Germany’s long-running criminal investigation into the 2022 Nord Stream explosions is straining European unity after courts in Poland and Italy rejected German extradition bids for Ukrainian suspects, even as Berlin’s case increasingly points to a Ukrainian military link.
A Wall Street Journal investigation published on 10 November reported that German detectives, meeting daily for three years at the federal police headquarters in Potsdam, believe a covert Ukrainian unit carried out the sabotage; one Ukrainian veteran could soon face trial if transferred to Germany.
On 16–17 October, the Warsaw District Court refused to extradite a Ukrainian national identified publicly as Volodymyr Z., ordered his release, and framed the Nord Stream operation as a wartime act beyond the reach of ordinary criminal liability. Prime Minister Donald Tusk endorsed the outcome, arguing the controversy lay in the pipelines’ construction rather than their destruction. The ruling, criticised in parts of Germany, underscored sharp differences between Warsaw and Berlin over energy policy and accountability for the sabotage.
In parallel, Italy’s highest court granted a reprieve to another Ukrainian suspect, identified as Serhii K., who had been arrested near Rimini in August on a German warrant. The Court of Cassation found faults in the legal characterisation underpinning the arrest request, sending the case back and delaying any transfer to Hamburg, the venue where German prosecutors intend to bring charges. Subsequent reporting from Bologna noted that the detainee declared a hunger strike while his lawyers challenged the extradition on procedural and substantive grounds.
The Journal’s account says German investigators now attribute the operation to an “elite” Ukrainian formation and suggest it was overseen by then-commander-in-chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi, allegations that Kyiv has not confirmed and which, if pursued in court, would carry significant diplomatic consequences. The article stresses that Berlin’s support for Ukraine could be tested if prosecutors frame the pipeline attacks as a hostile act by a partner state rather than a wartime strike on Russia’s revenue base.
The extradition setbacks highlight the legal thicket around cross-border accountability for actions carried out in international waters during an international armed conflict. The Polish court placed weight on the armed-conflict context and on the attacks’ location beyond national jurisdiction, a view echoed by some officials who argue that if the blasts were a wartime operation, state responsibility—rather than individual criminal culpability—could be the proper frame. German prosecutors, by contrast, have pursued individual suspects under domestic statutes covering explosions and damage to critical infrastructure.
Politically, the decisions in Warsaw and Rome have fed a broader European debate. The Journal described a probe “splintering Europe over Ukraine,” while other outlets have noted that the case has become a rallying point for critics of Germany’s past dependence on Russian gas. Tusk, a long-standing opponent of the Nord Stream projects, used the moment to restate Poland’s critique of the pipelines, which many in Central and Eastern Europe saw as a strategic vulnerability. Berlin has largely avoided public comment while the legal processes run their course.
Evidence questions are now central. Defence teams in both cases have challenged the sufficiency and admissibility of material generated by the German probe, while sympathetic commentators in Kyiv and Warsaw have alleged that some leads may reflect information operations designed to shift blame. The Journal itself warns that the diplomatic fallout for Germany would be “lighter” if the detectives had not built such a potent case against Ukraine—an acknowledgement that law-enforcement conclusions carry geopolitical weight in wartime. None of these claims has been tested at trial; the evidential record will only be established if a court in Germany hears the case.
The wider backdrop is the unresolved question of attribution for the blasts that crippled Nord Stream 1 and rendered the uncommissioned Nord Stream 2 unusable in September 2022. Early suspicion fell on Russia; more recent German filings and warrants have focused on a team that allegedly used a chartered yacht to deploy explosives near Bornholm, leading to arrests and European warrants across multiple jurisdictions.
With Poland and Italy pushing back on extradition, and with at least one suspect publicly contesting transfer while on hunger strike, the path to any German courtroom verdict remains uncertain. In the meantime, the legal divergence across EU states, combined with the Journal’s reporting on the investigators’ theory, has turned a complex criminal file into a test of Europe’s wartime cohesion and its handling of covert action within the law of armed conflict.
