A day after German media reports revealed that authorities in Berlin had finally issued an arrest warrant over the 2022 attack on the Nord Stream gas pipelines, the Ukrainian government on Thursday denied any involvement.
Authorities are seeking Ukrainian national Volodymyr Z., who allegedly hired a German yacht to bring explosives and diving equipment out to the pipelines’ location in the Baltic Sea.
On September 26, 2022, explosions and gas leaks were reported along the pipeline near the Danish island of Bornholm. The Nord Stream 1 and not-yet operational Nord Stream 2 had long been controversial for supplying Russian gas to Europe, even after the invasion of Ukraine.
Volodymyr Z. is believed to have acted with at least two and up to five accomplices. The initial report by German media outlets ARD, Süddeutsche Zeitung and Die Zeit said that they had uncovered no links to the government in Kyiv, something officials confirmed on Thursday.
“Such an act can only be carried out with extensive technical and financial resources… And who possessed all this at the time of the bombing? Only Russia,” presidental adviser Mykhailo Podolyak told Reuters news agency when asked if Kyiv had known of the attack ahead of time.
Poland accuses Germany of inaction
Both the Ukrainian and Polish governments have called out Germany for its perceived slowness in acting on its information.
Volodymyr Z. was last known to be living in a village outside of Warsaw. However, after the warrant was issued at the end of June, he was able to slip out of the country over the Ukrainian border and thus outside the European Union.
A spokeswoman for the Public Prosecutor Generals’s office in Warsaw questioned why Berlin had not made an entry in the Schengen register that helps other EU members keep track of international arrest warrants.
“Volodymyr Z. crossed the Polish-Ukrainian border, before the arrest, and the Polish border guards had neither the information nor the grounds to arrest him, as he was not was not listed as a wanted person,” she said.
Investigator: Z. must have had help
Investigative journalist Jörg Schmitt, who was part of the team that brought the warrant to public attention, said that they had “found any link to, let’s say, Ukraine state or the Ukrainian military.”
Schmitt told DW, however, that “he needed support, knowledge about how to create or work with explosive stuff and therefore we deeply believe that he had some help from… some military guys, but well all the fingers point now at Ukraine.”
He said that he wasn’t counting too much on German or Polish authorities getting to the bottom of the mystery due to their support of Ukraine in the face of Russia’s invasion.
es/rm (dpa, Reuters)
