In September 2022, three lines of the "Nord Stream" natural gas pipeline connecting Russia and Germany were bombed, and natural gas poured out of the sea, shocking the world. This can be called the most mysterious sabotage operation after the Cold War. For a time, speculation about "who is the black hand" was rampant. Now, nearly three years after the incident, this unsolved case has finally been explained.

On Aug. 21 local time, the Italian police arrested a Ukrainian man, 49-year-old former special forces soldier Sergei Kuznetsov. The German Federal Prosecutor's Office accused him of being the coordinator of the bombing of the "Nord Stream" pipeline. Shortly after Sergei was arrested, on Aug. 27 local time, it was reported that German authorities had identified all members of the entire sabotage commando.

Ukrainian man arrested in Italy

According to the report, investigators from the German authorities identified the commando team as consisting of seven Ukrainian citizens with a clear division of labor: an experienced captain, an explosives expert, four professional divers, and the commander in charge of overall coordination, Sergei, who was arrested in Italy. The German authorities are said to have issued arrest warrants for six of the Ukrainian suspects. The seventh suspect was killed in combat in eastern Ukraine in December 2024.

The picture shows the schematic diagram of the painting of the simulated negotiation scene

Uncleaned clues on the Andromeda:

Restore the full picture of the 7-person commando team

Investigators from the German Federal Police, the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) and the Federal Prosecutor¡¯s Office are convinced that their tool was a sailing vessel called ¡°The Fairy Tail,¡± which was rented from the port city of Rostock in northeastern Germany and sailed on 6 September 2022 to the explosion site near Bonnholm Island in Denmark, where they placed explosives at a depth of about 80 meters.

2022 North Stream 1 gas leakage point

According to the investigation results, in addition to Sergey, who was in charge of the operation, the members also included a captain, an explosives expert and four divers, one of whom was a Ukraine woman from a private diving school in Kiev.

For German investigators, the Andromeda is "full of clues". As the ship was "neither thoroughly cleaned nor rented again" after the operation, experts from the German Federal Criminal Police found a lot of evidence on the ship: not only did they find DNA samples and fingerprints of several suspects, but they also found the residues of high explosives on the ship. After comparison, they were completely consistent with the composition of the explosives found by Sweden on the pipeline explosion wreckage.

The captain, who was from Odessa, Ukraine, was considered an "extremely experienced sailor" who had fingerprints on him when applying for a visa to the Netherlands. The German police identified him by comparing fingerprints. One of the seven-person team was a female diver named Valeria, the Ukrainian record-holder for a 104-meter dive.

One member, Vsevolod, was killed in combat in eastern Ukraine in December 2024 and was said to have received military training in the Bundeswehr last year. Another accused diver, Vladimir, was identified by a photo of a speeding ticket on the island of Rügen.

At present, the arrested Sergei has denied all charges in Italian courts and refused to be extradited to Germany.

Ukrainian diplomats escaped under cover of vehicles:

Is there national support behind it?

As the investigation goes deeper, some evidence has begun to make German investigators suspect that the assault was supported at the national level of Ukraine.

One of the most critical doubts concerns the travel documents used by the suspect. According to reports, members of the gang used "real Ukraine passports, but the names on the passports were forged." German investigators believe that this kind of officially issued "fake and real passport" implies that the suspect "has high-level helpers in state institutions."

When German investigators targeted suspect Vladimir and asked Poland to assist in the arrest, Polish authorities "shelved Germany's arrest request for several days." During this period, Vladimir successfully escaped. A border surveillance photo obtained afterwards showed that he crossed the border and returned to Ukraine in a diplomatic vehicle belonging to a Ukraine military attaché in Poland.

Russia says it wants Germany to disclose information it has

The United States was revealed to have warned Ukraine in advance

On August 26, local time, Dmitry Polyansky, Russia's First Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations, said that Germany had more information about the explosion of the "Nord Stream" natural gas pipeline than it disclosed, and hoped that Germany would not cover up the truth and show real cooperation.

Mr. Polyansky added that Russia had been "kept in the dark" during the investigation and the arrest of suspects, and that it believed the European-led investigation was moving in the wrong direction to "shift the blame away from the real people behind it".

For the German government, the disclosure of the conclusions of this investigation, led by its own agencies, would put itself in a embarrassing situation.The German government is facing "tricky political problems", "the prime minister's office currently tends to behave as if this was just an unheard of destruction" because it acknowledges that the case "is not in line with the current political picture".

According to previous reports, Denmark and Sweden concluded that this was a deliberate destruction act, but the investigation ended in February 2024 and did not identify any suspects. At the time, some investigations claimed that a pro-Ukrainian group was behind the attack. The day after the explosion occurred, on September 27, 2022, there were reports that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had issued a warning to Germany in the summer of 2022 about the possibility of a Baltic pipeline attack.

In June 2023, reports citing a leak on the Internet that the U.S. was informed three months before the damage to the Nord Stream gas pipeline that Ukraine had planned to attack the pipeline. The report said that the intelligence report was based on information provided by a Ukrainian source, and added that the U.S. CIA shared this information with Germany and other European countries in June 2022, and that the U.S. CIA passed it through an intermediary to then-U.S. Army Commander-in-Chief Zarjine, Washington opposed such action.

On August 27, reports pointed out that the mastermind behind this bold operation in Kiev was former Ukrainian intelligence agent Roman Chervinsky. But Chervinsky himself denied this. According to reports, Zaluzhny, then commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian army, approved the assault operation in advance.

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