Poland receives arrest warrant for Ukrainian Nord Stream explosion suspect

Poland has confirmed it’s received a German arrest warrant for a Ukrainian diver, named as Volodymyr Zhuravlov, suspected over the sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines in 2022.

The Nord Stream gas pipeline was torn apart by an underwater explosion in September 2022.

Poland has confirmed it’s received a German arrest warrant for a Ukrainian diver suspected over the sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines in 2022.

German media said earlier that prosecutors had issued a warrant for a Ukrainian diver, named in Swedish media as Volodymyr Zhuravlov, 44. who they believe helped plant explosive devices on the pipeline.

The Polish prosecutor’s office told AFP it had received the warrant for the man in June “in connection with proceedings against him in Germany”.

“Ultimately, Volodymyr Z. was not detained, as he left the territory of Poland at the beginning of July this year, crossing the Polish-Ukrainian border,” the prosecutor’s office said in an email.

On September 26 2022, a series of underwater explosions tore apart three of the four main Nord Stream pipes off the Danish island of Bornholm, which are built to carry natural gas from Russia to Germany. The blasts were powerful enough to register with seismologic measuring stations. Russia and Western governments agreed the blasts were sabotage.

The pipelines had been at the centre of geopolitical tensions as Russia cut gas supplies to Europe in suspected retaliation to Western sanctions over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

In the weeks after the attack there were many different allegations about the possible culprit, with suggestions that an operation on this scale could only have been the work of a hostile state. Various theories initially blamed the US, Russia, Ukraine, Poland and even the UK.

Polish prosecutors said the suspect left Poland because the German justice, while issuing the warrant, did not “include him in the database of wanted persons”.

“The Polish Border Guard had no knowledge and no grounds for detaining Volodymyr Z.,” the prosecutor’s office told AFP.

Since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Poland has been one of Ukraine’s staunchest supporters.

AFP