A European arrest warrant was issued for a Ukrainian man suspected of involvement in blowing up the Nord Stream pipeline nearly two years ago, Polish prosecutors said on Wednesday.
The sabotage in September 2022 of the Nord Stream pipelines that carried Russian gas to Europe has become one of the central mysteries of the war in Ukraine, prompting extensive finger-pointing and guesswork. But until Wednesday, there were very few answers.
The Polish prosecutors office said it had received the warrant, issued by Germany, in June for a suspect who was living in Poland at the time. The suspect — identified only as Volodymyr Z., in keeping with German privacy laws — left the country before Polish authorities could detain him, according to Anna Adamiak, a spokeswoman for the prosecutor’s office in Warsaw.
The German federal prosecutor’s office declined to comment on the warrant, whose existence was first reported by a trio of German news outlets.
The warrant marks the first significant development toward potentially solving who was behind an act of sabotage that has sown political distrust among Western allies and raised the geopolitical stakes in Europe’s Baltic region.
The sabotage was first detected on Sept. 26 when a vast swirl of bubbles appeared on the surface of the Baltic Sea in international waters between Denmark and Sweden.
There was initial speculation that Russia was behind the explosions, but to some that made little sense — the Russians were deeply invested in both major lines of the pipeline, known as Nord Stream I and Nord Stream II.
Reports that a pro-Ukrainian group could have been behind the sabotage first emerged last year. That raised concerns in Berlin and Washington that supporting Ukraine could become more complicated. Germany is the European Union’s leading contributor of weapons to Ukraine.
U.S. officials said at the time that they had no evidence that the attack was done at the direction of the Ukrainian government, and Kyiv has flatly denied any responsibility.
Sweden and Denmark had both opened investigations into the blasts, but closed them earlier this year.
The German authorities, however, continued their investigation into the explosions, which rendered three of the four strands that make up Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines inoperable. Even before the blasts, though, Russia had severely curtailed the amount of natural gas it was sending to Germany via Nord Stream 1, citing problems with a turbine that had been sent to Canada for repairs. Nord Stream 2 had never come online.
Experts have said that divers could have been responsible for planting the explosives on the subsea pipes, and German news reports identified Volodymyr Z. as a professional diver. When the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper reached a man who identified himself by that name by telephone, he denied having any involvement with the attacks or knowing about the warrant.
A person briefed on the matter confirmed that German prosecutors had issued a warrant for a Ukrainian diver believed to be a member of the team that planted explosives on the pipelines. The diver was living in Poland but was able to escape before being apprehended, according to the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss an ongoing investigation.
The Süddeutsche, along with the Die Zeit newspaper and the German public broadcaster ARD, reported that the German authorities had tracked down the suspect after a speed camera recorded a van with Ukrainian license plates on the northeastern German island of Rügen on Sept. 8, 2022.
One of the passengers in the van was the suspect sought by German prosecutors, according to the German media outlets. The suspect lived in a suburb of Warsaw and worked as an instructor for a diving school in Kyiv, the media outlets reported.
Anatol Magdziarz contributed reporting from Warsaw.
Read More: Germany Issues Arrest Warrant for Ukrainian Over Nord Stream Explosion
