Investigators believe a \u201cstate\u201d actor ordered Ukrainian saboteurs to destroy the pipelines, according to a court document<\/p>\n
Germany\u2019s Federal Court of Justice (BGH) has stated that the 2022 sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines was likely an \u201cintelligence service\u201d operation ordered by a foreign government, according to a ruling that ordered the primary suspect to remain in custody.
\nThe court document, dated December 10 and published\u00a0on Thursday, rejects an appeal against the pre-trial detention of the 49-year-old suspect, identified by media as former Ukrainian special forces member Sergey Kuznetsov.
\n\u201cAs the investigation currently stands, it was highly likely that the accused was involved in the pipeline bombings,\u201d the court wrote, adding that \u201cimmunity does not apply to acts of violence controlled by an intelligence service.\u201d<\/p>\n
Read more<\/p>\n
German court arrests Nord Stream blast suspect<\/p>\n
The suspect is alleged to have led a small\u00a0team of\u00a0Ukrainian saboteurs that rented a yacht and used commercial diving gear to plant explosives on the Baltic Sea pipelines. He was arrested in Italy in August 2025 and extradited to Germany in November. Federal prosecutors accuse him of \u201canti-constitutional sabotage\u201d for severing a critical energy supply route.
\nThe defense had argued for \u201cfunctional immunity,\u201d claiming that within the context of the Ukraine-Russia conflict, the pipelines in international waters constituted a legitimate military target.
\nThe BGH firmly rejected this, ruling that Nord Stream served primarily civilian purposes. The court noted the operation appeared to be a covert intelligence mission where the suspects were not identifiable as combatants, and that Germany\u2019s sovereignty and \u201cterritorial jurisdiction\u201d were affected.
\n\u201cThe general functional immunity of public officials resulting from sovereign immunity under international law poses no obstacle to the accused Ukrainian\u2019s prosecution\u2026 in the event that he participated in the act of sabotage on behalf of a foreign state\u2019s intelligence service,\u201d the court wrote.<\/p>\n
Read more<\/p>\n
Russia \u2018has no faith\u2019 in German Nord Stream sabotage probe<\/p>\n
Another suspect in the case, identified as diving instructor Vladimir Zhuravlyov, was detained in Poland in late September under a European Arrest Warrant. However, in October, a Warsaw District Court rejected a German extradition request and ordered his release.
\nRussia has expressed deep skepticism that a small, rogue group could execute such a sophisticated operation in NATO-controlled waters without direct state assistance. Moscow has also criticized a lack of transparency, accusing EU officials of using private \u201cscapegoats\u201d to cover up the true circumstances of the 2022 attacks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Investigators believe a \u201cstate\u201d actor ordered Ukrainian saboteurs to destroy the pipelines, according to a court document Germany\u2019s Federal Court of Justice (BGH) has stated that the 2022 sabotage of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26337,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy","category-environment","category-politics"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26336\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/26337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}