Обученный дайвер из Германии, которого разыскивали в течение двух лет, был задержан на побережье Хорватии. Осенью прошлого года этот же человек остался на свободе в Варшаве. Разница между этими двумя исходами — вот в чём заключается настоящая история… ...
Сообщение Planet-Today.com. Перевод заголовка и краткого описания выполнен автоматически.
A trained scuba diver Germany has hunted for two years was taken into custody on the Croatian coast. The same man walked free in Warsaw last autumn. The gap between those two outcomes is the real story.
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| Source: Video Screenshot |
Key Takeaways by Planet Today
The arrest: Croatian police detained a Ukrainian national identified by German authorities as Vladimir Z. — widely reported as Volodymyr Zhuravlyov — in Pula on 19 August 2026 on a European arrest warrant issued in June 2024.
The allegation: German federal prosecutors say he took part in dives that planted explosives on Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 near Bornholm in September 2022, working with a group led by separately prosecuted Serhii K.
The earlier chapter: Poland arrested the same man in 2025 and then refused extradition, with a Warsaw judge treating a possible Ukrainian attack as a “just” act in a defensive war rather than a German criminal case.
The diplomatic problem: Berlin is Ukraine’s largest European military backer. The investigation now treats the blasts as an operation ordered by Ukrainian state authorities — a claim Kyiv has denied at the presidential level.
The competing inquiry: Ukraine has opened its own case and says it will test whether Russia staged a false-flag operation to discredit Kyiv.
The energy shadow: Four years later, German gas storage is unusually low heading into winter, and political debate over whether any Nord Stream string should ever return has not gone away.
What Happened in Pula on Wednesday Morning
On the morning of 19 August 2026, local police in the Istrian city of Pula arrested a Ukrainian man at a tourist facility. The operation was coordinated with Croatia’s General Police Directorate in Zagreb and carried out on a European arrest warrant issued by an investigating judge at Germany’s Federal Court of Justice on 3 June 2024.
Germany’s Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office named him only as Vladimir Z., in line with German privacy practice. Multiple outlets, including the BBC and The Guardian, identified him as Volodymyr Zhuravlyov (also rendered Zhuravlev or Zhuravlov), a trained scuba diver previously detained in Poland on the same suspicion.
“The suspect is strongly suspected of jointly causing explosions, anti-constitutional sabotage, and destruction of buildings and structures.”
— Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office, statement of 19 August 2026
The official English-language statement is published here: German Federal Prosecutor, 19 August 2026.
Prosecutors say he belonged to a group “surrounding separately prosecuted Serhii K.” that planted explosives on both Nord Stream pipelines near the Danish island of Bornholm. He “participated in the necessary dives.” The group, they say, left Rostock on a sailing yacht rented through intermediaries using falsified identity documents. The charges detonated on 26 September 2022.
Germany will seek extradition. After transfer, the suspect is to be brought before the investigating judge at the Federal Court of Justice.
This is the second public arrest in the German case. The first, former Ukrainian army officer Serhii K. — commonly identified as Serhiy / Serhii Kuznetsov or Kuznietsov — was detained in Italy in August 2025, extradited to Germany, and formally charged in an indictment filed on 30 June 2026 before the Hanseatic Higher Regional Court in Hamburg.
The Man Poland Would Not Send
The Croatian arrest is striking because the same suspect already faced a German warrant in Poland.
In late September 2025 he was detained near Warsaw. On 17 October 2025, a Warsaw District Court refused extradition and ordered his release. Judge Dariusz Lubowski’s reasoning, as reported at the time by the BBC and AP, was that Germany had not established sufficient jurisdiction in the way Poland required — and that if Ukraine had been responsible, the destruction of the pipelines could be viewed as a justified act in the context of Russia’s war against Ukraine.
The ruling produced a visible reaction in the courtroom. Reports described surprise in the gallery and a smile from the defendant. His lawyer said he did not admit guilt and did not understand why Germany was charging him. His wife told Polish media he was a hobby diver, not a military operator, and that the couple were in Poland at the time of the blasts.
That decision created a split inside the European arrest-warrant system. One EU member treated the alleged conduct as potentially lawful wartime action. Another treated it as a crime against German energy infrastructure and constitutional order. Croatia has now executed the same warrant Poland declined.
Whether Croatian courts will take the Polish analysis seriously, or treat the warrant as a routine EU judicial request, is the next procedural question. German officials have repeatedly said the judiciary is independent and that political support for Ukraine does not suspend criminal process.
What German Prosecutors Say Happened in September 2022
The physical facts of the damage are not seriously disputed. On 26 September 2022, underwater explosions ruptured three of the four strings of Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 in the Baltic Sea, southeast of Bornholm. Large volumes of methane reached the surface. Sweden and Denmark opened investigations and later closed them without charges. Germany continued.
The German account, refined through 2025 and 2026, is now specific:
- A small team of Ukrainians used a chartered sailing yacht, widely identified in earlier reporting as the Andromeda, departing from Rostock-Warnemünde.
- The yacht was rented with forged papers through intermediaries.
- Divers placed timed explosives on the pipelines.
- Serhii K., described as a Ukrainian army officer, is alleged to have led the operation.
- Vladimir Z. is alleged to have taken part in the dives.
- The purpose, according to the July 2026 charging documents reported by Reuters, the Guardian and the New York Times, was to permanently disrupt gas supplies and deprive Russia of revenue used to finance the war.
In the indictment against Serhii K., prosecutors went further than naming a freelance team. They said the plan was devised “on the orders of state authorities in Ukraine.” That sentence is the politically explosive part of the file. It converts a sabotage mystery into an accusation against organs of a state that Germany arms, trains and funds.
The suspect in German custody has denied involvement. So has the man arrested in Croatia, through earlier statements by his Polish counsel and family.
What Kyiv Says — and What It Has Started to Investigate
President Volodymyr Zelensky has said his government knew nothing about any plan to blow up the pipelines. That denial has been consistent since Ukrainian involvement first surfaced in Western reporting.
Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office has also stated that its work has not established facts showing involvement by the Ukrainian state, its authorised bodies or officials. After Germany filed the indictment against Serhii K., Kyiv registered its own criminal proceedings. According to Ukrainian reporting summarised by Euromaidan Press on 19 August 2026, investigators will examine, among other hypotheses, whether Russia organised a false-flag operation using Ukrainian citizens or imitating their participation in order to discredit Ukraine.
That is a formal investigative theory, not a proven finding. It sits alongside the German theory, not in place of it. Readers now have two official lines of inquiry pointing in opposite directions.
Related coverage of the wider war and Ukrainian operations can be found on this site: Ukraine’s 620-drone swarm over Moscow and Planet Today’s Ukraine archive.
How Mainstream Outlets Are Framing the Arrest
The first-day reporting from BBC, Reuters, The Guardian, AP, Le Monde, Al Jazeera and Bloomberg is tightly aligned with the Karlsruhe statement. The common elements are: second suspect, trained diver, Pula, European warrant, yacht from Rostock, link to Serhii K., German extradition request, reminder that Poland previously released him.
BBC noted that the case has “strained relations between Kyiv and Berlin.” The Guardian recalled that Berlin will seek trial at the federal court. Reuters added that prosecutors could not immediately reach the suspect or a lawyer for comment, and that Istrian police were confirming identity at a tourist facility.
German government spokespeople, when asked, pointed to judicial independence. A Justice Ministry spokesman told reporters Berlin was glad the prosecutor’s office was making progress because “it’s important that the bombing of the pipelines be clarified.”
None of those outlets treated the arrest as a final verdict. All presented it as an allegation now moving from warrant to custody.
What Alternative and Independent Reporting Has Said for Years
The Nord Stream case never had a single public narrative. It had several, and they still circulate.
The early Russian accusation
Moscow called the explosions a terrorist attack and, at various points, blamed the United States, Britain or Ukraine. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also dismissed as “predictably stupid” the idea that Russia had destroyed its own export leverage. That last point is the one even many Western analysts later accepted: blowing up one’s own paid-for infrastructure, after already throttling flows, is a poor fit for a revenue-maximising explanation.
The Seymour Hersh account
In February 2023, Pulitzer-winning reporter Seymour Hersh published a detailed, single-source account arguing that U.S. Navy divers, with Norwegian support, placed the charges under cover of a NATO exercise, with later remote detonation. The Biden administration denied it. Hersh has continued to argue that senior Western officials knew more than they admitted, and that Swedish and Danish decisions to close their inquiries should be read in that light. His reporting remains influential in parts of the alternative press and in some European commentary. It has not been adopted by German prosecutors.
The Wall Street Journal / Pancevski reconstruction
A later strand of reporting, including work by Wall Street Journal correspondent Bojan Pancevski and his 2026 book on the case, argues the opposite of Hersh: that a small Ukrainian team of unusually capable amateur divers carried out the operation, that some Western services had prior warning and tried to stop it, and that the early rush to blame Russia was wrong. That reconstruction is closer to the German indictment than to the Hersh thesis. It still leaves open how high the authorisation went inside Ukraine.
The “act of war” argument
The Polish court’s 2025 reasoning is the most consequential alternative legal frame. If the pipelines were a strategic asset feeding the budget of a state waging a full-scale war against Ukraine, then attacking them, in this view, is not German vandalism. It is a wartime strike on an enemy revenue stream. German law does not accept that framing. The pipelines land in German territory; the explosions affected German energy security; the Criminal Code sections cited — causing an explosion, anti-constitutional sabotage, destruction of structures — are ordinary criminal provisions, not a wartime exception.
Those three stories cannot all be true in full. They can, however, all be reported as claims that serious people have made. That is the honest way to leave the file open.
Why the Pipelines Mattered Before Anyone Touched Them
Nord Stream 1 opened in 2011 and, at its peak, moved large volumes of Russian gas under the Baltic, bypassing Ukraine, Poland and other transit states. Nord Stream 2 was completed in 2021 and never entered commercial service. Together they were designed for up to 110 billion cubic metres a year.
For Germany they were cheap, reliable baseload. For Ukraine they were a strategic threat: every cubic metre that went under the sea rather than across Ukrainian territory reduced Kyiv’s transit leverage. Ukrainian officials and many Central European governments said so for years. After February 2022, Russia first reduced and then halted Nord Stream 1 deliveries, citing sanctions and technical issues. Europe called it energy coercion.
By the time of the explosions, the commercial flow through Nord Stream 1 had already stopped. Nord Stream 2 had never started. The physical destruction still mattered. It removed the option of a quick political restart. It also released a record methane pulse and left one string of Nord Stream 2 intact — a fact Russian officials have since used when saying the remaining pipe could, in principle, be switched on “tomorrow” if Berlin agreed.
That option sits inside a larger energy argument that has not ended. EU law now phases out Russian gas. AfD politicians in Germany have called for a return to pipeline supplies. Storage levels in Germany in mid-August 2026 have been reported well below typical late-summer fills, which is why energy-security reporting has returned to the front pages even without any talk of repairing the Baltic pipes. For context on Europe’s energy and security tensions, see Planet Today’s Geopolitical section and coverage of alleged plots against German industry.
The Timeline, Without the Spin
A compressed chronology helps separate what is known from what is alleged.
September 2021: Nord Stream 2 construction completed; certification later halted.
24 February 2022: Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Summer 2022: Nord Stream 1 flows reduced, then stopped.
26 September 2022: Explosions damage three of four strings near Bornholm.
2023: Hersh publishes the U.S.–Norway thesis. Western officials deny it. Investigative reporting begins to describe a yacht and a Ukrainian crew.
3 June 2024: German investigating judge issues the European arrest warrant later used in Croatia.
August 2025: Serhii K. arrested in Italy.
September–October 2025: Volodymyr Z. arrested in Poland; court refuses extradition and releases him.
November 2025: Italy completes extradition of Serhii K. to Germany.
30 June 2026: German indictment filed against Serhii K. in Hamburg.
July 2026: Ukraine registers its own investigation, including a possible Russian false-flag theory.
19 August 2026: Vladimir Z. arrested in Pula.
Sweden and Denmark, for their part, closed national investigations without bringing charges. That does not prove they “knew.” It does mean Germany is the only state still driving a criminal case in public.
The Legal Collision Germany Cannot Avoid
Three legal ideas are now in the same room.
First, German criminal law. The warrant cites section 308 (causing an explosion), section 88 (anti-constitutional sabotage) and section 305 (destruction of buildings and structures). Jurisdiction is claimed because the pipelines terminate in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and the damage affected German energy security.
Second, the law of armed conflict as Poland applied it. A court in a neighbouring NATO and EU state said, in substance, that if Ukraine did this, it was not a German street crime. It was an attack on the war chest of an aggressor. That is a political and legal judgement, not a finding that the defendant planted the charges.
Third, the still-unresolved question of state responsibility. If a Ukrainian state agency ordered the operation, as German prosecutors now allege, then the case is no longer about six people on a yacht. It is about whether an allied government authorised an attack on infrastructure that a second ally still regarded as its economic lifeline. If no such order existed, then either a rogue team acted, or the German theory is wrong, or another state ran a deception. Ukraine’s new file is an attempt to keep the third possibility alive.
None of those questions is settled by an arrest in a Croatian hotel.
What the Arrest Does — and Does Not — Change
It changes the practical picture. A suspect who slipped the Polish process is back in custody inside the EU warrant system. If Croatia extradites him, Germany will have two alleged members of the same diving team in its courts: the alleged organiser and an alleged diver. That is more than the investigation had a year ago.
It does not, by itself, prove who gave the order. It does not resolve Hersh’s claims. It does not bind Ukraine. It does not reopen the pipes. It does not tell German households whether next winter’s gas will be expensive. Those are separate files that happen to share a name.
It does make the alliance awkward in a more visible way. Berlin has spent four years arguing that Ukrainian resistance is Europe’s security. The same capital is now asking another EU state to send a Ukrainian citizen for trial on charges that, if the indictment is right, lead upward into the Ukrainian state. Officials handle that tension by repeating the phrase “independent judiciary.” That phrase is accurate as a constitutional description. It is incomplete as a political one.
How to Read the Next Few Weeks
Watch the Croatian extradition hearing, not the headlines. The legal question is narrower than the historical one: is the German warrant valid under EU rules, and are there bars such as the Polish “political offence” or “act of war” reasoning?
Watch whether additional names appear. German reporting has previously spoken of a larger group and of warrants issued in 2025 for several Ukrainians. Two arrests do not close a six-person theory.
Watch the Hamburg case against Serhii K. A trial date has been discussed for the autumn. Testimony, if it happens in open court, will matter more than any prosecutor’s press release.
Watch Kyiv’s parallel investigation. If it produces documents, intercepts or a named Russian theory with evidence, the German narrative will have to answer it. If it produces only a press line, it will be treated as a defensive filing.
And watch the energy debate in Germany on its own terms. Low storage, LNG competition with Asia, and arguments about hydrogen conversion are happening whether or not anyone is ever convicted for 2022. The pipes are a symbol. The winter bill is a number.
A Note on Evidence and Language
German authorities have an arrest warrant, an indictment against one man, and now a second detention. That is a substantial investigative position. It is not a completed trial. “Strongly suspected” is the prosecutor’s phrase. “Ordered by a Ukrainian state agency” is an allegation in charging documents, not a verdict. “Government knew nothing” is a presidential denial, not a forensic report. “Just act of war” is a Polish judicial characterisation, not a finding that the man in the dock planted charges.
The honest sentence is still the oldest one in this story: someone destroyed three strings of a major European energy system, and four years later the public still has competing official stories about who sent the divers.
For more on the strategic backdrop, see Planet Today’s Europe coverage and geopolitical briefings.
Primary sources
- Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office (Germany), arrest statement, 19 August 2026
- BBC: Ukrainian man arrested in Croatia over Nord Stream blasts, 19 August 2026
- Reuters: second Nord Stream suspect arrested in Croatia, 19 August 2026
- The Guardian: Ukrainian diver arrested in Croatia, 19 August 2026
- BBC: Polish judge refuses extradition, 17 October 2025
- The Guardian: prosecutors accuse Ukrainian state authorities, 2 July 2026
Original source and date: German Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office press release, 19 August 2026, https://www.generalbundesanwalt.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilungen/EN/2026/Pressemitteilung-vom-19-08-2026-engl.html, corroborated the same day by Reuters, BBC, The Guardian and AP.
Disclaimer for fact-checkers: This article summarises contemporaneous official statements and major-media reporting as of 19 August 2026. The German case consists of allegations that have not been tested to a final verdict. Named suspects have denied involvement. Ukraine’s presidency has denied knowledge of any such plan. A Polish court previously refused extradition of the same individual on legal grounds that differ from Germany’s. Alternative accounts, including Seymour Hersh’s 2023 reporting and Ukraine’s 2026 false-flag inquiry, are described as claims, not as established fact. Readers should treat all attributions of responsibility as contested until a court of competent jurisdiction rules, and should check primary documents rather than secondary paraphrase.
