Hamburg trial opens over Nord Stream pipeline sabotage; Ukrainian suspect charged with war crime

In Hamburg, the trial begins against the head of the Ukrainian commando unit accused of blowing up the Baltic Sea pipelines. Everything you need to know.

Date published: 13 October 2026, 19:45

By Jan Kahlcke

On Wednesday, the trial over the 2022 bombing of the Nord Stream gas pipelines begins in Hamburg. The 50-year-old Ukrainian Serhii K., who has been in pre-trial detention for nearly a year, must answer before the Hanseatic Higher Regional Court. The proceedings, initially scheduled to run until the end of February, raise a series of broader questions beyond individual guilt: Was the attack carried out on the orders of the Ukrainian armed forces? Did K. act on command? Was President Volodymyr Zelensky informed of the attack, or did he even order it? Were the pipelines a legitimate military target for Ukraine?

What happened?

On 26 September 2022, massive explosions occurred at two points along the pipeline, northeast and southeast of the Danish island of Bornholm. Three of the four total pipes were so severely damaged that they were rendered unusable.

What is the charge?

The Federal Public Prosecutor's Office accuses Serhii K. of having led a commando unit that blew up the pipelines in September 2022. He is charged as an "accomplice to a war crime of attacking civilian objects," causing an explosive detonation, destroying structures, and disrupting public utilities.

According to the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office, K., as an officer of the Ukrainian army together with other military personnel and "on behalf of state agencies," devised the plan to destroy the Nord Stream pipelines. The aim was to prevent "Russia from using the revenues from the natural gas trade to finance its war efforts."

To this end, K. is said to have assembled a seven-member group of professional divers, a skipper, and an explosives expert. He himself allegedly entered Germany via Poland using a forged Ukrainian passport. Through intermediaries, the group chartered the 15-meter sailing yacht "Andromeda" in Rostock-Warnemünde. In the sports harbor of Wiek on Rügen, the Ukrainians are said to have brought "large quantities of military-grade high-performance explosives" on board and set sail.

Near Bornholm, the group around Serhii K. is alleged to have placed six explosive devices with time fuses at depths of over 70 meters at two locations near Bornholm by 22 September. One of these locations lies just a few hundred meters outside Danish territorial waters. The devices detonated four days later, on the morning and evening of 26 September. By that time, the "Andromeda" crew was long back on land.

In addition to Serhii K., another suspect is now in custody: the diver Volodymyr Z. was arrested in the Croatian city of Pula. According to information from the British Times, he was reportedly advising a film crew there making a feature film about the Nord Stream bombing. Germany has applied for his extradition. The same man is said to have previously been arrested in Poland, which refused his extradition to Germany.

What is the evidence?

According to the indictment, which several media outlets have quoted from, Serhii K. can be unmistakably identified in the photo of his forged passport, which was scanned upon entry into Poland. Another photo of him apparently exists due to a mishap: he is said to have been speeding and caught by a speed camera.

While loading the "Andromeda" in Wiek, the taciturn Eastern Europeans — who wanted to set off on a long sailing trip with heavy luggage so late in the season — are said to have struck a vacationer as so suspicious that he photographed their van. And on board the yacht, investigators claim to have found traces of the explosive used.

The most serious evidence, however, only emerged around the arrest of Serhii K. nearly three years later, in August 2025. He was on holiday with his family in the Italian resort of Rimini when he was arrested on the basis of a European arrest warrant. His mobile phone was seized, on which investigators claim to have found nautical charts of the area east of Bornholm and technical details of the Nord Stream pipelines.

Statements K. is said to have made in telephone calls from extradition custody to his wife also allegedly point to his involvement in the crime. In these, he is said to have emphasized above all his role as a soldier. What K. presumably did not suspect: the police were listening in on his conversations.

Is the German judiciary even competent?

The crime scenes were chosen deliberately; they lie in international waters and the exclusive economic zones of Denmark and Sweden, which do not establish sovereign rights. In both countries, investigations were therefore soon discontinued.

The Federal Public Prosecutor's Office justifies its jurisdiction via a roundabout route: because the "result of the crime" — the pipelines' loss of function — also occurred on German territory, where the lines ended, German "criminal jurisdiction" applies. The Federal Court of Justice (BGH) endorsed this view when it rejected a detention appeal by Serhii K. in January. German jurisdiction also applies, it stated, because the act "was capable of impairing the internal security of the Federal Republic."

The Higher Regional Court, meanwhile, rejected ancillary complaints by the operators, partly because the Gazprom subsidiaries had not suffered an "existential" loss. The repair costs for the pipelines, estimated at several hundred million euros, are relatively minor compared to the construction costs of nearly 17 billion euros.

Is Serhii K. exempt from prosecution?

According to the BGH, Serhii K. does not possess immunity under international law; this does not apply to "intelligence-directed acts of violence." Whether the attack on the pipelines was the work of intelligence agents, however, is among the questions still to be clarified. The court also ruled that Serhii K. "in all likelihood" cannot invoke the so-called combatant privilege under the laws of war. Firstly, because this does not apply to covert military operations, and secondly, because the pipelines are civilian objects. Whether this also means that the bombing constitutes a war crime under the International Criminal Code, the BGH explicitly left open.

The Hamburg Higher Regional Court will also address the question of whether Serhii K. might simply have been following orders as a soldier. The issue would then be whether he should have recognized potentially unlawful orders as such and refused to obey them. This point will be difficult to clarify, as his defense has so far stated that their client has no authorization from the Ukrainian army to testify.

What does the trial mean for relations with Ukraine?

It was just a week ago that Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) agreed a "strategic partnership" with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. He pledged further aid payments in the billions and additional weapons deliveries so that Ukraine can defend itself in Russia's war of aggression.

At the same time, in Hamburg, a Ukrainian officer must answer for having done the same thing — from Ukraine's perspective, very efficiently and cost-effectively, without any human casualties. This is difficult for many Ukrainians to understand. The citizens' initiative Vilni_De_Ua, made up of Ukrainians in Hamburg, has therefore announced it will protest on Wednesday in front of the Hamburg criminal justice building against the classification of the pipeline bombing as a war crime.

The Ukrainian government denies involvement in the attack. Should the trial reveal otherwise, it could severely damage relations with Germany. Support for the embattled country — already controversial in Germany — could become even harder to justify.

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