Nord Stream sabotage: Germany's first trial opens in Hamburg today
A 50-year-old Ukrainian is accused of coordinating the 2022 blasts on the Baltic Sea pipelines. Federal prosecutors charge him with a war crime, among other offenses. He denies it.
Archive image · Photo: Ajepbah / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 de (cropped and resized)
Germany's first trial over the attacks on the Nord Stream pipelines opens Wednesday at 11 a.m. at the Hanseatic Higher Regional Court in Hamburg. The defendant is 50-year-old Ukrainian Serhij K. Federal prosecutors charge him with a war crime for attacking civilian objects, as well as causing an explosion, destroying structures and disrupting public utilities. Sixteen hearings are scheduled through Dec. 17, with more set for January and February 2027.
Investigators believe a group of seven people planted explosives on the pipelines from the sailing yacht Andromeda. The charges went off near the Danish island of Bornholm on Sept. 26, 2022, rupturing three of the four lines of Nord Stream 1 and 2. K. was arrested in August 2025 while on vacation on the Adriatic coast and extradited to Germany in November; he has been in custody since.
His lawyer, Nicola Canestrini, rejects the charges. "He said he had nothing to do with it," he told ZDF, adding that his client was in Ukraine at the time. The court refused to admit the operators Nord Stream AG and Nord Stream 2 AG as co-plaintiffs. The defendant is presumed innocent.