First Indictment in the Nord Stream Case: Federal Prosecutor's Office Charges Alleged Coordinator Serhij K.

Serhij K. is charged with jointly causing an explosive detonation, anti-constitutional sabotage, and attacks on civilian energy infrastructure, which under international criminal law constitute a war crime. According to research by ARD, the Süddeutsche Zeitung, and Zeit, the indictment is based, among other things, on phone calls intercepted during his Italian extradition custody, in which the former soldier incriminated himself.

Course of Events and Investigations

According to the Federal Prosecutor's Office, the accused is alleged to have coordinated the operation. According to previous investigations, he is said to have led a six-person group from a sailing yacht to the seabed in September 2022, where time-controlled explosive devices were attached to the pipelines at depths of up to 80 meters. The detonations on 26 September 2022 destroyed three of the four strings so severely that no more gas could flow.

According to the BGH ruling, on board the chartered yacht "Andromeda" were, alongside Serhij K., a skipper, an explosives specialist, and four additional divers. The boat had been rented for several weeks through intermediaries and with forged identity papers. In January 2023, specialists from the BKA and Federal Police found traces of a mixture of the military explosives RDX (Hexogen) and HMX (Octogen) in the cabin.

Serhij K. was arrested in August 2025 during a family vacation on the Italian Adriatic coast on the basis of a European arrest warrant, according to the Attorney General. He resisted extradition to Germany for months and at times went on hunger strike because he felt mistreated. On 27 November 2025, he was finally transferred to Germany; the following day, an investigating judge at the Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe executed the arrest warrant against him.

Arrest and Extradition

A Ukrainian Defense Ministry document, reported on by Der Spiegel in mid-December 2025, states that Serhij K. was a member of a special unit of the Ukrainian armed forces at the time of the acts. A former superior told the magazine: "Serhi stood under my command at the time." The Federal Prosecutor's Office assumes that the sabotage was carried out on behalf of a foreign state but does not see this as an obstacle to prosecution in Germany.

The Third Criminal Senate of the Federal Court of Justice had already ruled in December on a complaint against detention filed by the accused and rejected it. In its ruling, the court made clear that international law immunity for officeholders does not apply to "intelligence-directed acts of violence." Nor would combatant law immunity likely apply, because covert operations by military forces are not covered by it and the pipelines had been considered civilian objects.

Legal Questions: Immunity and Jurisdiction

At the same time, the BGH confirmed the jurisdiction of the Federal Prosecutor's Office and German criminal authority. Although the acts had taken place in international waters, the effects of the explosions had also occurred on German territory, which establishes German jurisdiction. According to the Federal Prosecutor's Office, Germany is thus the only country still investigating; Sweden and Denmark had halted their investigations in 2024 citing lack of jurisdiction.

The explosives attacks of 26 September 2022 permanently changed the picture of energy policy in Europe. Shortly before, in June 2022, German security authorities had been warned by the Dutch intelligence service and the CIA of a possible attack on the Baltic Sea pipelines, according to ARD research. Reports by the Wall Street Journal from August 2024 also suggested that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was aware of the plan and that the Americans had asked him to stop it; the then Commander-in-Chief Valeriy Zaluzhny is said to have ignored the instructions.

Political Dimension of the Case

In the months before the sabotage, Russia, after the start of the war of aggression against Ukraine, had repeatedly sharply reduced or completely stopped gas deliveries through Nord Stream 1. Nord Stream 1 had previously transported Russian natural gas to Germany; Nord Stream 2 was not yet in operation at the time of the explosions. According to a Greenpeace investigation, it is unlikely that the pipes were blown up from the inside; footage from the environmental organization and broadcaster SWR from November 2022 showed a completely destroyed pipeline.

According to the operator company Nord Stream AG, the double strings at the time of the explosions were filled with a combined 340 million cubic meters of methane gas. One tube of the Nord Stream 1 double string was thereby destroyed along a length of about 250 meters. Three of the four strings showed leaks at depths of 70 to 80 meters.

Outlook on the Main Trial

According to its own information, the Federal Prosecutor's Office has identified seven suspects. Arrest warrants have been issued against six Ukrainian nationals; another suspect, a soldier, has since been killed in combat against Russia. In addition to Serhij K., the Ukrainian Volodymyr Zhuravlov was also arrested in Poland at the end of September 2025. However, a court in Warsaw rejected the extradition of Zhuravlov to Germany in October 2025; the man was released.

If the State Protection Senate of the Hanseatic Higher Regional Court admits the indictment, it will simultaneously decide on the date for the main trial. Until then, Serhij K., who is 49 years old and, according to his Italian lawyer, intended to invoke, among other things, his position as a member of the Ukrainian armed forces, will remain in German pretrial detention. Attorney General Jens Rommel had already announced after the arrest in August 2025 that Serhij K. would be accused of coordinating the act.

According to the investigations, the northern German port city of Rostock is considered the starting point of the "Andromeda," which was steered with several intermediate stops in the direction of the Danish island of Bornholm in September 2022. The forensic evidence on board as well as data from the Polish border police, which also contained information on Serhij K., gradually led the investigators to the group's trail.

The proceedings are likely to cause a stir not only legally but also politically. The Federal Prosecutor's Office speaks of an "anti-constitutional act of sabotage" on behalf of a foreign state, which once again raises the question of Kyiv's role. Poland had spoken out against the construction of Nord Stream in the past; the then Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk also stated that it was not in his country's interest to prosecute the suspect or extradite him to another state.