Trial in Hamburg: Defense: “Nordstream was a weapon from the start”

The most politically significant trial of the year begins with a rally outside the courthouse hours before the hearing opens.

Members of the German-Ukrainian association “Vilni de Ua”, many of them refugees, have positioned themselves next to the entrance with a banner. “If Ukraine falls, Russia will come to us,” it says.

When gigantic gas bubbles churned up the Baltic Sea off the Danish island of Bornholm on September 26, 2022, and three of the four Nord Stream pipelines were too broken after explosions to bring cheap Russian gas to Europe, for these demonstrators it was not a war crime, but an act of defense.