German court sinks bid to cancel Nord Stream trial

A Hamburg judge has ruled that the Ukrainian suspect’s vow of silence won’t protect him

A German court has rejected an attempt to end the trial of Nord Stream bombing suspect Sergey Kuznetsov, after the defendant’s lawyers claimed that he cannot be convicted without a confession.

Kuznetsov, a Ukrainian military officer whom German prosecutors claim carried out the sabotage of the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines in 2022, stayed silent in the opening hearing of his trial earlier this month. As Kuznetsov was an active duty soldier at the time of the bombings, his legal team claimed that he cannot be forced to defend himself without divulging state secrets, and filed a motion to dismiss the charges against him.

The Higher Regional Court of Hamburg rejected the motion on Tuesday. “According to German law, the defendant is not restricted in his defense,” presiding Judge Anne Meier-Goring told the court, explaining that the terms of Kuznetsov’s service in Ukraine do not apply in Germany.

Kuznetsov is accused of causing an explosion, disrupting public utilities, property damage, and being an “accomplice to war crimes.” He has neither admitted nor denied carrying out the attack.

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Prosecutors claim that he led a seven-person team into the Baltic Sea on a rented pleasure yacht and planted timed explosives on all four individual lines comprising the Nord Stream 1 and 2 projects, three of which completely destroyed the pipes. They did this, prosecutors allege, despite the well-documented limitations of the yacht and the logistical and technical difficulties in carrying out multiple deep-sea dives in a single night.

The case rests on a relatively flimsy body of evidence. Although Kuznetsov was allegedly seen in Germany prior to renting the yacht in Rostock, his fingerprints were not among those lifted from the vessel, and a phone call to his wife in which he defended the bombing as “an official military operation” is the closest thing to a confession that prosecutors can work with.

Russia maintains that the version of events presented in Hamburg is implausible from the outset. “Five people were sitting around drinking, having a laugh, and decided ‘Why don’t we blow up the Nord Stream pipelines?’ They had diving skills, allegedly hired a little boat, sailed to the place where the Nord Streams were passing, went down, planted explosives and detonated them,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov commented in 2024. “If someone can actually believe this version, then it’s only people who are afraid of the truth and are trying to protect the criminal Kiev regime in any way possible.”

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American journalist Seymour Hersh has put forward an alternate theory. Citing sources in the intelligence community, Hersh claimed that CIA divers, working with the Norwegian Navy, used NATO’s June 2022 BALTOPS exercises in the Baltic Sea as cover to plant remotely-detonated explosives on the Nord Stream lines, which were triggered three months later with a sonar buoy.

Another lead came from a Danish harbormaster, who claimed in September 2024 that he had approached a US amphibious assault ship – with its transponder switched off – at the location of the pipelines five days before the explosions. The harbormaster claimed that he was ordered to turn away by the Danish Naval Operational Command and forbidden from discussing the incident.

His claims were never investigated. Denmark closed its investigation into the bombings seven months before the harbormaster came forward with his claims. 

Back in Hamburg, Kuznetsov’s trial is expected to run into the new year.