Nord Stream Sabotage Trial Opens in Hamburg as Defence Seeks Dismissal
A former Ukrainian army officer went on trial in Germany on Wednesday over the September 2022 bombings of the Nord Stream gas pipelines — the first person to face a courtroom over an attack widely described as one of Europe's biggest acts of sabotage since the Second World War. Proceedings opened under tight security at the Hanseatic Higher Regional Court in Hamburg, where prosecutors read out a 136-page indictment in a hearing that lasted about two hours.
The defendant, identified in court only as Serhii K. under German privacy rules, is 50-year-old Serhii Kuznietsov, a former special-forces officer with a 25-year military record and four children, with an address in Kyiv. He denies all charges; when the judge asked whether he wished to comment, his lawyers said he did not. Prosecutors believe he was the ringleader of a team that included four deep-sea divers, an explosives expert and a boat captain. He faces charges of causing an explosion, damaging property, disrupting public service and being an accomplice to a war crime by attacking civilian infrastructure.
According to a summary of the indictment released by Germany's federal prosecutor, the plot was drawn up at the end of February 2022 by Kuznietsov and other military personnel "on behalf of state authorities in Ukraine." The stated aim, prosecutors say, was to "permanently halt gas deliveries via the pipelines and prevent Russia from using the revenue from the natural gas trade to finance its war efforts." Prosecutors allege Kuznietsov entered Germany through Poland about three weeks before the attack using a forged Ukrainian passport.
Seeking dismissal of the charges, defence lawyer Nicola Canestrini argued that the pipeline was "a weapon in the hand of the Russians" and therefore potentially a legitimate target. "Is it unlawful to destroy an aggressor's infrastructure without harming any human beings?" he asked the court. He noted that before Russia's 2022 invasion, the pipeline provided half of Germany's natural gas imports.
Defence lawyer Jes Meyer-Lohkamp grounded her dismissal request in procedure, saying Ukrainian military secrecy rules bar Kuznietsov from testifying without his superiors' approval. "He is not permitted to speak. His two immediate superiors told him that he does not have authorization to make any statements — not even to his lawyers," she told the court, adding that under German law "anyone who cannot speak out cannot be convicted." The defence also said war-crime allegations would be better aimed at Russian forces acting on orders from Vladimir Putin, citing Bucha and the abduction of Ukrainian children.
The lawyers argued that the case linking their client to the operation is circumstantial: investigators found no fingerprints from him on the rented yacht, and prosecutors have no eyewitnesses placing him aboard.
Prosecutors say four divers planted "high-performance" explosives roughly 80 metres (260 ft) below the surface, southeast of the Danish island of Bornholm. Four devices weighing up to 27 kg each were fitted with timers. On 26 September 2022, Swedish seismologists recorded several blasts some 17 hours apart, rupturing three of the four concrete-coated steel pipelines, which run about 1,200 km (750 miles) under the Baltic Sea and sent huge plumes of methane into the atmosphere. The team allegedly sailed a rented yacht, the Andromeda, from the northern German port of Rostock; investigators reported traces of subsea explosives on the boat and DNA allegedly left by a team member.
Ukraine has consistently denied responsibility. President Volodymyr Zelensky has said Ukraine had "nothing to do with" the blasts, even though the indictment alleges the saboteurs acted on the orders of Ukrainian state agencies. Ukrainian MP Oleksandr Merezhko, who chairs parliament's foreign affairs committee, told the BBC he did not expect the case to damage relations, because "it's in the best national interests of Germany to continue to support us." The German government has declined to comment, saying no verdict has been reached and the case rests with an independent judiciary. Denmark and Sweden have already closed their own inquiries.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia expected "objectivity" and a verdict: "We expect… that both the perpetrators and those who ordered it will be named." Russia has declared the blasts "an act of international terrorism" and opened its own investigation, and has accused US and British intelligence of involvement — claims Washington and London deny. German investigative journalists have reported that the CIA knew of the plan in advance and initially even offered financial support, changing position only after Dutch intelligence learned of it.
The court has set two hearings a week until at least February, with 16 dates fixed through 17 December and more expected in January and February 2027; no verdict date has been announced. The next hearing is on 28 October. A second suspect, Volodymyr Z., a trained scuba diver the prosecution says was one of the divers, was arrested in Croatia in August; a Croatian court approved his extradition in September, and he is fighting it. Poland previously refused to extradite another suspect, with a judge saying that if Ukraine had organised the mission, it was "justified, rational and just." Kuznietsov had been detained in Italy in 2025 and was extradited to Germany in November.