Key actors — tap for context
Volodymyr Zhuravlov
Ukrainian citizen and trained diver, whom the German prosecutor's office refers to as Vladimir Z.
Why here: The man arrested in Pula, he publicly denied participation in the sabotage in the past.
Serhiy Kuznetsov
Ukrainian officer, whom the German prosecutor's office considers to be the leader of the entire operation.
Why here: In Germany since November 2025, his trial is scheduled to begin in late October in Hamburg.
Federal Prosecutor's Office
Highest German prosecutor based in Karlsruhe, prosecutes state security crimes.
Why here: Has issued an arrest warrant and indictment, claiming the sabotage was carried out on order of Ukrainian state bodies.
Nord Stream
Pair of underwater pipelines from Russia to German Lubmin, four pipes in total.
Why here: Three of the four pipes were destroyed by explosions on September 26, 2022, German justice has been investigating the case since.
More info →
Pula
Croatian port city in southern Istria, approximately 50,000 residents.
Why here: The diver was arrested here on August 19, according to LTO while filming a movie about the sabotage.
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Bornholm
Danish island in the Baltic Sea between Sweden and Poland.
Why here: The group of divers was supposed to place the charges near its vicinity.
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Lubmin
German municipality in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, where the pipelines come ashore.
Why here: This point establishes German jurisdiction over the entire case.
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Federal Court of Justice
Highest German court for civil and criminal matters based in Karlsruhe.
Why here: In December 2025 it ruled that the functional immunity exception applies to this case and rejected the argument about a legitimate military target.
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Donald Tusk
Polish Prime Minister, long-time critic of Nord Stream pipelines.
Why here: His statement that the problem was not the destruction of the pipeline but its construction summarizes Poland's position on the entire affair.
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Doug Liman
American director, author of films The Bourne Identity and Mr. & Mrs. Smith.
Why here: He is filming the thriller Snake Island in Croatia inspired by this very sabotage.
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Sean Penn
American actor and two-time Oscar winner.
Why here: One of the main stars of the film about Ukrainian divers being shot.
More info →
Adrien Brody
American actor, Oscar winner for The Pianist.
Why here: Second main star of the film Snake Island.
More info →Third attempt, twice through Poland
- The court in Pula remanded him in custody. The judge ordered it "with a view to his extradition" to Germany and justified it by the risk of escape. He was arrested Wednesday morning at a hotel on the basis of a European arrest warrant. n-tv ↗
The German Federal Prosecutor's Office refers to the man only as Vladimir Z., while Polish and Ukrainian media have identified him as Volodymyr Zhuravlov. According to the prosecution, he belonged to a group around Serhiy K., which placed time-fused charges near Bornholm in September 2022. The group reached the pipelines in a sailboat that they rented in Rostock through intermediaries using false information in documents. German courts exercise jurisdiction because both pipelines come ashore in Lubmin in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Federal Prosecutor General ↗
The first attempt to arrest him came in summer 2024, when Zhuravlov was living in Poland. He escaped before they could detain him, and according to Spiegel, he crossed the border into Ukraine in a car belonging to the Ukrainian military attaché in Warsaw. Polish authorities later explained the escape as a German administrative error in entering the international wanted persons database. The Guardian ↗
In autumn 2025, he returned to the Warsaw area and Polish police arrested him. However, extradition to Germany did not occur again. ORF ↗
Polish court said it was a legitimate target
- Tusk did not leave this to the courts' interpretation and stated it directly. According to him, Germany should not prosecute the suspects, and regarding the pipelines he added: "Shame on those who built it." The Polish Prime Minister thus turned a legal question about functional immunity into a political question about who bears responsibility for the pipelines being built in the first place. Digi24 ↗Ukrainian Pravda ↗
- The Kremlin responded within hours and called it a terrorist act. Dmitry Peskov, according to Onet, received Tusk's words with "great surprise" and insisted that it was a terrorist attack on Russian infrastructure. Thus, Moscow entered the dispute on the side of criminal prosecution after years of silence about the investigation. Onet ↗Portfolio ↗
Instead of a routine examination of the European arrest warrant, the Polish court entered into a substantive assessment of the case and concluded that the pipelines were a legitimate military target in an armed conflict. This is, however, a question that should be considered by the country that will judge, not the one that is issuing the warrant. Zhuravlov was released. Legal Tribune Online ↗ The Guardian ↗
Poland was among the loudest opponents of both pipelines even during their construction, and Prime Minister Donald Tusk, according to Kyiv Post, publicly opposed the suspect's extradition. On X on October 7, 2025, that is, at the time when Germany requested extradition, he summed it up in a sentence that has been quoted since: "The problem with Nord Stream 2 is not that it was blown up. The problem is that it was built." Kyiv Post ↗ The Guardian ↗ Gazeta Wyborcza ↗
His Polish attorney Tymoteusz Paprocki, after the arrest in Croatia, confirmed that it was his client and denied reports that he was there on vacation. According to him, his client understood the Polish court decision to apply on Polish territory. Onet ↗
German court answered exactly opposite than Polish
- Denmark refused to help Germany with the investigation. According to Ukrainian Truth, Copenhagen did not comply with Germany's request for legal assistance, although explosions occurred in its exclusive economic zone near Bornholm and Danish investigation was closed in 2024 without charges. Berlin thus remains the only one still pursuing the case. Ukrajinská pravda ↗
- Romanian Digi24 pulled from the case a question that awaits Berlin. Citing The Times, it writes that if it is confirmed that it was "on the orders of state bodies," the German government will have to explain why it is sending to the country that destroyed a piece of its key energy infrastructure a sum roughly the size of the annual budget of its own Transport Ministry. (Digi24 ↗)
The most interesting part of the case is not happening in Pula, but in Karlsruhe. The Federal Court of Justice on December 10, 2025 rejected Serhij K.'s complaint against the continuation of detention and in its reasoning expressed itself precisely on what the Polish court based its refusal to extradite. BGH, StB 60/25 (HRRS) ↗
The starting point is that people who act on the orders of a foreign state in its name with force enjoy functional immunity derived from state immunity. This applies regardless of whether they are its employees or act for it only once. According to the Federal Court of Justice, however, this immunity has an exception in intelligence-directed violent acts that infringe on the sovereignty of the affected state. According to this logic, therefore, they are not covered. It should be added that the court decided on the continuation of detention based on the state of the investigation so far, not by a judgment on the merits. BGH, StB 60/25 (HRRS) ↗
The second legal finding of the decision goes against Polish arguments even more directly. The right of parties to a conflict to cause damage, according to it, does not apply to objects serving directly civilian purposes, even when the opponent obtains from them the means it uses for war. This is a response to the claim that the gas pipeline was a legitimate target because it financed the Russian war. Germany's jurisdiction is based on the fact that the consequence of the explosions also occurred on German territory. BGH, StB 60/25 (HRRS) ↗
The indictment filed at the end of June 2026 and announced on July 2 at the Higher Regional Court in Hamburg corresponds to this: it charges war crime of attack on civilian objects, plus causing an explosion, destruction of buildings and disruption of public utilities. In the same press release, the prosecutor states that the plan was created "on the orders of state bodies in Ukraine". Generálny spolkový prokurátor ↗
At the Hamburg court, however, there will be a dispute over yet another, different immunity. Serhij K.'s defense attorney Nicola Canestrini argues that his client was at the time of the act an officer of the Ukrainian armed forces, and thus a combatant — and combatants enjoy immunity from prosecution in international armed conflict. The condition is that they distinguish themselves from the civilian population, for example by uniform. The Federal Prosecutor's Office counters that the group passed themselves off as tourists, that is, were not distinguishable from civilians, and the covert procedure is at odds with combatant status. According to ZDF, the 108-page indictment contains a sentence stating that there are sufficient suspicions that the sabotage was committed on the orders of Ukrainian state bodies and directed by them. ZDF frontal ↗
Serhij K. was arrested on August 21, 2025 in the Rimini province and in November 2025 Italy extradited him. According to his defense, the trial in Hamburg is to begin around October 26. Babel ↗ Meanwhile, the Ukrainian General Prosecutor's Office is conducting its own investigation, which has not yet confirmed Kyiv's involvement. Kyiv Independent ↗
What Slovak and Czech media wrote about it
- Foreign newsrooms led the story with exactly what we didn't hear here on Wednesday — the film. The Dutch NRC, the Belgian Het Laatste Nieuws and the Romanian Pro TV put the filming directly in the headline. NRC ↗Het Laatste Nieuws ↗Pro TV ↗
In our RSS archive, eleven Slovak and Czech newsrooms picked up the arrest in Croatia on Wednesday. Seven of them handled the story with an agency paragraph of three to four lines, which states that a Ukrainian was arrested in Croatia and is being prepared for extradition to Germany. Eight of the eleven did not mention at all that the same man had already once been refused extradition by Poland, and not a single one mentioned the film. Aktuality.sk ↗
This is not a criticism of the agency news service, it does what it is meant to do. It is that the essential context of this story is in the background. Without it, it is a routine arrest. With it, it is the third attempt by one European country to bring to court a person whom another European country refused to extradite on the grounds that the act was justified. iROZHLAS ↗
Read also: Germany opened anti-drone center against hybrid attacks
And that film
- He was not on set by chance — he advised the crew professionally. According to Spiegel, he worked as a consultant for the filmmakers, the Belgian De Standaard writes outright that he himself participated in the docudrama about Nord Stream. The man whom Germany accuses of sabotage thus consulted on a film about the same sabotage. n-tv ↗De Standaard ↗
In Croatia, since the beginning of August, a political thriller Snake Island is being filmed, directed by Doug Liman with Sean Penn and Adrian Brody. According to media reports, the film is about a secretly operating team of Ukrainian divers who undertake a dangerous underwater mission. The crew first worked in Zagreb and then moved to the coast, probably for underwater scenes. The last filming was in Pula. Welt ↗
That Zhuravlov was arrested precisely there is reported by LTO citing its own information and formulates it cautiously. Neither the German prosecutor nor the Croatian police have officially clarified the circumstances of the arrest, and no one claims that he had anything in common with the production. Legal Tribune Online ↗
What hotinfo is watching
- The case has four points that will show in the coming weeks whether Croatia behaves like Italy or like Poland.
- *The Croatian court's extradition ruling.** Italy extradited Serhij K. within three months after failed appeals; Poland refused extradition on the merits. Croatia is the third test of whether the European arrest warrant works in this case at all.
- *The start of the trial in Hamburg at the end of October.** The key will be whether the defence can challenge two separate prosecution conclusions at once: that a covert operation without distinguishing oneself from civilians rules out combatant status, and that the pipelines were an object serving civilian purposes. Both must fall — one is not enough to defeat the war crimes charge.
- *Whether prosecutors issue a new arrest warrant for Zhuravlov.** The current one dates from summer 2024 and covers an explosion and sabotage, not a war crime. The indictment against Serhij K. already rests on a war crime.
- *Who gave the order.** German prosecutors speak of a commission from Ukrainian state bodies, but have never named anyone, and the investigation on this point is not closed.
- The circumstances of the arrest: Zhuravlov was detained in Zagreb on the set of the film Snake Island (Sean Penn, directed by Doug Liman), where he was working as a consultant on the reconstruction of the incident.→ Man arrested over Nord Stream bombing was consultant on film about it starring …Doložené 3 nezávislými zdrojmi (The Guardian #1388186, Independent #1391712, forum24.cz #1388597). Nevypĺňa indikátor o vydaní — chorvátsky súd zatiaľ nerozhodol.
