Germany has issued its first arrest warrant in connection to the 2022 sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines, aiming at a Ukrainian national who previously worked for the Ukrainian military. The European Arrest Warrant (EAW) targets a Volodymyr S., said to have been living in Poland. However, Polish prosecutors say he has already left the country.
German intelligence and their European counterparts in the Netherlands and elsewhere were able to identify Volodymyr S., a diving instructor, through witness testimony and photographs.
Previous reports claimed Nord Stream was sabotaged by Ukrainian special forces who rented a yacht that sailed from Germany to Denmark, Sweden, Poland, and then back to Germany around the same time as the sabotage. Ukrainian special forces commandos are believed to have dived down to the pipeline and attached explosives at a depth of around 260 feet. Some explosive residue was found on board the yacht.
Dutch intelligence is said to have been the first to warn that Ukraine was behind the attack, which many Western leaders initially blamed on Russia—despite the lack of any obvious motive for the Russians to destroy lucrative pipelines bypassing Ukraine and going directly to their customers in the European Union.
The Dutch claimed Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky did not give the order to destroy the pipeline, with the operation allegedly headed by the now-former head of the armed forces, Valery Zaluzhnyi.
Poland’s foreign minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, has previously suggested that U.S. President Joe Biden knew about the attack plan against NATO infrastructure before it was carried out but allowed it to take place.
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) allegedly knew about the attack as much as six months in advance.
