German investigators believe a man last known to have lived in Poland was one of the divers who installed explosive devices in September 2022 – seven months after Russian troops invaded Ukraine on gas pipelines leading from Russia to Germany along the bottom of the Baltic Sea, the three German media reported citing anonymous sources. According to them, Germany asked the Polish authorities in June to detain the suspect.
The Polish Prosecutor’s Office said today that The Ukrainian in Poland was not detained and that he traveled from Poland back to Ukraine in July. Although Germany issued an arrest warrant for the diver, it did not enter it into the database of wanted persons, so the Polish border guards did not detain him, spokeswoman for the Prosecutor General Anna Adamiaková told the Onet server.
The suspect is Volodymyr Žuravlov
The Swedish newspaper Expressen, which was part of the search in cooperation with the German media, wrote that the suspect of sabotage and of causing the explosion is forty-four-year-old Volodymyr Žuravlov.
According to the letter, German investigators tracked him down because the car he was riding in was picked up by photo radar near the portfrom which the Andromeda yacht set sail with a group of suspected saboteurs. According to earlier information, the yacht sailed from Rostock.
The Ukrainian suspect is believed to have left Poland in the meantime, he wrote with reference to security sources of Der Spiegel magazine. Another man and woman – also Ukrainian diving instructors – have been identified as part of a German investigation into the sabotage. According to SZ, Die Zeit and ARD, however, an arrest warrant has not yet been issued for them.
If the information is confirmed, it would be the first breakthrough in the long-running investigation, noted the British newspaper Financial Times. According to Reuters, it remains a mystery who was behind the explosions that destroyed three of the four pipelines of the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines. They became a controversial symbol of Germany’s dependence on Russian gas after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Recrimination
Russia and the West accuse each other of sabotage. All deny their involvement, no one has yet claimed responsibility.
An investigation led by Swedish authorities found sexplosive tops on several items recovered from the blast site. This confirmed that the explosions were intentional. Denmark and Sweden ended their investigations in February this year without identifying any suspects.
In January 2023, Germany raided a ship it believed could have been used to transport explosives. The Germans then told the UN that they believed trained divers could have attached the device to the pipeline at a depth of 70 to 80 meters, Reuters reported.
