In June, Berlin issued an arrest warrant for a suspect in the Nord Stream blowing up case who was in Poland at the time. However, Warsaw did not arrest him — and the suspect was able to leave for Ukraine. This caused outrage in Germany.
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) writes about it.
Polish law enforcement officers publicly stated that they did not arrest the suspect because their German colleagues did not enter his residential address in the European register. The German authorities denied this. At the time, Warsaw said the countryʼs Internal Security Service (ABW) had to look into the matter before arresting the suspect.
Last week, the Polish prosecutorʼs office informed Germany in a letter that the suspect had left the country. It also discussed whether German law enforcement officers are still interested in their Polish colleagues searching the suspectʼs house near Warsaw.
The German authorities regarded this letter as an "additional insult" because Poland did not comply with the arrest warrant.
Meanwhile, Russia has filed a complaint against Germany over the lack of progress in the investigation of the Nord Stream explosions and has invited talks on "Germanyʼs fulfillment of its international obligations in the fight against terrorism," said the director of the third European department Oleh Tyapkin.
According to German investigators, as recently as last year, Poland refused to provide surveillance footage of a yacht that was moored in a Polish port, as well as mobile phone data from the area. Germany believes that the Ukrainians used a small sailing yacht and a crew of six people, which stopped at the port of Kolobrzeg in Poland, to blow up the Nord Streams.
Polandʼs internal security service ABW denies these claims, stressing that such footage does not exist, as standard procedure is to regularly overwrite it after 30 days.
Some German law enforcement officers and politicians say Polish authorities are deliberately trying to obstruct the investigation.
As WSJ writes, at a meeting between German and Polish government officials in Warsaw on July 2 this year, a Polish official allegedly told a German colleague that all potential suspects who could have destroyed the Nord Streams "should receive medals" instead of being arrested. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said the "initiators and patrons" of the gas pipelines — presumably referring to Germany — should "apologize and shut up."
Germany is now investigating the role of ex-commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valerii Zaluzhnyi in the September 2022 Nord Stream blowing up. The President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky allegedly initially approved the plan, but later ordered it to be canceled, and Zaluzhnyi, despite this, continued the operation.
- On September 26, 2022, three explosions occurred on the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines that run along the bottom of the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany, causing massive gas leaks. Only one of the four threads of the gas pipeline remained intact. Western media wrote that Russia will preserve the "Nordic Streams" because it is not going to repair them after the accidents.
- The governments of the United States, Great Britain, and the EU have declared targeted sabotage. Russia believes that the United States and its allies are interested in the explosions. Western and Russian media wrote about different versions — from sabotage by the Russians themselves to the involvement of Ukraine. President Volodymyr Zelensky denied Ukraineʼs involvement in sabotage.
- In early February 2024 , Sweden closed the investigation into the Nord Stream blow-up due to lack of jurisdiction. Following Sweden, Denmark also completed the investigation.
Author: Iryna Perepechko