German prosecutors have obtained a European arrest warrant for a Ukrainian man they believe was involved in the bombing of the Nord Stream gas pipelines, according to media reports Wednesday.
The man, however, was able to escape arrest, German media reported.
Germany’s federal prosecutor general is seeking a man identified as Volodymyr Z. for privacy reasons. He is a 44-year-old Ukrainian diving professional who was last seen in Poland and has since disappeared, according to reports by ARD, the Süddeutsche Zeitung and Die Zeit.
The man was identified as Volodymyr Zhuravlov by the Swedish newspaper Expressen — part of the reporting consortium covering the story.
The subsea explosions in September 2022 took out three of the four Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines transporting gas from Russia to Germany and sent geopolitical shockwaves around the world. There are continuing unanswered questions about who was responsible and fingers pointed variously at Russia, Ukraine, the U.S. and the U.K.
Nord Stream 1 had been in operation since 2011; Nord Stream 2 was completed but had not yet begun pumping gas by the time of the attacks. The pipelines had been enormously controversial, with Ukraine, the U.S., Poland and others criticizing Germany for tying itself to Russian gas exports — a position that became untenable following Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Denmark and Sweden also opened probes into the explosions, but those investigations were suspended without naming a suspect.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has previously denied Kyiv was involved.
The German prosecutor’s investigation into the blasts also points to two other Ukrainian nationals — a couple who run a diving school in Ukraine where Zhuravlov worked as a diving instructor.
Authorities believe Yevhen and Svitlana U. attached the explosive charges to the pipelines. According to the investigation, the three expert divers were in the Baltic Sea in September 2022 aboard a German sailing yacht called “Andromeda.”
According to the Süddeutsche Zeitung, the German prosecutor had listed Yevhen U. and his wife Svitlana as possible accomplices, but the report does not specify if it had issued an arrest warrant against them.
The two have denied knowing Zhuravlov and said that they were on vacation in Bulgaria when the attack took place.
According to the media reports, prosecutors believe Zhuravlov last lived in a village west of Warsaw before disappearing.
German authorities transmitted the arrest warrant to Poland in June after they were able to identify the man thanks to photos and statements from witnesses, Die Zeit reported. According to the German media, however, it’s not clear why the Polish authorities failed to arrest the man and didn’t respond to Germany’s request for legal assistance.
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