Ukrainian suspect in Nord Stream explosion seeks asylum in Croatia

MOSCOW, September 29. /TASS/. Ukrainian citizen Vladimir Zhuravlev, who is suspected by German investigators of orchestrating the Nord Stream pipelines explosion, has applied for political asylum in Croatia, according to his lawyer Nikolay Katerinchuk.

"Despite all the legislative norms, extradition is a country’s political decision. When politicians have no influence on courts, we believe them. But there is an extrajudicial procedure – granting political asylum – and as part of it, the Croatian leadership can express its position regarding the situation with the Ukrainian national who is suspected of blowing up Nord Stream," he told the Ukrainian media outlet Babel.

He noted however that an application for asylum doesn’t automatically halt the extradition process.

A Croatian court earlier sanctioned Zhuravlev’s extradition to Germany. His defense plans to challenge this ruling.

Zhuravlev was detained on August 19 in the Croatian city of Pula where, according to the local media, he took part in the shooting of a Hollywood film about the Nord Stream sabotage as a consultant.

In late September 2025, he was detained in the city of Pruszkow near Warsaw under a European arrest warrant. In October, 2025, he was released from custody by a Warsaw court.

Die Zeit reported earlier that German investigators had identified all the saboteurs involved in the Nord Stream explosions on September 26, 2022. Arrest warrants were issued for six Ukrainian nationals. The seventh suspect, according to Die Zeit, died in hostilities in Ukraine in December 2024. According to the German prosecution authorities, the sabotage group comprised a skipper, a coordinator, an explosives expert, and four divers, who arrived at the intended crime scene in the Baltic Sea aboard the yacht Andromeda from the German city of Rostock.