Nord Stream Arrest in Croatia Escalates Diplomatic Tensions Between Germany and Kyiv

A Croatian judge ordered Zhuravlyov to remain in custody on August 20 while extradition proceedings continue. His lawyer, Matija Miloš, said the defence would appeal.

German prosecutors accuse Zhuravlyov of being part of the team that planted explosives on Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 near the Danish island of Bornholm in September 2022. They say the group was led by former Ukrainian military officer Serhii Kuznetsov.

The case is now becoming more than a question of who carried out the attack. German prosecutors have also alleged that Kuznetsov acted on behalf of Ukrainian state entities.

That claim could become a serious problem for Kyiv.

Germany is not dropping the case

Zhuravlyov is the second Ukrainian national to be detained in connection with the German investigation.

Kuznetsov was arrested in Italy in August 2025 and extradited to Germany several months later. German prosecutors formally charged him in July 2026, accusing him of organising the operation on behalf of Ukrainian state entities. He denies the allegations.

Zhuravlyov is accused of playing a more direct role. German prosecutors say he is a professional commercial diver who took part in the underwater operation to place the explosives.

Investigators also say the group used the German-flagged yacht Andromeda, which was rented from a company in Rostock using forged documents and intermediaries. Traces of military-grade explosives were later found on the vessel.

For Germany, the legal case is straightforward in one important respect. The pipelines were connected to Germany and landed at Lubmin in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. German prosecutors therefore argue that the destruction affected German internal security and critical infrastructure.

The political context is much less straightforward.

Nord Stream was already a deeply controversial project by the time it was destroyed. Nord Stream 1 had carried Russian gas to Germany since 2011. Nord Stream 2 was completed in 2021 but never entered operation. Germany suspended its certification in February 2022, just before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

By September 2022, relations between Russia and the West had collapsed. Russia had already stopped Nord Stream 1 flows, citing maintenance problems. European governments accused Moscow of using energy supplies as a weapon.

Then came the explosions.

Poland showed that the case could be treated differently

Germany's investigation has not been accepted in the same way across Europe.

Zhuravlyov was already detained in Poland in 2025 under a German warrant. A Polish court later refused to extradite him.

The judge questioned whether the alleged operation could be considered an ordinary criminal act if it had been carried out by Ukraine as part of its defence against Russian aggression.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk also made his position clear, saying that the real problem was the construction of Nord Stream, not its destruction.

Zhuravlyov eventually left Poland and returned to Ukraine.

That decision matters now because his lawyers can point to it as a precedent. Croatia has detained him, but extradition is not yet certain. His defence is expected to challenge the detention and the German extradition request.

The two cases also show a wider problem inside the EU.

The European Arrest Warrant was designed to make extradition between member states faster and less dependent on political negotiations. But the Nord Stream investigation has put that system under unusual pressure.

Germany sees a major attack on infrastructure linked to its territory. Poland has viewed the alleged operation through the wider reality of Russia's war against Ukraine.

Those are very different starting points.

The difficult question for Kyiv

The most sensitive part of the German investigation is no longer simply whether Ukrainian citizens were involved.

It is whether they acted with the backing of the Ukrainian state.

German prosecutors have accused Kuznetsov of acting on behalf of Ukrainian state entities. That is an allegation, not a court finding. But even as an allegation, it changes the political situation.

Kyiv has not accepted the accusation. Ukrainian authorities have said they do not have enough detailed information from German prosecutors to respond officially. They have also repeated earlier denials of official Ukrainian involvement.

Zhuravlyov's Ukrainian defence lawyer, Mykola Katerynchuk, has called on Ukraine's Prosecutor General to seek Zhuravlyov's extradition to Ukraine.

That would put Kyiv in an unusual position. Its authorities would be seeking control over a suspect whom Germany wants to prosecute for an attack on infrastructure connected to Germany.

The case could therefore become a direct issue between two countries that otherwise have a strong strategic relationship.

Germany is one of Ukraine's main European military and financial supporters. Berlin has little interest in allowing the Nord Stream case to damage that relationship. But the German Federal Prosecutor's Office also has a strong reason to continue its investigation.

Stopping because the case has become politically uncomfortable would create its own problems.

The old energy model has disappeared

There is another reason the Nord Stream case is so difficult.

The pipelines belonged to a European energy system that no longer exists.

Nord Stream 1 was built on the idea that large amounts of Russian gas could flow directly to Germany under the Baltic Sea. Nord Stream 2 was meant to expand that system further.

Russia's full-scale invasion destroyed the political basis for that model. Germany suspended Nord Stream 2's certification before the invasion and later abandoned its previous dependence on Russian energy.

The explosions made the physical risks clear as well.

Four explosions struck the pipelines on September 26, 2022. Three of the four Nord Stream 1 and 2 strands were damaged. The attacks took place in international waters near Bornholm, inside the exclusive economic zones of Denmark and Sweden.

Danish and Swedish investigations later closed without charges and transferred their findings to Germany.

The important point for the current case is that Europe is no longer treating energy infrastructure as something separate from security.

Undersea pipelines, cables and other infrastructure can become targets in a conflict. But deciding who is responsible, and how wartime actions should be treated under criminal law, is much harder.

Berlin and Warsaw are looking at the same case differently

This is the deeper dispute behind Zhuravlyov's arrest.

Germany is following a legal process. Poland's earlier decision showed that some countries in Eastern Europe see the Nord Stream attack in a very different strategic context.

For countries that have long regarded Russian energy projects as a security problem, the destruction of Nord Stream is difficult to compare with an ordinary attack on civilian infrastructure.

Germany, however, is applying its own criminal law to the destruction of pipelines connected to its territory.

The difference could become more important if German prosecutors produce further evidence of Ukrainian state involvement.

There is still an important distinction between individual Ukrainians taking part in a covert military operation and an operation ordered or authorised by the Ukrainian government. The current allegations do not, on their own, settle that question.

But the more the German case moves towards the second explanation, the harder it will be for Kyiv to keep the issue separate from its relationship with Berlin.

Moscow has an easy argument to use

Russia is likely to benefit from the case regardless of what happens in court.

German proceedings involving Ukrainian nationals give Moscow material for its long-standing argument that Ukraine is willing to attack Western infrastructure and that Western governments have tolerated such actions.

The allegation of links to Ukrainian state entities makes that message even easier to promote.

That does not prove the Russian version of events. It does mean that every new German filing or arrest can become part of Moscow's information campaign against Ukraine.

For Kyiv, this creates an uncomfortable situation. It must defend itself against allegations that it says are unsupported, while avoiding a public confrontation with Germany.

The question of military and financial support is also difficult to separate from the wider political relationship. The briefing does not establish that the Nord Stream case will lead to changes in German aid to Ukraine. But a prolonged dispute over alleged state involvement would add another source of tension between Berlin and Kyiv at a time when Germany remains one of Ukraine's key European supporters.