Latest / Pollar Sounds / Nord Stream on Trial: war crime, or act of war?

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Nord Stream on Trial: war crime, or act of war? · Pollar Sounds

0:07
Wednesday.
0:08
The 14th of October, 2026.
0:12
A 50-year-old man walked into a courtroom in Hamburg, under heavy security.
0:17
He gave the judge his name and his personal details.
0:20
He didn't cover his face.
0:22
And after that, he stood there in silence.
0:26
His name is Serhii Kuznetsov.
0:28
He's a former officer in the Ukrainian army, and he's the first person
0:32
to stand trial for one of the strangest attacks Europe has seen this century.
0:40
Almost exactly four years ago, in September of 2022, someone blew up the Nord
0:47
Stream gas pipelines, 80 metres down at the bottom of the Baltic Sea.
0:51
German prosecutors say Kuznetsov led the team that did it.
0:55
And they say the team was acting on orders from the Ukrainian state.
1:01
He denies it.
1:03
His lawyers say there's no fingerprint, no DNA and no witness that puts him on the boat.
1:08
And his defence has a second argument too.
1:11
One of his lawyers, Nicola Canestrini, put it to the court as a question.
1:15
"Is it unlawful to destroy an aggressor's
1:18
infrastructure without harming any human beings?"
1:22
Unfortunately for Kuznetsov, the prosecution's answer is yes.
1:27
Senior prosecutor Stefan Schmidt told the court the men
1:30
on that boat knew the pipelines were not a legitimate target of war.
1:34
But in the midst of the whole matter, one of Germany's
1:37
closest neighbours sees the whole affair quite differently.
1:40
Donald Tusk: The problem for Europe, the problem for Ukraine, the problem for Lithuania and Poland is not that Nord Stream 2 was blown up, but that it was built.
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That's Poland's Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, in October last year,
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when Germany wanted a Ukrainian suspect handed over by Poland.
2:01
The problem, he said, isn't that Nord Stream 2 was blown up.
2:05
It's that it was built.
2:07
Two of Ukraine's closest allies giving opposite answers.
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A war crime, or an act of self-defence?
2:17
This is Pollar.
2:18
Everything in this episode comes from reporting already published,
2:22
and where people disagree, you'll hear each side in its own words.
2:26
In this episode, we're going out to sea, on a rented sailing yacht called Andromeda.
2:31
Then back to a pipeline that Poland once compared to a pact between Hitler and Stalin,
2:36
and that Donald Trump said had left Germany "captive to Russia".
2:40
And finally, to Berlin, where a verdict in Hamburg
2:44
could cost the German government more than it wins.
2:47
The question running through all of it, however: when one country at war blows up
2:52
the property of the country attacking it,
2:54
inside the waters of its friends, is that a crime?
2:57
And whose?
3:07
The date: 26th of September, 2022.
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Location: the Baltic Sea, near the Danish island of Bornholm.
3:17
Explosions tear through three of the four lines
3:20
that make up Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2.
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Seismic stations in the region pick them up.
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Gas comes boiling up to the surface in circles hundreds of metres wide.
3:31
Today, analysts think it may have been the single
3:33
largest release of methane caused by the human race.
3:37
Nobody is hurt.
3:39
But the pipelines that carry Russian gas straight to Germany are wrecked.
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In the Danish and Swedish waters around the blast sites,
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ships are told to keep their distance.
3:49
For days, from the air, you can see the sea fizzing.
3:53
And this was all seven months into the war,
3:56
with Europe already bracing for a winter without Russian gas.
4:00
Gas prices had hit an all-time high that August.
4:03
Whoever did this had chosen their moment.
4:06
And almost immediately, everyone had a suspect.
4:10
Four days after the blasts, at a ceremony in the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin named his.
4:17
Vladimir Putin: But sanctions are no longer enough for the Anglo-Saxons. They have moved on to sabotage. Incredible, but true. By organising explosions on the international gas pipelines of Nord Stream, which run along…
4:29
That was Putin, in the same speech in which he
4:31
announced the annexation of four Ukrainian regions.
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The "Anglo-Saxons", he said, had moved on from
4:38
sanctions to sabotage, and blown up the pipelines.
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He meant, above all, the United States.
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And there was one American clip that people kept coming back to.
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Joe Biden: Germany.
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Joe Biden: If Russia invades that means tanks or troops crossing the border of Ukraine again,
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Joe Biden: then there will be we, there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2.
5:05
Joe Biden: We will bring an end to it.
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That was President Biden in February of 2022,
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two weeks before the invasion, standing next to the German Chancellor.
5:16
Washington has always denied any role in the explosions.
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In February of 2023, the American journalist Seymour Hersh published a story,
5:28
based on a single unnamed source, claiming US Navy divers had planted the charges.
5:33
The White House called it "utterly false".
5:37
Moscow repeated that story often.
5:39
Kyiv pointed at Moscow.
5:41
A senior adviser to President Zelensky, Mykhailo Podolyak,
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called them a terrorist attack planned by Russia.
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One Ukrainian energy security expert, Mykhailo Gonchar, still says the Ukrainian theory
5:54
doesn't stand up, and that Russian agents or Gazprom itself could have been involved.
6:03
Away from the theories, within two months,
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Swedish investigators had found traces of explosives at the blast sites.
6:10
It was sabotage.
6:11
But finding the people responsible would take much longer.
6:15
Sweden and Denmark both opened investigations,
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because the blasts happened in their economic zones.
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Denmark said it was clearly deliberate sabotage,
6:24
but there weren't enough grounds for a criminal case.
6:27
Sweden, on the other hand, said it had no jurisdiction.
6:31
Both closed their cases in February 2024.
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Which left German investigators at a town called Lubmin, where the pipes came ashore.
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German investigators kept going, and they followed a boat.
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According to German prosecutors, a team of seven chartered a 15-metre sailing yacht,
6:50
the Andromeda, from a company in Germany, using false identity documents.
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They detailed a captain, an explosives expert, four divers.
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And the coordinator.
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Prosecutors say that coordinator was Serhii Kuznetsov.
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Prosecutors say that on the fourth of September 2022, three weeks before the blasts.
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He crossed from Poland into Germany on a forged Ukrainian passport and joined the yacht.
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And that over the next few weeks the divers went down
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to the pipelines and fixed charges with timers to them.
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They were military explosives, prosecutors say.
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The kind that work at depth.
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In 2023, German and American media reported that investigators
7:34
had found traces of explosives on a table in the yacht's cabin.
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Reporters were following the same trail and in August of 2024,
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the Wall Street Journal reported that the plan was dreamed
7:46
up by Ukrainian officers and businessmen at a drunken gathering
7:50
in May of 2022, and that it cost around $300,000.
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The Journal's sources said President Zelensky first approved it,
7:59
then ordered it stopped after the CIA asked him to,
8:03
and that the army's commander at the time, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, went ahead anyway.
8:07
Zaluzhnyi says he knew of no such operation.
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Zelensky has said Ukraine did nothing of the sort.
8:14
In August of 2025, Italian police arrested Kuznetsov,
8:19
the alleged coordinator of the Andromeda.
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A month later, Polish police arrested a Ukrainian
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diving instructor, Volodymyr Zhuravlov, near Warsaw.
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Both men deny everything.
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Zhuravlov's story has a strange chapter of its own.
8:35
German investigators had been after him since 2024, when, reports say,
8:41
he slipped out of Poland back to Ukraine in the boot of a diplomatic car.
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He insists he was nowhere near the Baltic.
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So after four years, German prosecutors say they
8:51
know who planted the charges, and who sent them.
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A small team of Ukrainians, acting for their state.
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Kuznetsov denies it.
9:00
Proving that is the trial's first job.
9:03
But even if they prove it there's a harder question.
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What exactly was blown up? To the prosecution, civilian infrastructure.
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To Kuznetsov's lawyers, in their words, a Russian weapon.
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So is the Nord Stream a weapon?
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To answer that, you have to go back to before it existed.
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In 2006, Poland's defence minister, Radosław Sikorski, stood up in Brussels
9:40
and compared the planned German-Russian pipeline to the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact.
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So, he compared it to the 1939 deal between Hitler and Stalin that carved up Poland.
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That couldn't have landed well.
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Well, the European Commission called the comparison unhelpful.
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But the fear behind it was simple.
10:00
The old pipelines from Russia ran across Poland and Ukraine.
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A pipeline under the sea would let Moscow send gas to Germany while going around them.
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But the gas would still be reaching Europe.
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Why did the route matter so much to Warsaw?
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We asked Agata Łoskot-Strachota.
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She runs the Energy in Europe programme at the Centre for Eastern Studies,
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a state-funded think tank in Warsaw,
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and she's been following Nord Stream since it was first proposed.
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Agata, thanks for talking to us.
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Could you explain to us, what was Poland's fear in having the Nord Stream built?
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: Poland was preparing to become a new member, and then this idea of Nord
10:42
Agata Łoskot-Strachota: Stream appeared which it seemed problematic from Polish perspective.
10:47
Agata Łoskot-Strachota: This level that we really wanted to be a part of European Union and, Germany is..
10:54
Agata Łoskot-Strachota: Well, has been always our big neighbor,
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: but also a key partner in this process of accession.
11:01
Agata Łoskot-Strachota: And then it started to somehow engage in a project
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: which was completely against Polish interests.
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: I would say not only energy interest, but strategic interests.
11:14
Agata Łoskot-Strachota: Since the fall of communism, I think Poland was trying to decrease
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: as much as possible its ties to Russia and its dependency on Russia.
11:24
Agata Łoskot-Strachota: Because of this difficulty in diversification, Poland was also trying to somehow
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: have some countermeasures to somehow balance this asymmetric relationship with Russia.
11:37
Agata Łoskot-Strachota: When Nord Stream appeared, it has been seen as a way of increasing,
11:42
Agata Łoskot-Strachota: actually, not decreasing Russian gas exports to Europe.
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: Of course, Ukrainian question, because Nord Stream project was directly linked to Ukraine
11:55
Agata Łoskot-Strachota: and so for Poland, that was kind of tricky from strategic and security point of view.
12:00
Agata Łoskot-Strachota: Exactly.
12:00
Agata Łoskot-Strachota: We've seen this transit thing as, let's say, trust-giving mechanism or at least a,
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: an instrument which made two sides sit, talk together,
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: and actually accommodate each other interests.
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: And if Ukrainian transit was supposed to decrease significantly or cease to exist,
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: well, from Poland perspective, it was very risky on strategic interests.
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Germany saw it differently.
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Nord Stream 1 opened in 2011.
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And it was cheap gas.
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By 2021, Nord Stream 1 was carrying nearly 60 billion cubic metres a year.
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Before the invasion, Germany was getting more than half of its gas from Russia.
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For German industry, chemicals, steel, glass,
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cheap Russian gas was part of the business model.
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And for German households, it heated the homes.
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Agata, Germany's argument for why they wanted Nord Stream
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is improving ties with Russia and the need for cheap energy.
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How do you see it?
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: So I would say that we don't have well one country in Europe.
13:14
Agata Łoskot-Strachota: I mean, There are different countries with different interests, and whereas indeed
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: Germany has been seen, and this was kind of in line with German way of seeing things,
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: that tightening economic ties, increasing economic connections,
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: means that Russia becomes indeed
13:33
Agata Łoskot-Strachota: closer to Germany, tightly linked to Germany,
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: so that it would decrease risk of any, I don't know
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: crazy behaviour, well, or that would threaten security of Germany,
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: because of this deep economic ties and interests.
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: And that actually has been proven wrong in 2022.
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: But I understand that till then, for Germans,
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: it was kind of difficult to imagine that someone
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: would endanger their economic interests so deeply rooted in physical links as Nord Stream.
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: But I would say that there was also another reason why Germany went for Nord Stream.
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: So I understand that first of all, it was also starting to go
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: forward with its energy transition, so to phase out nuclear power.
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: And in order to do that, it had to secure itself a lot of alternative fuels,
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: and gas has been seen as this key fuel enabling German ambition.
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: And Russia has been seen as a source of relatively cheap, abundant volumes of gas.
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: Now, Western European countries companies, including German companies,
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: have been really fed up with this difficult relationship between Russia and Ukraine.
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: There have been quarrels be-between the two sides.
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: There have been these accusations of Ukrainians
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: stealing gas from transit pipelines, et cetera.
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: So they wanted to get rid of this problem.
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However, it wasn't only Poland that objected.
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When in 2018 a second pipeline, Nord Stream 2, was being built
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alongside the first, a new American president made it his cause.
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In July of 2018, at a NATO summit in Brussels, Donald Trump sat down
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to breakfast with the alliance's Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg.
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The cameras were still rolling.
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Donald Trump: You're supposed to be guarding against Russia, and Germany goes
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Donald Trump: out and pays billions and billions of dollars a year to Russia.
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Donald Trump: But Germany, as far as I'm concerned, is captive to Russia.
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Jens Stoltenberg: The gas pipeline from Russia to Germany is one issue where
16:01
Jens Stoltenberg: allies disagree, but the strength of NATO is that this one
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Germany, a captive of Russia.
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Two months later, at the United Nations, Trump warned that Germany would
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become "totally dependent" on Russian energy if it didn't change course.
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In the footage, some of the German delegation can be seen smiling.
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Berlin's line, from the start, was that Nord Stream 2 was simply a commercial project.
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And in Germany, Washington's objections were often waved away
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as a sales pitch for American gas, shipped across the Atlantic.
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In December of 2019, Trump signed sanctions on the companies building Nord Stream 2.
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Within a day, the Swiss firm laying the pipe pulled out.
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Berlin accused Washington of interfering in its affairs.
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Russia finished the job with its own ships.
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Nord Stream 2 was completed in September of 2021.
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But it never got its licence.
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Germany's energy regulator had to approve it under EU rules.
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Then, two days before the invasion, Chancellor Scholz froze the approval.
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Agata, you said Germany wanted to get around Ukraine too.
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What was in it for Russia?
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: In Russia's interest it also was to be able to bypass Ukraine,
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: because it enabled it to go tough on Ukraine, actually.
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: Because It could try to cultivate its gas relationship with Europe without Ukraine.
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: And I really think that one of the reasons why war started in 2022,
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: it was because Russia had already had in place
17:42
Agata Łoskot-Strachota: infrastructure which actually enabled it to supply Europe
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: without Ukraine, using Ukrainian transit pipelines.
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: But then it did not expect Europe, including Germany, to change their mind that deeply
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: and actually to endanger their gas security
18:02
Agata Łoskot-Strachota: to suffer such high prices for the sake of Ukraine.
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Meanwhile, Poland tried something different.
18:12
It built a terminal on the Baltic to import liquefied gas by ship,
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and a pipeline from Norway, so it wouldn't need Russian gas at all.
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That pipeline from Norway, the Baltic Pipe,
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was officially opened on the 27th of September of 2022.
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The day after the Nord Stream explosions.
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Returning to the courtroom in which the episode started
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in a central part to the defence's case is that when Russia cut
18:39
the flow through Nord Stream 1 it blamed technical problems,
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however, Europe itself said Moscow was using gas as a weapon.
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Which is the heart of the defence's case.
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A pipeline that a country uses to pressure its neighbours,
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they argue, is part of that country's war.
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And in war, an enemy's means of waging it can be a target.
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And the prosecution's own indictment says what the aim was: to cut Russia's
19:05
gas sales for good, so that Moscow couldn't use the money to pay for its war.
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Which, to the defence, sounds a lot like a military objective.
19:15
Agata, is that how Ukraine sees Russia's gas?
19:19
As part of the war?
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: I'm not able to say if Ukrainians were indeed behind these explosions or not.
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: But what we see for sure is that Ukrainians are actually
19:32
Agata Łoskot-Strachota: attacking Russian oil sector, because And it's understandable:
19:37
Agata Łoskot-Strachota: they see both oil and gas as sectors as those which bring money to Russian
19:42
Agata Łoskot-Strachota: budget and which actually enable Russia to wage this war for longer.
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: So that's one thing.
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: But then the other: they also experienced weaponisation of especially gas flows,
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: so it has been done by Russia for decades.
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: So I think it's worth remembering that.
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Germany's highest criminal court has already looked at that argument.
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In December of 2025, when Kuznetsov challenged his detention,
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the Federal Court of Justice rejected it and kept him in custody.
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The pipelines were civilian infrastructure, it said, even if you call them Russian,
20:22
and gas money that helps pay for a war doesn't turn them
20:25
into a military target, at least on what is known so far.
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And on one point, the court agreed with the defence.
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There were strong grounds, it said,
20:34
to believe a foreign state had started and directed the attack.
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So whether the Nord Stream was a weapon depends
20:40
entirely in which country you are standing in.
20:43
From Warsaw's perspective it looked like a threat from the start.
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From Berlin's it looked like a bridge and a way to bring Russia closer to Europe.
20:57
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20:58
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Europe has a shortcut for catching suspects across borders: the European arrest warrant.
21:32
One country issues it, and another is meant to hand
21:34
the person over, mostly without reopening the case.
21:38
Germany has used it more than once.
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And the answers it got back tell you a lot about Europe.
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Start in Poland.
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In October 2025, a judge in Warsaw, Dariusz Łubowski,
21:51
refused to hand over the diver, Volodymyr Zhuravlov.
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He said the information Germany had sent would fit on a single sheet of A4 paper.
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But he didn't stop there.
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He said the court wasn't deciding who did it,
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but if it was Ukraine, its war met every condition of a just war,
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and blowing up an enemy's critical infrastructure
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during a defensive war, quote, "is not sabotage".
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The actions, he said, were "not unlawful.
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On the contrary, they were justified, rational, and just."
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The judge in Warsaw told Zhuravlov he was free to go.
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Donald Tusk posted his reaction the same day.
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The court, he wrote, had been right.
22:34
"The case is closed."
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Then, in August this year, Zhuravlov turned up in Croatia.
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Police arrested him at a resort in Pula, where, reports say,
22:45
he'd been working as a consultant on a film about the attack.
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The Croatian court said the Polish ruling didn't apply here,
22:52
and in September it approved sending him to Germany.
22:55
His lawyers are appealing, and he's asked Croatia for political asylum.
23:00
Italy, at first, also didn't comply.
23:03
Its top court threw out the first order to extradite Kuznetsov and sent the case back.
23:09
He went on hunger strike in prison.
23:11
In November of 2025, Italy handed him to Germany.
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And go back to the two countries whose waters the pipes were in.
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Sweden and Denmark had both investigated and closed their files, without charging anyone.
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So, one attack, one warrant system, and five countries.
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Two looked and walked away, that being Sweden and Denmark.
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If you remember, close to the beginning of this episode we discussed
23:37
how they investigated and closed the files without charging anyone.
23:41
Yes. Poland refused.
23:44
Italy said yes after some budging and Croatia was
23:47
willing to comply but there is an appeal pending.
23:51
The German court and the defence keep coming back to two legal ideas.
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The first is functional immunity.
23:58
Normally, if a soldier or an official does something on their government's orders,
24:02
another country can't put that person on trial for it.
24:05
The act belongs to the state, not to the individual, and states deal with states.
24:11
So if Ukraine ordered this, the argument goes,
24:15
Germany should take it up with Kyiv, not with the man on the boat.
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The second is what lawyers call the combatant's privilege.
24:23
A soldier in a war can't be prosecuted for lawful acts of war,
24:26
like attacking a military target, even though the same act in peacetime would be a crime.
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Germany's Federal Court of Justice rejected both, at least for now.
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On immunity, it said there's an exception when an intelligence-style operation
24:41
violates another country's sovereignty, and the damage here landed in Germany.
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And on the privilege, it said it doesn't cover secret
24:49
operations by soldiers who look like civilians.
24:52
In the court's reading, the privilege is for soldiers who can be recognised as soldiers.
24:58
On the prosecution's account, no one on that yacht could be.
25:01
Not everyone agrees on these points.
25:04
In a quieter courtroom in London in July, a judge ruled on something else entirely:
25:09
whether the pipeline's operator could claim on its insurance.
25:13
It couldn't, the judge said, because the damage was a consequence of war.
25:17
Which isn't a criminal ruling, and it isn't in the European Union.
25:22
But it shows how slippery the word "war" becomes once you take it into a courtroom.
25:27
So a British insurance judge called it war, a Polish judge called it a just war,
25:33
and Germany's top criminal court called it a crime.
25:36
Same pipeline, same suspects, same accusation.
25:40
And the European Union's own system for handing over suspects couldn't produce one answer.
25:46
Now one court has the case in front of it, in Hamburg.
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And whatever it decides won't land on Serhii Kuznetsov alone.
25:53
It lands on Germany's relationship with Ukraine.
26:02
Here's what everyone in Europe is really afraid of: what happens
26:07
if a German court says the Ukrainian state ordered this?
26:11
Germany is Ukraine's biggest backer in Europe.
26:14
It has sent money, weapons and air defence,
26:17
and it has taken in more than a million Ukrainians.
26:20
The international lawyer Clemens Fischer told German media
26:24
that if the court finds the Ukrainian government was involved,
26:27
Germany would find it, quote, "very difficult
26:30
to continue supporting Ukraine unconditionally".
26:33
Some in Germany want exactly that.
26:36
In June, the co-leader of the far-right AfD, Alice Weidel,
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said Ukraine should compensate Germany for the damage,
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and, according to one news agency,
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described the country as a bottomless pit for German money.
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Moscow is watching too.
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Two days before the trial opened, Moscow expected objectivity and a verdict,
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naming the people who carried out the attack and whoever ordered it.
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Kuznetsov's Ukrainian lawyers don't rule out that a conviction could open the door
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to compensation claims from Russia, such as the Russian assets that Europe has frozen.
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And Kyiv?
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Officially, Kyiv denies any involvement, and in July Ukraine's
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prosecutors said they had found no evidence the state was behind it.
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Which has left the accused feeling rather alone.
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In a letter from an Italian prison,
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Kuznetsov said he was being treated like "criminal number one".
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He wrote that his Italian lawyer couldn't find any support from Ukraine,
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though he said he understood Kyiv had more pressing concerns.
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He loves Ukraine, he said, and is proud to have served as an officer.
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Ukraine's human rights ombudsman, Dmytro Lubinets,
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has said Kuznetsov's conditions in German custody could amount to torture.
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However, there is a strong case for the trial too,
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and Germany's interior minister, Alexander Dobrindt, put it in August.
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Germany has, he said, "a strong interest in clarifying the facts",
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and in bringing those responsible to Germany, where they'll be "dealt with appropriately".
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Because the principle cuts both ways.
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If an ally can blow up infrastructure in European waters and walk away,
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what does a European court say the next time someone cuts a cable on the Baltic seabed?
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Germany's argument is that the law has to be the same, whoever is behind the explosives.
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Ukraine's supporters say a country defending itself can't
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be judged by the same rules as the country that invaded it.
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And in the same week the trial opened,
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Europe's arrest warrant system started running the other way.
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On the evening of the 23rd of September, two men climbed the fence
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of a Starlink satellite ground station at Wola Krobowska, south of Warsaw.
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According to Polish reporting, the station carries internet
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traffic through Poland, including traffic bound for Ukraine.
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Surveillance footage shows them pouring an accelerant
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over a control cabinet and setting it alight.
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The station briefly went offline, reports say.
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Nobody was hurt.
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According to the newspaper Rzeczpospolita,
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Polish police stopped the two men the very next day, and let them go.
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Polish prosecutors are treating it as sabotage
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carried out for a foreign intelligence service.
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Donald Tusk says there's evidence the attack was ordered by Russian intelligence.
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On Monday, the 12th of October, German police arrested
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two Turkish men at a railway station near Stuttgart.
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The next day, the day before the Nord Stream trial opened in Hamburg,
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a German judge ordered them held while a decision
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is made on Poland's request to hand them over.
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Poland's request.
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Made with a European arrest warrant.
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The same kind of warrant a Warsaw court refused to honour for Germany a year ago.
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This time it's Poland asking Germany to hand someone over,
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for an attack on infrastructure that helps a country at war.
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Tusk says the suspects will answer before Polish justice.
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So Poland is now where Germany was a year ago.
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Something it depends on has been attacked, the suspects are in another country,
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and it needs that country's courts to hand them over so it can put them on trial.
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The difference is who is said to be behind it.
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The judge in Warsaw said that if Ukraine did it,
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a country defending itself had struck its attacker, and that was lawful.
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Poland says Russia, the attacker, ordered the Starlink fire.
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So on Nord Stream, a Polish court has given one answer,
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Germany's top criminal court, so far, has given another.
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The court in Hamburg hasn't given its answer yet.
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Meanwhile, 80 metres down off Bornholm,
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the pipes are still lying on the seabed, full of seawater.
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Except one.
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Of the four lines, one didn't rupture that night.
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Vladimir Putin: …to supply gas through the surviving line. And one line of Nord Stream 2 does seem to have survived. Russia is ready to start such deliveries. The ball, as they say, is in the European Union's court. If they want it, they can simply open the tap, and that's it.
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That was Putin, two weeks after the blasts.
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One line had survived, he said. The ball was in Europe's court.
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Europe never picked it up.
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Four years later, people are talking about switching Nord Stream back on.
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Before 2022, Russia supplied about 40% of the gas the European Union imported.
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So what did losing it change?
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: There was this source of stable gas supplies and also a buffer because,
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: Soviet Union and then Russia was always
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: able to increase its gas flows in case of,
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: I don't know increased demand, and it was especially true in wintertime.
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: And then suddenly, we are in a for the last few years we live in, when there
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: is no Russian gas or almost no Russian gas and so this buffer cease to exist
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Europe filled most of the gap with liquefied gas brought in by ship,
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much of it from the United States.
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And this year, the war involving Iran has disrupted tankers through the Strait of Hormuz.
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In September, European gas prices were close to their highest in three years.
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: Then we have this change of US politics. Well, quite
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: big uncertainty about the directions of your
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: current Trump administration policy on energy.
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: And that makes Europe also a bit worried if its
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: degree of dependency on US LNG flows is not to be.
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And then there's the pipeline itself.
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On the eighth of October, Reuters reported that Donald Trump's envoy,
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Jared Kushner, and a Kremlin adviser, Kirill Dmitriev,
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had discussed bringing an American investor into Nord Stream,
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to earn money carrying Russian gas to Europe once the fighting stops.
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A White House official said there had been no recent talks about the pipeline.
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And in Europe, it's illegal for now anyway: the European Union banned any transactions
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involving Nord Stream last year,
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and Germany's economy ministry says it doesn't want a restart.
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A German Green MP, Michael Kellner, put the fear this way.
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"This threatens to be a dirty deal that will cost Europe dearly.
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Americans and Russians will share the profits."
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So does Donald Trump really want it reopened?
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: From what I see is, I don't know if he really wants to open that or not.
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: There is for sure some talk about that. But then we heard a lot of things,
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: and not everything that is in the media is actually happening.
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: So I would say that some of that might be some kind of strategic communication.
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: What I also think
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: about possibility of reopening, Nord Stream is, first,
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: it would be very costly because pipes are actually destroyed, filled with salty water.
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: Second is, for now, legally, it seems improbable in Europe because we have
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: such legislation that I can't see really Nord Stream starting to work
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: unless something changes drastically on legal or political level in Europe.
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: And then third thing, which I think is important for the US,
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: is that, as I already told you,
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: this was US LNG which gained the most because of Europe phasing out Russian gas.
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: So if Nord Stream 2 is to be restarted,
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: then it would be US LNG, which loses actually on that.
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: And I cannot really see how it squares with, US energy dominance policy,
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: which is actually the strategy that Trump announced.
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: So
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Agata Łoskot-Strachota: yeah, so there are a lot of question marks, and I would say it's a long shot.
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Serhii Kuznetsov is in a German cell,
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being tried in a German court for something he says he didn't do.
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Whatever the judges decide, they'll be deciding more than one man's guilt.
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Whether a country fighting for its life can strike back at the money funding the war.
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And whether, when it does it in someone else's waters, that's war or a crime.
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On Tuesday the trial resumes, and the judges may
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rule soon after on whether it goes on at all.
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Kuznetsov's lawyers want it stopped.
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They say he can't defend himself while he's sworn to secrecy,
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and kept in isolation in Germany.
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If the judges agree, the question at the heart
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of this case may never be answered in a courtroom.
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For now, the pipes stay on the seabed.
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And the man accused of blowing them up stays in a courtroom in Hamburg.
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Thanks for listening to this episode of Pollar.
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If you want to get the latest coverage on the Nord Stream trial,
36:20
Russia-Ukraine war or any European issue, you can do so at pollar.news.
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We are a relatively new podcast so every comment,
36:29
rating and voice of support or even negative feedback means a lot to us.
36:34
Please, let us know what you think in the comments below.
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And thank you to Agata Łoskot-Strachota, who runs the Energy in Europe programme
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at the Centre for Eastern Studies in Warsaw, for talking to us for this episode.
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Sources for this episode are at pollar.news.