Second Nord Stream Sabotage Suspect Arrested in Croatia
(Bloomberg) -- German prosecutors secured the arrest of a second person in its Nord Stream gas pipelines sabotage investigation.
Croatian police forces arrested a Ukrainian national on Wednesday on the nation’s request, Germany’s Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office said. The suspect, identified only as Vladimir Z. was arrested in the city of Pula.
Last year, Ukrainian national Serhii K. was arrested in Italy and extradited to Germany where he was later charged over the sabotage.
Speculation had run riot about the origin of the attack on the two pipelines, installed to deliver natural gas from Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea. Russia blamed it on the US, Ukraine and Poland and called them “beneficiaries” of the blasts.
Vladimir Z., a trained scuba diver, was allegedly part of a group that used explosives to blow up the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines near the Danish island of Bornholm in September 2022. The group departed from Rostock on board a sailing yacht rented from a German company with falsified IDs. Vladimir Z. participated in the necessary dives, according to the statement.
The Nord Stream 1 undersea link to Germany was the main route for Russian pipeline gas flows before the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, while the second pipeline was completed but never operated. In 2021, the year before the war started, Nord Stream 1 delivered more than a third of Russia’s total gas exports to Europe.
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