in Ukraine in 2014 and Georgia in 2008.
Former Chancellor Angela Merkel attracted particular criticism for her conciliatory strategy to Moscow.
In Merkel’s just lately launched memoir, she rebutted accusations that Germany had been dependent on Russian gas, writing, “particularly in the case of Nord Stream 2, even though no gas had ever been transported through this pipeline… It was a relic of a failed investment.”
Given how interwoven many in German politics had been with the push to assemble the Nord Stream pipelines, as we speak many politicians would welcome distancing themselves from the case, Meister mentioned.
“My impression is they want to wash themselves clean,” he mentioned.
The fog across the case solely serves to feed tensions in Europe at a time when unity towards Russia, and an unpredictable ally within the US, is all-important. Russia’s efforts to sow divisions overseas are nicely documented however right here the Kremlin could have achieved considered one of its objectives with out lifting a finger.
Nord Stream dangers “further questions and maybe fractures within the alliance,” Landsbergis mentioned. “Especially at a time where we’re no longer at peace, that should be remembered.”
Whatever the results of Germany’s quest for judicial satisfaction over Nord Stream, Russian gas received’t be flowing south prefer it did earlier than 2022.
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Europe has battled to wean itself off a decades-long dependence on Russia gas. The lack of Nord Stream solely hastened that.
Russia’s share of EU imports of pipeline gas dropped from greater than 40% in 2021 to about 11% in 2024, in accordance to EU figures.
“The right place for Nord Stream 2 is at the bottom of the sea, in pieces,” Estonia’s Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna mentioned in March.