Nord Stream 2 bombing suspect slips out of Poland’s fingers

A suspect in the destruction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline linking Russia to Germany escaped into Ukraine before he could be arrested, according to Polish officials who received a German warrant for his arrest.

“The man crossed the Polish-Ukrainian border at the beginning of July,” Anna Adamiak, a spokeswoman for Poland’s national prosecutor’s office, said Wednesday.

The man, identified as a Ukrainian diving instructor named Volodymyr Z., is suspected of working with a diving team to place explosives on the controversial pipeline. Yet German authorities neglected to “include him in the database of wanted persons,” according to Polish authorities, which enabled him to leave the country without arousing suspicions at the border.

“Free crossing of the Polish-Ukrainian border by the above-mentioned person was possible because German authorities … did not include him in the database of wanted persons, which meant that the Polish Border Guard had no knowledge and no grounds to detain Volodymyr Z.,” Adamiak said.

The detonations, which erupted in September of 2022 as Polish, Danish, and Norwegian officials hailed the opening of a different pipeline as insulation against Russia’s threats to deprive Germany of gas in the coming winter, sparked a wave of international speculation and diplomatic posturing about the identities of the perpetrators. 

NATO condemned the “deliberate, reckless, and irresponsible acts of sabotage,” while Russia accused the United States of orchestrating the scheme and European officials most suspicious of Moscow suggested the Kremlin might have damaged the dormant pipeline in order to underscore the vulnerability of the alternative pipelines.

“In the end, everything depends solely on the decision of the German government. Nord Stream 2: One pipeline remained intact despite the terrorist attack,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said in February. “Can we restart Nord Stream 2? We can! It would take a week. But they don’t want to.”

The damage to the other Nord Stream pipelines gave rise to criminal investigations by multiple European governments affected by the incident. Sweden and Denmark closed their investigations without identifying a perpetrator amid reports that U.S. intelligence assessments pointed to “a pro-Ukrainian group” of saboteurs. 

“Regardless of the results of this investigation, it does not change the fact that Russia is waging an illegal, aggressive war against Ukraine,” German government spokesman Wolfgang Buchner told reporters on Wednesday. “Regardless of the outcome, we will continue to support Ukraine in its defensive struggle against Russia’s illegal war of aggression for as long as necessary, as the chancellor has repeatedly stated.”