HAMBURG, Germany — The first criminal trial over the September 2022 Nord Stream pipeline bombings opened Tuesday at the Hanseatic Higher Regional Court, where German prosecutors laid out their case against a Ukrainian former special-forces diver accused of leading the underwater sabotage team that destroyed one of Europe's major energy lifelines.

The defendant, identified in court filings as Serhii Kuznietsov, faces four counts, including the German war-crimes offense of "employing prohibited methods of warfare through an attack on civilian objects," along with explosives and sabotage-related charges. He has denied all of them.

Prosecutors allege Kuznietsov led a team of roughly six to seven people who chartered the sailing yacht Andromeda from a company in Rostock using forged identity documents, then used the boat to plant explosives on the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines in the Baltic Sea, according to reporting from the Kyiv Independent. The blasts knocked out pipelines that had carried the bulk of Russian gas exports to Germany before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

FOUR COUNTS, INCLUDING A GERMAN WAR-CRIMES CHARGE — AND A DEFENDANT WHO DENIES ALL OF THEM

A Yacht, Forged Papers and a Years-Long Manhunt

German investigators believe a Ukrainian state agency ordered the attack as a way to cut off Russian energy revenue, though nothing has been proven in court and Ukraine's government, including President Volodymyr Zelensky, has denied any official involvement. Kuznietsov was detained near Rimini, Italy, in August 2025 under a European Arrest Warrant and extradited to Germany in November 2025, after a brief reversal by an Italian court, per wire reporting from Justice Info.

An alleged accomplice, Volodymyr Zhuravlyov, was separately arrested in Croatia, where a court approved his extradition to Germany. A third suspect's extradition was reportedly refused by Poland, leaving gaps in Germany's effort to bring the full alleged team to trial. No trial date has yet been set for Zhuravlyov, and German prosecutors have not said whether they expect to bring additional defendants to trial once Kuznietsov's case concludes.

The court has also ruled that Nord Stream AG and Nord Stream 2 AG — the pipeline operating companies — cannot currently join the case as injured parties with prosecutorial rights, even though the court acknowledged the companies suffered financial losses from the attack.

A Pipeline at the Center of a War

The Nord Stream pipelines were built to carry Russian natural gas directly to Germany under the Baltic Sea, bypassing Ukraine and Poland, and had been a source of tension within the European Union and NATO even before the September 2022 blasts. The pipelines have sat unused since the explosions, and Germany halted certification of the newer Nord Stream 2 line even before the attack, following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine earlier that year. In the weeks after the attack, investigators in Germany, Sweden and Denmark each opened separate inquiries, and the three governments reached differing public conclusions about responsibility before closing or scaling back their own probes. Germany's case against Kuznietsov is the first to result in an actual criminal trial over the sabotage.

What's Next

Judges have scheduled 16 hearing dates running from Tuesday through Dec. 17, with the possibility of additional sessions stretching into January or February 2027. The case is being watched closely across Europe both as a test of Germany's war-crimes statutes and as a potential flashpoint in relations between Berlin, Kyiv and Moscow, none of which have offered a unified account of who ordered the attack.