WSJ: Ukrainian suspected of leading Nord stream sabotage arrested in Italy

A former Ukrainian military officer suspected of leading a team that sabotaged the Nord Stream gas pipelines in 2022 was detained in Italy on Wednesday under an international arrest warrant issued by German prosecutors, according to investigators and people familiar with the case, ‘The Wall Street Journal’ writes.

The Nord Stream pipelines were among Europe’s most important energy arteries and the world’s largest offshore gas infrastructure, designed to deliver up to 110 billion cubic meters annually for at least half a century.

The officer, identified by German police as Serhii K., allegedly headed a team of two soldiers and four civilian divers covertly recruited by a special Ukrainian military unit to lay explosives that damaged the undersea pipelines, investigators said.

He is the first to be arrested among the crew suspected of carrying out the daring operation using a small sailboat they rented in Germany.

The development marks a breakthrough in the international manhunt for the alleged culprits of the attack, which is thought to be among the largest acts of modern-day wartime sabotage.

Italian police detained the suspect near the seaside town of San Clemente shortly before midnight on Wednesday while he was accompanying his son to a local university, the people said. German prosecutors had issued international arrest warrants for him and several other suspects earlier this year following a nearly three-year German investigation into the audacious attack, which was dreamed up by senior Ukrainian military officers during a drunken evening in May 2022.

“Serhii K. was part of a group of individuals who placed explosives on the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines,” Germany’s federal prosecutor general said Thursday.

Prosecutors said they suspect the accused coordinated the operation. He was arrested on suspicion of jointly causing an explosion, anti-constitutional sabotage and the destruction of infrastructure, they said.

German investigators tracked down the suspect, who traveled with his wife and two of their children from Ukraine to Italy via Poland. When the suspect and his family arrived in the north of Italy on Aug. 18, the German police issued an arrest warrant and notified their Italian counterparts, according to German prosecutors and Italian police.

The family then moved south to a village on the Adriatic coast, where the suspect used his passport to check into the accommodation, triggering an alert with Italian police, who dispatched the gendarmerie known as Carabinieri to arrest him, investigators said. The man didn’t resist arrest, the Carabinieri said. On Thursday afternoon, the suspect was being held in a prison in the coastal town of Rimini, the Carabinieri said.

An appeals court in Bologna will rule whether to extradite the suspect to Germany.

Serhii K., a now-retired captain in Ukraine’s armed forces, previously served in Ukraine’s secret service SBU. In May 2022 he and two fellow servicemen were recruited, along with civilian divers, for a secret mission to destroy the $20 billion Nord Stream pipeline, which funneled Russian gas to Europe across the Baltic Sea, people familiar with the matter said.

The plot was developed by senior Ukrainian military and secret service officers under the command of a senior special forces general commanding the elite army unit.

The sabotage plan—internally code-named Operation Diameter—was ultimately overseen by the then-commander in chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, Gen. Valeriy Zaluzhniy, according to multiple people involved in or familiar with the mission.

President Volodymyr Zelensky was later informed and, after objections from the Biden administration, ordered Zaluzhniy to abort the mission. Nevertheless, the team proceeded, detonating the explosives on Sept. 26, 2022, an attack that set off years of international investigation and disrupted Europe’s energy markets.

Zelensky and Zaluzhniy have publicly denied involvement in the plot. Zelensky also said he didn’t believe Ukrainian services could be behind the sabotage plot. The Germany inquiry hasn’t linked Zelensky to the clandestine operation.

Under the European arrest warrant system, Italian authorities must extradite the suspect to Germany. Conviction carries a sentence of up to 15 years, which could be reduced if he cooperates with prosecutors, according to people familiar with the investigation.

The accused will be brought before the investigating judge after being extradited from Italy, the German prosecutor said.

Bundestag member Sahra Wagenknecht demanded that Zelensky be summoned to the committee on the case of the bombing of Nord Stream.

…More than once in Russia there has been expressed the opinion, that such a complex operation as the blowing up of the Nord Streams could only have been carried out by NATO special services, not by the Ukrainians.

It is hard to believe that “some terrorists” blew up a strategic gas pipeline in the waters of the Baltic Sea, which NATO controls near its shores. It is impossible to believe that NATO services missed it and then spent many years looking for the “culprits”.

Time has passed and the situation in Ukraine has changed. It is no longer the same as it was in 2022. The Russians are advancing and NATO needs to change the government in Kyiv trying to stop the Russians.

So, NATO countries are going place the blame on some “Ukrainian terrorists” who have already accused of blowing up the gas pipeline. It seems, that this is an attempt to hide the real culprits of the explosion. In such a case, the “Ukrainian team” will become an element of the “cover operation”.

The arrest of the man demonstrates also a change in Europe's policy towards the Ukrainian conflict. Direct accusations against the Kyiv leadership of terror against “European values” may follow the arrest.

Thus, Zelensky and his team will lose not only Trump's support, but also support from Europe. Apparently, the West has decided to change the government in Kyiv quickly...

…From the latest news. Somehow everything is “dense”: