Croatia Arrests Second Ukrainian Suspect in Nord Stream Pipeline Bombing

German federal prosecutors announced Wednesday, August 19, that Croatian police arrested a second Ukrainian national accused of helping blow up the Nord Stream gas pipelines in September 2022. The man was taken into custody in the coastal city of Pula on a European arrest warrant, according to Germany's Federal Public Prosecutor's Office.

Prosecutors identified him only as "Vladimir Z." under German privacy rules, but multiple outlets, including the BBC, The Guardian and Daily Sabah, confirmed he is Volodymyr Zhuravlyov, a trained scuba diver. Prosecutors say he "participated in the necessary dives" as part of a team that planted explosives on the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines near the Danish island of Bornholm.

Zhuravlyov was previously arrested by Polish authorities in 2025 on the same German warrant. A Polish court refused to extradite him, ruling that if Ukraine carried out the bombing, it amounted to a "just" act taken during a defensive war, according to the BBC and The Guardian. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk backed that logic publicly, saying at the time, per Daily Sabah, that handing Zhuravlyov over "would not be in Poland's interest." Tusk has also said bluntly, according to The Guardian, that "the problem with Nord Stream 2 is not that it was blown up; the problem is that it was built."

Zhuravlyov was released after that ruling. He then left Poland and eventually surfaced in Croatia, where he was picked up again this week. How he crossed borders freely despite an active international warrant is itself a live dispute. Polish and German media reported he fled back to Ukraine in 2024. Polish officials blamed German administrative errors for failing to properly log him in the international wanted persons database, allowing him to slip through, per The Guardian. Germany's Der Spiegel has alleged a Ukrainian military attaché in Warsaw helped him escape. His Polish lawyer, Tymoteusz Paprocki, told the Associated Press (carried by Daily Sabah) that Zhuravlyov believed the Polish court's ruling applied only inside Poland, and that even his wife was surprised he was detained in Croatia.

Germany's Justice Ministry welcomed the new arrest. Spokesman Nicholas Limmer told reporters in Berlin, as reported by Al Jazeera and Daily Sabah: "We're simply glad that the federal prosecutor's office is making progress in these investigations, because it's important that the bombing of the pipelines be clarified."

Zhuravlyov is the second suspect German authorities have moved to prosecute. The first, former Ukrainian army officer Serhii Kuznetsov, was arrested in Italy in August 2025 and extradited to Germany in November after Italian courts rejected his appeals, according to Breitbart and Euronews. German prosecutors filed formal charges against him in July, accusing him of coordinating the attack on behalf of Ukrainian state entities. He appeared before a court in Hamburg in June and has denied any involvement.

Prosecutors allege the group rented a yacht, the Andromeda, out of Rostock, Germany, using forged documents, then sailed to the Bornholm area where trained divers descended to attach explosives to the pipelines. Investigators previously told the UN Security Council that traces of subsea explosives were found in samples taken from the boat, according to Reuters reporting cited by the BBC. The blasts on September 26, 2022, destroyed three of the four Nord Stream lines. Nord Stream 1 had been actively supplying gas to Germany, though Russia had already halted deliveries that August, citing sanctions and technical problems, a claim Europe dismissed as energy blackmail. Nord Stream 2 had never entered commercial service because Germany froze its certification just before Russia's February 2022 invasion.

Denmark and Sweden both investigated the blasts and closed their probes in February 2024 without publicly naming a culprit, leaving Germany as the only country still pursuing charges, according to Breitbart. Russia has long accused the United States of orchestrating the attack, a charge Washington has denied.

Kyiv has consistently denied ordering the sabotage. Ukrainian officials, quoted by Al Jazeera, said they don't have enough information to respond in detail to Germany's specific allegations against Kuznetsov and Zhuravlyov.

The case sits at an uncomfortable intersection for Berlin. Germany is prosecuting nationals of a country it has armed and funded through years of war, over an attack that destroyed Russian-linked infrastructure Germany itself once championed. The Polish court's reasoning, that sabotaging Nord Stream could be a legitimate act of self-defense, has not been tested in a German courtroom and carries no legal weight there. Whether a German court reaches the same conclusion, or convicts Zhuravlyov and Kuznetsov on sabotage and explosives charges, will become clear once Zhuravlyov's extradition from Croatia is completed and he appears before Germany's Federal Court of Justice.