Pipeline suspect avoids warrant
Poland has received a European arrest warrant issued by Germany in connection with the 2022 attack on the Nord Stream pipelines but the suspect, a Ukrainian man named as Volodymyr Z, has already left, Polish prosecutors say.
He was able to leave as Germany had failed to include his name in a database of wanted persons, the prosecutors said.
The multibillion-dollar Nord Stream one and two pipelines transporting gas under the Baltic Sea were ruptured by a series of explosions on September 26, 2022, seven months after Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
German investigators believe Volodymyr Z, a Ukrainian diver, was part of a team that planted the explosives, the SZ and Die Zeit newspapers reported alongside the ARD broadcaster, citing unnamed sources.
Polish National Public Prosecutor’s Office spokeswoman Anna Adamiak said German authorities sent a European warrant to the District Prosecutor’s Office in Warsaw in June for Volodymyr Z in connection with proceedings conducted against him in Germany.
“Ultimately, Volodymyr Z was not detained because at the beginning of July he left Polish territory, crossing the Polish-Ukrainian border,” she wrote in an email reply to Reuters. “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.”
Polish law does not allow for publication of the full name of suspects in criminal investigations.
Germany said its relationship with Ukraine was not strained by the Nord Stream inquiry. “The procedures have no bearing on what the Chancellor [Olaf Scholz] has described as the support of Ukraine’s defence against Russia’s illegal war of aggression, as long as necessary,” the spokesperson said.
A married couple, a man and a woman — also Ukrainian diving instructors — have also been identified in Germany’s investigation into the sabotage but so far no arrest warrants have been issued for them, according to SZ, Zeit and ARD. The woman told broadcaster Welt yesterday that neither she nor her husband were involved, and that she was in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv at the time of the pipeline attack.
The blasts wrecked three out of four Nord Stream pipelines, which had become a controversial symbol of German reliance on Russian gas following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Russia blamed the United States, the United Kingdom and Ukraine for the blasts, which largely cut Russian gas off from the lucrative European market. The three countries have denied involvement.
Germany, Denmark, and Sweden all opened investigations into the incident, and Swedish authorities found traces of explosives on several objects recovered from the explosion site, confirming the blasts were deliberate acts. The Swedish and Danish investigations were closed this February without identifying any suspect. —AAP