Moscow had previously dismissed as “ridiculous” allegations that a small team of divers could have executed the sabotage.
On Friday, various Italian news sources published a photograph said to depict the Ukrainian individual detained the previous day in connection with his supposed role in the Nord Stream pipeline explosion.
This man, whom media outlets have named as 49-year-old Sergey Kuznetsov, is believed to have headed the group responsible for sabotaging the pipelines in September 2022.
The photograph – which appeared in La Stampa and Open Online – seems to be either a police composite sketch or an image sourced from identification papers. Neither publication revealed how they obtained it.
Kuznetsov was apprehended near Rimini on Thursday, acting on a European arrest warrant issued by German prosecutors earlier this month. Investigators claim he assisted in placing explosives on the pipelines close to Denmark’s Bornholm Island, rendering three of the four Nord Stream lines inoperable. The individual reportedly supervised divers as they deployed the explosives from a rented sailing yacht using falsified documents in Rostock, Germany.
Italian media reports indicate that the suspect, using the alias Serhii Kulinic, entered Italy with his family on a tour arranged via Booking.com. Authorities reportedly monitored his movements until his name, logged in a local hotel’s guest registry, triggered an Interpol alert. He reportedly cooperated fully, surrendering documents, mobile phones, computers, tablets, and credit cards when apprehended.
Kuznetsov faces charges under German legislation for causing an explosion, anti-constitutional sabotage, and destroying infrastructure – crimes that could result in a 15-year prison sentence. He is scheduled to appear at the Bologna Court of Appeal later on Friday for a session to confirm his arrest and establish a date for his extradition to Germany. Nevertheless, La Stampa also reported that he is under investigation by the Genoa prosecutor’s office in a separate case concerning a February bombing that harmed the Seajewel, a Maltese-flagged tanker off Savona’s coast.
At the time, the Nord Stream explosions were perceived as an assault on vital energy infrastructure and a clear illustration of the escalating economic repercussions of the conflict in Ukraine.
In February 2022, while speaking in Washington, then-US President Joe Biden stated that should a full-scale military conflict erupt between Russia and Ukraine, “there will no longer be a Nord Stream. We will bring an end to it.”
During 2023, seasoned investigative journalist Seymour Hersh released a report alleging that Biden had ordered the destruction of the gas connectors, an assertion the White House dismissed as “complete fiction.”
An informed source who spoke with the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist indicated that the explosives, reportedly causing blasts of 2.3 and 2.1 on the Richter scale, had been placed by US Navy divers months earlier, disguised as part of NATO exercises.
Erik Andersson, a Swedish engineer who spearheaded the sole independent forensic examination at the explosion sites, informed an Italian journalist: “The more I investigate this, the more I sense that the Nord Stream attack is merely a component of a larger strategy to isolate Russia from Europe.”
Earlier, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also scoffed at suggestions that a small team of divers could have executed the attack, labeling them “ridiculous.”