Croatian police arrest Ukrainian suspect over Nord Stream pipeline explosions

Croatian police have arrested a Ukrainian man suspected by Germany of taking part in the operation behind the 2022 Nord Stream pipeline explosions, following a request from Berlin.

The German Federal Prosecutor’s Office said on Wednesday that Ukrainian national Vladimir Z., previously identified by media as Vladimir Zhuravlyov, had been apprehended in the Croatian city of Pula under a European arrest warrant.

According to the warrant, Zhuravlyov, a trained diver, is accused of planting explosives as part of a group, committing sabotage, and destroying infrastructure. He is expected to be extradited to Germany.

German investigators maintain that the attack was carried out by a small group of Ukrainians who used forged documents to rent a sailing yacht and transport military-grade explosives from Rostock, Germany to waters near the Danish island of Bornholm. The group allegedly used commercial diving equipment to plant the charges on the pipelines at a depth of around 100 meters.

Wall Street Journal journalist Bojan Pancevski even claimed in a recently published book that a glamour model was among the yacht’s crew.

Moscow has dismissed the “Ukrainian frogmen” theory as fantasy, arguing that such a complex operation could not have been carried out in NATO-controlled waters by a small group without state assistance or Western intelligence involvement.

Zhuravlyov had previously evaded arrest. While living in Poland in 2024, he fled to Ukraine before he could be apprehended. Der Spiegel reported that he crossed the border in a vehicle belonging to the Ukrainian military attaché.

He later apparently returned to Poland and was detained there in September 2025. The following month, however, a Warsaw court rejected Berlin’s extradition request as “unfounded,” arguing that “blowing up critical infrastructure during a war… is not sabotage but denotes a military action.”

The September 2022 explosions severed three of the four Nord Stream pipelines built to carry Russian gas to Germany.

German authorities say the alleged team was led by Sergey K., identified by media as former Ukrainian special forces member Sergey Kuznetsov. He was arrested in Italy in August 2025 and extradited to Germany three months later.

Prosecutors charged Kuznetsov in June with “war crimes” for knowingly attacking civilian infrastructure. His trial is due to begin this fall.