Serhii K goes on trial in Hamburg over Nord Stream pipeline blasts

A German court in Hamburg opens the trial of Serhii K, a former Ukrainian army officer, on 14 October 2026, accused of plotting the explosions that ruptured three of the four Nord Stream gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea on 26 September 2022. He is the first suspect to go on trial over the blasts. He denies the charges, as does a second suspect fighting extradition from Croatia.bbc.co.uk

The case matters because it is the first courtroom test of who destroyed the pipelines linking Russia's gas to Germany, an attack that exposed Europe's dependence on Russian energy. German prosecutors allege the saboteurs acted by order of Ukrainian state agencies to stop Russia financing its war through gas revenue, while Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky has always maintained Ukraine had "nothing to do with [the Nord Stream blasts]".bbc.com

What the indictment alleges

Prosecutors charge Serhii K with causing an explosion, damaging property, disrupting public services and complicity in war crimes by attacking civilian infrastructure, bringing the case under Germany's code of crimes against international law as an attack by military means against civilian objects. They allege he was a serving Ukrainian army officer in 2022 who led a group of professional divers, a boat captain and an explosives expert.fakti.bg

The indictment alleges the suspect organised and carried out the detonation of at least four bombs weighing between 14 and 27 kilograms at a depth of 70 to 80 metres near the Danish island of Bornholm. The explosions on 26 September 2022 tore apart Nord Stream 1, Russia's main supply route to Germany until Moscow cut off supplies in August 2022, and damaged Nord Stream 2, which never entered service.ocregister.com

German prosecutors focused on deep-sea divers who rented a yacht called the Andromeda from the northern German port of Rostock, hired from a German company through intermediaries and forged identity documents. Prosecutors said "traces of subsea explosives were found in the samples taken from the boat". Investigators from Sweden, Denmark and Germany probed the blasts before Denmark and Sweden shut down their inquiries.

How investigators traced the yacht

The blasts came seven months after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Russia had already shut off Nord Stream 1 weeks before the attack, and Berlin had frozen the multi-billion dollar Nord Stream 2 project shortly before the invasion. Western suspicion initially looked towards Moscow without directly apportioning blame, while Russia's Vladimir Putin accused the US and its UK allies, blaming "the Anglo-Saxons", which they denied.

Attribution remains disputed. Russian officials say US and British intelligence agencies were involved, calling the blasts "an act of international terrorism", and Russia has accused NATO of involvement. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia expects "objectivity" and that "both the perpetrators and the sponsors will be identified". Joachim Weber, a security expert at the University of Bonn, said all evidence clearly shows Ukraine blew up the pipelines.

Serhii K was arrested in August 2025 after checking into a hotel near the Italian Adriatic resort of Rimini under a European arrest warrant, then extradited to Germany in November. A second suspect, Volodymyr Zhuravlov, had his extradition from Poland refused in October 2025, with a judge ruling the attack was not unlawful, but was arrested in Pula, Croatia in August and Croatia approved his extradition last month.

Where the two suspects stand

Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky has rejected allegations of Ukrainian involvement and told reporters in August that Ukraine's prosecutors and Foreign Ministry were cooperating with partners, saying Kyiv was "fully open to joint investigative actions". Oleksandr Merezhko, chairing the Foreign Affairs Committee in Ukraine's parliament, said of the German account: "It's one of the versions." The German government has declined to comment, saying no verdict has been reached.

Stefan Meister of the German Council on Foreign Relations said successive German chancellors tried to depoliticise the case, handing it to the judiciary. In January 2025, Germany's federal court of justice ruled the case fell within German territorial jurisdiction, involving "undermining [Germany's] internal security". Merezhko said continued German support remains "in the best national interests of Germany". The trial at the Higher Regional Court in Hamburg is expected to run amid sharp differences between Kyiv and Berlin over the sabotage. It is not yet clear when the second suspect will be extradited from Croatia or whether his case will be folded into the Hamburg proceedings.