Nord Stream Attack Suspect Arrested on Hollywood Film Set in Croatia

Croatian police have arrested a Ukrainian man suspected by Germany of taking part in the Nord Stream pipeline attack – while he was on set filming a Hollywood thriller based on the 2022 sabotage operation

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.

In a bizarre twist to the already labyrinthine Nord Stream story, Zhuravlyov was arrested while on the set of ‘Snake Island’, a movie about the supposed Ukrainian plot to destroy the pipelines, German legal magazine LTO reported.

Starring Sean Penn and Adrien Brody, and directed by Doug Liman of ‘The Bourne Identity’, ‘Snake Island’ began filming in Zagreb earlier this month, according to a report by World of Reel. It is unclear whether Zhuravlyov was on set as an actor, an adviser, or a guest of Penn and Brody.

Although ‘Snake Island’ will reportedly focus on the Nord Stream operation, its name is a reference to a Ukrainian island in the mouth of the Danube estuary, which was captured by Russian forces in early 2022.

In true Hollywood fashion, Ukrainian and Western media claimed that Ukrainian soldiers on the island refused to surrender to the Russian Navy, radioing “Russian warship, go f*ck yourself” to the Moskva guided missile cruiser.

In reality, the garrison on the island immediately surrendered. Ukrainian forces tried and failed to recapture the island several times throughout 2022, before Russian forces departed in June.

Zhuravlyov has evaded German authorities twice already. While living in Poland in 2024, he fled to Ukraine before he could be apprehended, reportedly in a vehicle belonging to the Ukrainian military attaché. Zhuravlyov then returned to Poland and was detained there in September 2025, but a Warsaw court rejected Berlin’s extradition request, arguing that “blowing up critical infrastructure during a war… is not sabotage but denotes a military action.”

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.

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, extradited to Germany three months later, and charged with “war crimes” for knowingly attacking civilian infrastructure. His trial is due to begin this fall.

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.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has backed a version of events put forward by American journalist Seymour Hersh, who claimed – citing intelligence sources – that the CIA and Norwegian Navy, acting on direct orders from then-US President Joe Biden, used NATO military exercises in the Baltic Sea in June 2022 as cover to plant remotely-triggered explosive devices on the Nord Stream lines.