Baltic Pipeline Discussion (Current Events)

German state prosecutors trying to solve the mystery of who blew up the Nord Stream gas pipelines under the Baltic Sea in 2022 have issued an arrest warrant for a Ukrainian diving instructor.

The suspect has been named as Volodymyr Z by German media, who have treated the sabotage like a sensational true crime drama.

Ines Peterson, a spokeswoman for Germany's prosecutor general, declined to confirm the arrest warrant, telling the BBC that her office never commented so as not to jeopardise the investigation by giving the suspect a chance to escape.

But the Polish prosecutor general's spokeswoman, Anna Adamiak, in Warsaw told the BBC's Adam Easton that a European Arrest Warrant had indeed been passed to them by German prosecutors.
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bbc
Edit: i have dropped my probability that it was Putin to 0
 
qed said:
Now that's a much better Metabunk quality answer than your earlier.
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Such as this acknowledgement of mine at the very beginning of the discussion:

"Anyway, you're entitled to your interpretation. Let's just wait for the Swedish investigation to run its course and see if there's harder evidence forthcoming. And if such evidence points to another power, I will eat the humble pie. I've said it."

Turns out there's no smoking gun evidence even at this point clearly pointing at anyone.
 
Polish involvement at the highest levels claimed by Hanning.

Article:
German investigators are now accusing Poland of not executing the European arrest and search warrants issued against Z. by Germany's Federal Court of Justice in June. Germany's federal criminal police and Federal Public Prosecutor's Office are displeased. An official familiar with the investigation made a serious accusation to WELT AM SONNTAG, claiming that Poland was sabotaging the investigation. Another person familiar with the investigation called the episode "obstruction of justice."

That's not an uncommon view in Germany.

"The Polish government obviously let him go in order to cover up its own involvement in the attack on the pipelines," August Hanning, the former head of Germany's Federal Intelligence Service, or BND, told WELT AM SONNTAG. He is convinced that the presidents of Poland and Ukraine, Andrzej Duda and Volodymyr Zelenskyy, were aware of the attack plans. "Operations of such dimensions are inconceivable without the approval of the political leaders of the countries involved," said Hanning.
 
LilWabbit said:
Polish involvement at the highest levels claimed by Hanning.

Article:
German investigators are now accusing Poland of not executing the European arrest and search warrants issued against Z. by Germany's Federal Court of Justice in June. Germany's federal criminal police and Federal Public Prosecutor's Office are displeased. An official familiar with the investigation made a serious accusation to WELT AM SONNTAG, claiming that Poland was sabotaging the investigation. Another person familiar with the investigation called the episode "obstruction of justice."

That's not an uncommon view in Germany.

"The Polish government obviously let him go in order to cover up its own involvement in the attack on the pipelines," August Hanning, the former head of Germany's Federal Intelligence Service, or BND, told WELT AM SONNTAG. He is convinced that the presidents of Poland and Ukraine, Andrzej Duda and Volodymyr Zelenskyy, were aware of the attack plans. "Operations of such dimensions are inconceivable without the approval of the political leaders of the countries involved," said Hanning.
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Careful - evidence of involvement in a cover-up after the event isn't evidence of involvement in the event or planning thereof, which is where the thread started.
 
FatPhil said:
Careful - evidence of involvement in a cover-up after the event isn't evidence of involvement in the event or planning thereof, which is where the thread started.
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Hence the qualifier "claimed". According to Hanning the Polish government is covering up its own involvement in the pipeline attacks.
 
August Hanning's (the former head of Germany's Federal Intelligence Service involved in the Nord Stream investigation) own ties to a Russian "oligarch" Piotr Kondrashev are discussed in this Spiegel article. Again, it obviously doesn't prove he's in bed with the Russians or Russians blew up their own pipeline.

Article:
At PNB Banka, things proved rather bumpy for him from the very beginning. To finance his expansion plans, Guselnikov raised $75 million from Russian industrialist Piotr Kondrashev, who also wanted to obtain a stake in PNB Banka. But the two men had a falling out over the project. It was at this point, around 2016, that August Hanning came into the picture.

Tasked By a Russian Raw Materials Magnate

Kondrashev tasked Hanning with mediating in the conflict. The two had come into contact through the Swiss consulting firm System 360 AG, where Hanning is a member of the supervisory board. The company employs former security policy personnel and touts its "extensive knowledge of the various types of corporate crime."
​
Hanning should have been skeptical right from the start. Kondrashev had grown rich through the privatization of a Russian state-owned company involved in raw materials. His investments are difficult to track. Is he an oligarch? A spokesman for Kondrashev denied the label when contacted. Kondrashev, the spokesman said, had worked his way up from being a simple miner to a successful businessman, without political connections.
 
Matt33 said:
However, it's just another uncorroborated story. Remember the article from Simon Hersh? Pure fiction in my opinion.
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There was no arrest warrant issued on the Hersh story.
While I stand by my statement that a definitive answer needs a trial verdict, the arrest warrant means there is fairly solid evidence proving the Ukrainian's involvement.

LilWabbit said:
Poland's role has messed up all my subjective probability maths on this
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That you don't put the probability of Poland co-operating with Russia on this at 0 puts you in a special class of people, I think.
 
Mendel said:
There was no arrest warrant issued on the Hersh story.
While I stand by my statement that a definitive answer needs a trial verdict, the arrest warrant means there is fairly solid evidence proving the Ukrainian's involvement.


That you don't put the probability of Poland co-operating with Russia on this at 0 puts you in a special class of people, I think.
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I must admit Donald Tusk's and other Polish official's statements in the aftermath of the German arrest warrant seem much more like cover-up than sincere. Even without access to other evidence possessed by the agency responsible for investigation. And if indeed the case, the likelihood of Russian involvement decreases crucially.

Trial verdicts however are not definitive answers in terms of scientific evidence. We'll probably never get undisputed evidence on who ordered the attack. But it certainly looks like Ukrainians were involved at deep official levels.
 
LilWabbit said:
August Hanning's (the former head of Germany's Federal Intelligence Service involved in the Nord Stream investigation)
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August Hanning is almost 80 years old. He left the BND in 2005, and left government altogether in 2009.

The agency investigating the Nordstream explosions is the BKA, not the BND; the investigation is led by the German Attorney General.
 
Alleged evidence for "the USA did it" is making the rounds

Source: https://x.com/Erkperk/status/1839654160695689280

External Quote:
"For the first few days, the harbor master said he was "not allowed to say a thing". But today, John Anker Nielsen can reveal that four or five days before the Nord Stream blasts, he was out with the rescue service on Christiansø because there were some ships with switched-off radios. They turned out to be American naval vessels, and when the rescue service approached, they were told by Naval Command to turn back. Therefore, the harbor master has some faith in the theory that American star journalist Seymour Hersh, among others, has put forward without any documentation: that the US was behind the sabotage. The Americans have these small unmanned submarines that can solve any task, John Anker Nielsen has been told".
The attack was on September 26th. Remember:
Mendel said:
the USA (The Kearsarge Amphibious Ready Group (ARG) and the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) left the Baltic on Thursday 22nd,
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So that's likely what Mr Nielsen would have seen.
It's not a secret, and it's not news.

Christiansø is a small island NE of Bornholm.
nord-Stream-leaks-1.jpg
 
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Mendel said:
External Quote:
... they were told by Naval Command to turn back.
... American star journalist Seymour Hersh
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On the former - there ought to be a record of that communication. The US Navy can only delete their copy.
On the latter - Hersh has been making stuff up about American operations since at least the ObL days. only a Rip van Winkel would call him a "star" journalist any more.
 
Hersh hasn't been a star journalist since the 70's. From there to 2005 he reported plenty of adequate news but broke nothing of import. In 2005 he got to print fastest with the Abu Graib story and those infamous photos but at the cost of his article being the least revealing of that first wave - he was not the only person with that report in hand.

Everything since then has been anonymously sourced from the Internet and none of it aged well. He spent six years and so much ink printing wild stories about US commandos already being at war with Iran wearing foreign uniforms with nukes armed and waiting the target lock that Rush Limbaugh was routinely *less* unhinged.
 
Hevach said:
Everything since then has been anonymously sourced from the Internet and none of it aged well. He spent six years and so much ink printing wild stories about US commandos already being at war with Iran wearing foreign uniforms with nukes armed and waiting the target lock that Rush Limbaugh was routinely *less* unhinged.
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Probably the funniest Hersh related thing in the last few years was when he posted this on his substack in the summer of 2023, purporting to be sourcing an American government official:

At this point, with the Ukraine counteroffensive against Russia thwarted, the official said, "Zelensky has no plan, except to hang on. It's as if he's an orphan—a poor waif in his underwear—and we have no real idea of what Zelensky and his crowd are thinking. Ukraine is the most corrupt and dumbest government in the world, outside of Nigeria, and Biden's support of Zelensky can only come from Zelensky's knowledge of Biden, and not just because he was taking care of Biden's son."
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This immediately stood out to people, because what on earth is that expression? Certainly nothing even vaguely resembling any known English language idiom. Waif is a very uncommon word to encounter in day to day speech. The entire passage from the odd idioms to the comparison to Nigeria as the "dumbest and most corrupt nation" doesn't ring true to the ear for an American, especially not one embedded in the Biden administration. Then there's the cherry on top - the conspiracy that Zelensky is only recieving US Aide because he has leverage on Joe Biden via Hunter.

People proposed a theory that the strange phrase I bolded is a translation of a Russian idiom. I've seen native speakers push back on that being literally accurate - it isn't in common usage, though those same people claim it's some kind of reference to some Russian propaganda from 2014 where they spread a story about the Ukrainians murdering a boy in his underwear. Either way, the theory that this is probably somebody whose native language is Russian seems pretty likely.
 
TDM said:
Either way, the theory that this is probably somebody whose native language is Russian seems pretty likely.
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I read a couple of posts referencing "Father God", and although I am not a speaker of Russian, that sounded like an unfamiliar phrase in westernized nations.
 
TDM said:
Probably the funniest Hersh related thing in the last few years was when he posted this on his substack in the summer of 2023, purporting to be sourcing an American government official:

This immediately stood out to people, because what on earth is that expression? Certainly nothing even vaguely resembling any known English language idiom. Waif is a very uncommon word to encounter in day to day speech. The entire passage from the odd idioms to the comparison to Nigeria as the "dumbest and most corrupt nation" doesn't ring true to the ear for an American, especially not one embedded in the Biden administration. Then there's the cherry on top - the conspiracy that Zelensky is only recieving US Aide because he has leverage on Joe Biden via Hunter.

People proposed a theory that the strange phrase I bolded is a translation of a Russian idiom. I've seen native speakers push back on that being literally accurate - it isn't in common usage, though those same people claim it's some kind of reference to some Russian propaganda from 2014 where they spread a story about the Ukrainians murdering a boy in his underwear. Either way, the theory that this is probably somebody whose native language is Russian seems pretty likely.
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First of all, I give no credence to anything Hersh writes, not least his deliberately vague attributions.

However, I see nothing unusual about the word "waif". If I'm reaching for that concept, I certainly arrive at "waif" before I reach "urchin", for example, though neither is much of a stretch. And I don't think I'm alone. A random search for ``Kate Moss waif'' finds on the first page of hits a variety of international sources happy to use the word for that concept:
"From her waif and "heroin chic" look, to Johnny Depp, and more, Kate Moss is our '90s icon of the week." -- https://www.hola.com/us/celebrities/20210614fzk7xes4s2/kate-moss-90s-icon-of-the-week/
"... waif, whose exemplar is Kate Moss—a gangly snaggletoothed girl from Croyden, England, who quietly, but certainly, changed modeling forever" -- https://www.vogue.com/article/models-1990s-naomi-campell-kate-moss-christy-turlington
"When I pore over these wonderful images of the model, designer, and eternal waif Kate Moss, firefly thoughts flit in and out of the dark" -- https://www.wmagazine.com/story/good-kate-bad-kate
"Original Waif Kate Moss Admits To Having Been Too Thin - Glamour" -- https://www.glamour.com/story/original-waif-kate-moss-admits
"90s Waif Kate Moss" --
Source: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/90s-waif-kate-moss--495114552762370780/

"Moss's appearance as the model for Calvin Klein Jeans created the 'waif' look." -- https://www.businessinsider.com/images-of-kate-moss-that-define-her-career-2012-11
"Kate Moss the opposite of glamour: Fashion designer Calvin Klein has explained how his distaste for plastic surgery led him to originate the "waif" trend." -- https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/fa...e-of-glamour-calvin-klein-20111020-1m9uh.html

I don't think you should be criticising a journalist for having a vocabulary.

However, the kewl nudie tales that it's a "russian idiom" doesn't seem very well supported either, as you point out. People seem able to come up with a russian term that translates to the English expression used, but that proves nothing apart from the fact that Russian has the concept of both kids and keks, which isn't news. If it were an idiom, you would find use of it *outside* discussion of this very localised matter - but all I can find is people in a flap that Hersh used an unusual-to-them expression.

Either way, the theory that this is probably somebody whose native language is Russian seems unsupported by evidence presently.

On the flip side - I can prove that "waif" is used in an English idiom, though, as wikipedia confirm:
External Quote:
In later centuries, the expression "waifs and strays" came to be used as metaphors for – and ultimately became synonymous with – abandoned or neglected children.[3]
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waif_and_stray
 
TDM said:
Probably the funniest Hersh related thing in the last few years was when he posted this on his substack in the summer of 2023, purporting to be sourcing an American government official:
External Quote:
At this point, with the Ukraine counteroffensive against Russia thwarted, the official said, "Zelensky has no plan, except to hang on. It's as if he's an orphan—a poor waif in his underwear—and we have no real idea of what Zelensky and his crowd are thinking.
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FatPhil said:
I don't think you should be criticising a journalist for having a vocabulary.
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They're criticising Hersch for quoting a government official, who probably speaks Russian since his job is to analyse Ukraine and Russia, for using a turn of phrase they would expect from a Russian. I don't know whether Hersch even speaks Russian, his wikipedia page doesn't say.

Now if you were to argue that "waif in his underwear" was a yiddish phrase, that could serve as indication that Hersch himself wrote the quote.
 
FatPhil said:
First of all, I give no credence to anything Hersh writes, not least his deliberately vague attributions.

However, I see nothing unusual about the word "waif". If I'm reaching for that concept, I certainly arrive at "waif" before I reach "urchin", for example, though neither is much of a stretch. And I don't think I'm alone. A random search for ``Kate Moss waif'' finds on the first page of hits a variety of international sources happy to use the word for that concept:

...

I don't think you should be criticising a journalist for having a vocabulary.

...


On the flip side - I can prove that "waif" is used in an English idiom, though, as wikipedia confirm:
External Quote:
In later centuries, the expression "waifs and strays" came to be used as metaphors for – and ultimately became synonymous with – abandoned or neglected children.[3]
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waif_and_stray
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I'm not criticising Hersh's use of language, because they aren't his words. In the passage I posted, he is providing a direct quote from his alleged US government official source. It's the usage by whomever he was speaking to that is bizarre, because "It's as if he's an oprhan - a poor waif in his underwear" is an extraordinarily unusual phrase.

The use of waif or waifish to describe a fashion model is definitely one of the times you would see that word used, but context is critical here, people do not hurl that as a political insult to slightly chubby world leaders, nor is it in modern usage to mean, in isolation "someone who is alone / lacking support". The second half of the old phrase you mention here is 'strays', a word which does have a common parlance meaning of homeless/abandoned. But waif on it's own does not ever mean anything like that - and that's a rather rare idiom to begin with.

Can you imagine somebody describing Churchil in 1940, seemingly alone and on the back foot militarily, as "like a poor waif in his underwear"?

FatPhil said:
However, the kewl nudie tales that it's a "russian idiom" doesn't seem very well supported either, as you point out. People seem able to come up with a russian term that translates to the English expression used, but that proves nothing apart from the fact that Russian has the concept of both kids and keks, which isn't news. If it were an idiom, you would find use of it *outside* discussion of this very localised matter - but all I can find is people in a flap that Hersh used an unusual-to-them expression.

Either way, the theory that this is probably somebody whose native language is Russian seems unsupported by evidence presently.
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Part of why I've raised it here is the hope that someone with more direct expertise or with better research skills than I might chime in.

Here is the complete list of quotes attributed to this unknown individual:
"Of course it was our technology," "The drone was remotely guided and half submerged—like a torpedo."

"What will Putin do? We don't think that far," "Our national strategy is that Zelensky can do whatever he wants to do. There's no adult supervision."

"Odessa's exports included illegal stuff like drugs and the oil that Ukraine was getting from Russia."

"Zelensky has no plan, except to hang on. It's as if he's an orphan—a poor waif in his underwear—and we have no real idea of what Zelensky and his crowd are thinking. Ukraine is the most corrupt and dumbest government in the world, outside of Nigeria, and Biden's support of Zelensky can only come from Zelensky's knowledge of Biden, and not just because he was taking care of Biden's son." "Will Kiev be next?"
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So for the sake of clarity, here is the list of things I would say about it:

  1. It reads exactly like Russian propaganda. Odessa deserved to be hit because it was exporting drugs, Zelensky has no plan, Zelensky is blackmailing America to get support because of corrupt Joe Biden and his evil son.
  2. The idea that Zelensky is being let run free with no restrictions is the opposite of how I would characterise the Biden cabinet's policies on esclation management with respect to Ukraine.
  3. It's written by someone who clearly dislikes and disrespects Ukraine. On top of all of the above, note the usage of "Kiev" rather than "Kyiv" in the summer of 2023.
  4. Waif in Underwear line sets off alarm bells.
  5. The phrasing in that last paragraph even beyond that one line seems a bit ESL. It just sounds odd.

If this "US government official" and "member of the intelligence community" is really who they say they are, the bare minimum we could say is that they are feeding Hersh a bunch of information that lines up exactly with whatever the Russians would want Hersh to be blogging about. Expanding a bit, I would suggest they are not likely to be high ranking, given how poor their insights seem to be. The person, imo is highly likely to not speak English as their first language, and Russian seems like a pretty good guess based on all the surrounding context. That could imply this is someone in a translation type role, if they really worked there at all.

The theory that this is somebody taking Hersh for a ride also seems pretty plausible. Whether it's just a Russian sympathizing troll or someone employed by Russia for the purpose of feeding propaganda to sympathetic western sources is an open question to me. Seymour Hersh has a high enough profile and is prestigious enough to be targeted for that kind of thing, and his track record of taking positions that align with Russian interests is quite extensive (i.e. his writing on Syria, Iran and Ukraine going back more than 15 years). So he's the right combination of potentially sympathetic + important.
 
TDM said:
I'm not criticising Hersh's use of language, because they aren't his words. In the passage I posted, he is providing a direct quote from his alleged US government official source.
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In my defence, I had silently accepted "there is no such source" as one of the possibilities, as he's somewhat of a fabulist.

I agree with the vibe that you detect, wholeheartedly. Living in a country where the first language I hear when I leave the flat is usually Russian, and where one of our more popular political parties is informally nicknamed the "Putin Party", I've encountered enough Russian propaganda to detect that vibe in his writing. It's the boring stuff, like corroborating evidence, that I'm lacking.

By bizarre coincidence, as I searched for some supporting evidence for my claim that we view one of our major political parties as the Putin Party, my first hit was this Bachellor's thesis:
External Quote:
n 2004, his party, Keskerakond (Centre),
entered into a cooperation agreement with United Russia, Putin's party in Russia. This was
opposed by every other party in parliament, including SDE, and the meaning and scope of this
agreement has been a point of contention ever since (Tambur 2022). Additionally, Savisaar and
Boroditš, who were Mayor and deputy mayor of Tallinn were caught taking money for Centre
Party from Russian Railways president Vladimir Yakunin in 2010. All of these issues have made
many voters skeptical of Centre party's allegiances, and corrupted their image as a party.
-- https://digital.lib.washington.edu/.../10fe1338-d9c9-45da-918d-1ef0faff6c8b/content

And 100% instinctively (I read a lot of theses, this is a common mistake), as soon as I got to the full stop at the end of the first sentence I internally yelled "assertion!" and demanded a citation to back up that claim; even though I knew it to be true as I remember it being scrapped in 2022: https://web.archive.org/web/2022041...кола-о-сотрудничестве-с-«единой-россией».html "Совет уполномоченных Центристской партии подтверждает недействительность Протокола о сотрудничестве с «Единой Россией»"
"The Council of Commissioners of the Centre Party confirms the invalidity of the Protocol of Cooperation with United Russia"
 
TDM said:
I'm not criticising Hersh's use of language, because they aren't his words. In the passage I posted, he is providing a direct quote from his alleged US government official source. It's the usage by whomever he was speaking to that is bizarre, because "It's as if he's an oprhan - a poor waif in his underwear" is an extraordinarily unusual phrase.

The use of waif or waifish to describe a fashion model is definitely one of the times you would see that word used, but context is critical here, people do not hurl that as a political insult to slightly chubby world leaders, nor is it in modern usage to mean, in isolation "someone who is alone / lacking support". The second half of the old phrase you mention here is 'strays', a word which does have a common parlance meaning of homeless/abandoned. But waif on it's own does not ever mean anything like that - and that's a rather rare idiom to begin with.

Can you imagine somebody describing Churchil in 1940, seemingly alone and on the back foot militarily, as "like a poor waif in his underwear"?



Part of why I've raised it here is the hope that someone with more direct expertise or with better research skills than I might chime in.

Here is the complete list of quotes attributed to this unknown individual:


So for the sake of clarity, here is the list of things I would say about it:

  1. It reads exactly like Russian propaganda. Odessa deserved to be hit because it was exporting drugs, Zelensky has no plan, Zelensky is blackmailing America to get support because of corrupt Joe Biden and his evil son.
  2. The idea that Zelensky is being let run free with no restrictions is the opposite of how I would characterise the Biden cabinet's policies on esclation management with respect to Ukraine.
  3. It's written by someone who clearly dislikes and disrespects Ukraine. On top of all of the above, note the usage of "Kiev" rather than "Kyiv" in the summer of 2023.
  4. Waif in Underwear line sets off alarm bells.
  5. The phrasing in that last paragraph even beyond that one line seems a bit ESL. It just sounds odd.

If this "US government official" and "member of the intelligence community" is really who they say they are, the bare minimum we could say is that they are feeding Hersh a bunch of information that lines up exactly with whatever the Russians would want Hersh to be blogging about. Expanding a bit, I would suggest they are not likely to be high ranking, given how poor their insights seem to be. The person, imo is highly likely to not speak English as their first language, and Russian seems like a pretty good guess based on all the surrounding context. That could imply this is someone in a translation type role, if they really worked there at all.

The theory that this is somebody taking Hersh for a ride also seems pretty plausible. Whether it's just a Russian sympathizing troll or someone employed by Russia for the purpose of feeding propaganda to sympathetic western sources is an open question to me. Seymour Hersh has a high enough profile and is prestigious enough to be targeted for that kind of thing, and his track record of taking positions that align with Russian interests is quite extensive (i.e. his writing on Syria, Iran and Ukraine going back more than 15 years). So he's the right combination of potentially sympathetic + important.
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Prestigious is a catch here, he'd be targeted because he has high perceived veracity despite having a record of poor reporting either being gamed by sources or just flat out making up lies.

1 and 2 are pretty spot on also. It's not been reported on a lot and one of the sad areas that spawns some other debates about frequently promoted claims of the opposite, but we've had military staff largely running it for the Ukrainians. Not to take respect away from their own actions and conduct because it is theirs, but I mean, if 80% of your strategic command cell is American and Brit officers doing all your strategy and planning, changes things quite a bit but alas, never been a case of letting Zelensky run free.
 
Kacmarek said:
So...... any update/investigation result/new hypothesis regarding potential actors who may have blown up the pipeline?
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https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68401870
External Quote:
Danish police have said they are closing their inquiry into the blasts that tore apart two pipelines intended to ship Russian gas to Germany.

Authorities concluded the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines had been "sabotaged" in September 2022 - but said there was no basis for pursuing a criminal case.

Responsibility for for the suspected sabotage is still unknown.

Sweden closed its investigation earlier this month, citing a lack of jurisdiction.

Germany is still investigating the incident.
That's as of February 2024. The state of the German investigation is described upthread (arrest warrant issued, no court case), and German Wikipedia doesn't have more than that, either. I expect that the case needs to go to court before we learn more.
 
Mendel said:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68401870
External Quote:
Danish police have said they are closing their inquiry into the blasts that tore apart two pipelines intended to ship Russian gas to Germany.

Authorities concluded the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines had been "sabotaged" in September 2022 - but said there was no basis for pursuing a criminal case.

Responsibility for for the suspected sabotage is still unknown.

Sweden closed its investigation earlier this month, citing a lack of jurisdiction.

Germany is still investigating the incident.
That's as of February 2024. The state of the German investigation is described upthread (arrest warrant issued, no court case), and German Wikipedia doesn't have more than that, either. I expect that the case needs to go to court before we learn more.
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Thanks for the update
 
External Quote:

Ukrainian suspected of undermining Nord Stream denies charges and refuses extradition

A Ukrainian man arrested in Italy over the 2022 Nord Stream pipeline explosions displayed a three-finger trident gesture in court Friday while denying charges and refusing extradition to Germany

The 49-year-old suspect was arrested on the evening of 21 August at a farm holiday resort in San Clemente, near Rimini, on a European arrest warrant issued by German federal authorities. He faces charges including joint commission of an explosion using explosives, anti-constitutional sabotage, and destruction of buildings.

Italian police detained Kuznetsov while he was vacationing with his family. German investigators suspect he belonged to a group that destroyed the Nord Stream pipelines in September 2022 but was not among the divers who planted the explosives.
-- https://euromaidanpress.com/2025/08...tream-denies-charges-and-refuses-extradition/
 
A bit more details this noon from "Tagesschau". Tagesschau is the oldest and leading public law news TV format in Germany and part of the ARD collective of regional public law broadcasters. ARD, along with the daily newspaper "Süddeutsche Zeitung" and weekly "Die Zeit" have fielded a joint investigative team which now has gained access to the contents of the international arrest warrant, upon which Serhi K. was arrested in Italy.

https://www.tagesschau.de/investigativ/ndr-wdr/nord-stream-sabotage-festnahme-ukrainer-102.html

Translation by google: https://www-tagesschau-de.translate..._sl=de&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=de&_x_tr_pto=wapp

External Quote:
exclusive

Nord Stream investigationsArrested Ukrainian allegedly led sabotage team

As of: 23.08.2025 12:31
A Ukrainian man allegedly involved in the 2022 attacks on the Nord Stream pipelines was arrested in Italy on Wednesday. ARD , Süddeutsche Zeitung, and "Zeit" now have access to the arrest warrant against the man.

By Manuel Bewarder NDR/WDR, Florian Flade WDR, Michael Götschenberg ARD Capital Studio, Georg Heil RBB, Holger Schmidt SWR

When Serhii K. was brought before the magistrate at the Bologna court on Friday, he was handcuffed and accompanied by three police officers. This didn't stop the Ukrainian from extending a gesture to the journalists on site: three fingers – often used in Ukraine as a symbol of the "trysub," the trident that appears as a national symbol on flags and coats of arms.

Serhii K. was arrested late Wednesday evening at a holiday resort in the Italian province of Rimini . He was staying there with his wife and children. A few days earlier, the German Federal Prosecutor General had obtained a European arrest warrant for the 49-year-old Ukrainian: Serhii K. is alleged to have been involved in the bomb attacks on the Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea in September 2022.

German investigators assume leadership role

A research team from ARD , Süddeutsche Zeitung, and "Zeit" now has access to the arrest warrant against the Ukrainian. It reveals that German investigators believe Serhii K. even assumed the important role of leading the overall operation and the sabotage team. K. is said to have been part of the crew of the sailing yacht "Andromeda," which was allegedly used to sabotage the natural gas pipelines.

According to Italian media, K.'s lawyer has denied the charges. He is presumed innocent. K. reportedly intends to fight possible extradition to Germany. The first arrest in the trial for one of the most spectacular acts of sabotage in Europe is considered a major success for German investigators.

At least four explosive devices with time fuses

According to the arrest warrant, Serhii K. is said to have boarded the previously rented sailboat in Wiek on the island of Rügen in early September 2022. K. was tasked with coordinating the operation and leading the sabotage team, which allegedly consisted of a skipper, four divers, and an explosives expert.

It goes on to say that the suspected saboteurs had planted at least four explosive devices, each weighing 14 to 27 kilograms, on the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines at a depth of approximately 70 to 80 meters. The explosives were a mixture of hexogen (RDX) and octogen (HMX), and the bombs were allegedly equipped with time fuses.

According to investigators from the Federal Criminal Police Office and the Federal Police, Serhii K. allegedly disembarked from the sailing yacht in Wiek on September 22nd and was picked up by a driver and taken back to Ukraine. Other suspects then reportedly returned to Hohe Düne near Warnemünde, where the "Andromeda" had previously been rented.

Clues from abroad led to the "Andromeda"

The arrest warrant names K. as an accomplice, accusing him of "anti-constitutional sabotage," "intentionally causing an explosion," and "destruction of buildings." The Ukrainian could face up to 15 years in prison.

Since October 2022, the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) and the Federal Police have been investigating the attacks on the pipelines on behalf of the Federal Prosecutor General. Shortly after the explosions, investigators used submersible robots to conduct seabed surveys, take soil samples, and recover parts of the destroyed pipeline.

Thanks to tips from a foreign intelligence service, investigators finally tracked down a sailing yacht that had been rented in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania using false personal details and through a Polish shell company. Investigators were able to secure both fingerprints and DNA traces on the vessel, and traces of explosives were also discovered.

Another suspect was able to escape

Meanwhile, officers from the Nord Stream investigation team believe they have identified several suspects. They are believed to be several Ukrainian civilians and former and active military personnel.

Last year, German investigators hoped to arrest their first suspect: They had tracked down Ukrainian Volodymyr Z., who was alleged to have been involved in the Nord Stream attacks as a diver, in Poland.

Despite a European arrest warrant , Z. was able to escape – possibly with official assistance from Ukraine. According to a media report, he left the country in a Ukrainian diplomatic vehicle before Polish police could arrest him. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has consistently denied his government's involvement in the attacks .

A competent court in Italy still has to decide whether Serhii K. will be extradited to Germany. According to Italian media, an important hearing on the possible extradition is scheduled for the middle of next week.
 
Another article at Tagesschau:
https://www.tagesschau.de/investigativ/nord-stream-sabotage-104.html
Google Translated: https://www-tagesschau-de.translate..._sl=de&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=de&_x_tr_pto=wapp

Main points:
  • German police ivestigators now know the names and identities of all 7 crew members of the yacht Andromeda - all are Ukrainian
  • The Andromeda was a treasure trove of forensic material, with fingerprints, DNA, explosives residues...
  • A couple of the crew have already been positively identified through comparison with DNA samples from the Andromeda. One for example was trained as a soldier by German armed forces in Germany subsequent to the pipeline attack. The skipper had once been to the Netherlands where he had to give fingerprints as part of the visa process - same prints found on Andromeda; this skipper is said to be a very experienced one who has participated in international sailing competitions
  • The team travelled using two sets of passports: One Romanian - with fake names and fake passports. The other: Ukrainian passports - REAL Ukrainian passports (issued by Ukrainian authorities), but with fake names. This is one of several indications that the team had Ukrainian state support
  • A couple of suspects has been determined to have had prior Ukrainian secret service connections
  • It appears that Poland has deliberately refused to cooperate with investigations and actively saboaged the possible arrest of one suspect, allowing him to escape to Ukraine - in the car of a Ukrainian military attaché. It seems straightforward to speculate that Poland was quite happy with the attack, as they had lon protested the Nordstream project, one of the main points of which was to circumvent Poland.
So, to summarize:
a) According to German police investigations, the case is solved as far as who layed the explosive charges is concerned
b) All indications point to the Ukrainian state being behind the attack.
 
The Telegraph have quite an extensive, and fairly dramatic, write-up of everything that seems to be known up to and including the most recent German investigations:

External Quote:

Revealed: how an elite Ukrainian unit blew up the Nord Stream pipelines

The explosions, which crippled Russia's gas supply system, sparked a global whodunnit. Now German police say they've identified the culprits

[... huge snippage ...]

His [Serhii K] trial may also prove politically explosive. Germany is now Ukraine's biggest military and financial backer after America. And while Ukranian president Volodymyr Zelensky has denied sanctioning the plot, leaks from the investigation suggest he was at least aware of it. It was also allegedly overseen by Ukraine's former top commander General Valeriy Zaluzhny – now Kyiv's ambassador to London – who likewise denies all knowledge.

So what exactly do the Germans think happened? Drawing on public details from the investigation, as well as reports in German and other international media, it is now possible to piece together the full outline of the police case. And it seems that, for all its drunken beginnings, "Operation Diameter", as the sabotage plot was allegedly nicknamed, was a highly professional undertaking. Not only did it require high explosives to be smuggled across borders, they had to be planted on the seabed 80 metres below the surface – a depth reachable only by expert divers.

To that end, the six-strong Ukrainian team included four experienced deep-sea divers. The group, which was said to include civilians, hired a yacht called the Andromeda from a marina in Germany's Baltic port town of Rostock in early September 2022. The marina employees, it seems, barely gave them a glance.

[... lots more ...]
-- https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-n...ukrainian-unit-blew-up-nord-stream-pipelines/

I'm kinda hoping Soderbergh or similar thinks this has good thriller potential, I think the world needs a decent movie based on this operation.
 
And another one:
External Quote:
We wtorek w godzinach porannych na terenie Pruszkowa zatrzymano obywatela Ukrainy Wołodymyra Z., podejrzanego w sprawie wysadzenia Nord Stream - przekazał prokurator Antoni Skiba, rzecznik prasowy Prokuratury Okręgowej w Warszawie. Wiadomo, że mężczyzna prowadził w Polsce działalność gospodarczą i nie była to pierwsza próba jego zatrzymania.
https://tvn24.pl/polska/ukrainiec-p...-warszawa-poinformowal-jego-mecenas-st8675290

Deepl translation:
External Quote:
On Tuesday morning, Ukrainian citizen Volodymyr Z., suspected of involvement in the Nord Stream explosion, was arrested in Pruszków, according to Antoni Skiba, spokesperson for the District Prosecutor's Office in Warsaw. It is known that the man ran a business in Poland and that this was not the first attempt to arrest him.
 
Someone with a sufficiently large cork-board and enough red string might link parts of this to Merkel's recent embarassment:
External Quote:
WARSAW, Oct 7 (Reuters) - It is not in Poland's interest to hand over a Ukrainian man wanted by Germany for suspected involvement in explosions which damaged the Nord Stream gas pipelines, the Polish prime minister said on Tuesday.

Donald Tusk said that ultimately it was for the court to decide whether Volodymyr Z., who was detained near Warsaw in late September, is handed over. But he reiterated Poland's long-standing opposition to the pipelines, which Warsaw says were key to making Europe too dependent on Russian energy.

"The problem of Europe, the problem of Ukraine, the problem of Lithuania and Poland is not that Nord Stream 2 was blown up, but that it was built," Tusk told a news conference.
-- https://www.reuters.com/business/en...any-nord-stream-suspect-tusk-says-2025-10-07/
 
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