German Prosecutors Arrest Second Nord Stream Attack Suspect in Croatia
Translated from German, summarized and contextualized by DistantNews.
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- A second suspect in the Nord Stream pipeline attacks, identified as Ukrainian Wolodymyr Z., has been arrested in Croatia.
- German prosecutors accuse him of being a trained diver involved in planting explosives on the pipelines in September 2022.
- He was previously arrested in Poland in 2025 but released after Germany's extradition request was denied.
German federal prosecutors have arrested a second suspect in connection with the Nord Stream pipeline attacks. The Ukrainian national, identified as Wolodymyr Z., was apprehended in Pula, Croatia, based on a European arrest warrant. This development comes four years after the explosions that damaged the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines.
The Federal Public Prosecutor's Office had the Ukrainian citizen Wolodymyr Z. arrested in Croatia by local officials, as announced by the Karlsruhe authority.
Prosecutors accuse Wolodymyr Z., a trained diver, of participating in the dives where explosives were placed on the pipelines in the Baltic Sea near the island of Bornholm in September 2022. The indictment details that he and his accomplices used a sailboat departing from Rostock, Germany, for the operation. Intermediaries allegedly rented the yacht using forged identity documents.
She accuses him, among other things, of joint commission of an explosive detonation.
The explosions on September 26, 2022, rendered both pipelines inoperable. Nord Stream 1 was carrying Russian natural gas to Germany at the time, while Nord Stream 2 was awaiting operational status. The German Federal Public Prosecutor's Office had previously indicted Serhiy K., considered a key figure in the operation, in late August 2025. He was arrested on the Adriatic coast while on vacation with his family.
The arrested man is the one who was already arrested in Poland in autumn 2025, but was released.
Notably, Wolodymyr Z. had been arrested in Poland in 2025 in connection with the same investigation. However, Polish authorities released him after rejecting Germany's request for extradition. The suspect is now awaiting extradition from Croatia to face German investigators.
According to the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office, the man is said to have been involved as a trained diver in the dives in the Baltic Sea where the explosive devices were placed on the gas pipelines.
DistantNews Editorial
Originally published by Die Zeit in German. Translated, summarized, and contextualized by our editorial team with added local perspective. Read our editorial standards.
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