Ukrainian “state authorities” ordered the destruction of the Nord Stream gas pipelines, German prosecutors said Thursday. “German prosecutors have accused Ukrainian ‘state authorities’ of ordering the 2022 explosives attack on the Nord Stream gas pipelines linking Russia with Europe,” British newspaper The Guardian reported.

The prosecutors accused a group of divers, led by a Ukrainian army officer, of carrying out the deep-sea operation near the Danish coast. The news comes days after a German court indicted a Ukrainian national for the pipeline blast. The BBC reported Thursday that a suspect, currently in German custody, has been “accused of leading a team of seven accomplices in an operation to destroy three of the four Nord Stream gas pipelines.”

The disclosure could potentially derail ties between the two countries. Since President Trump scaled back U.S. commitment, Germany has emerged as Ukraine’s biggest military backer in its ongoing war with Russia.

The blast severed the 760-mile Baltic Sea pipeline, Russia’s primary natural gas supply line to Western Europe. Russia and Germany spent around $20 billion on the joint pipeline project. Before the war in Ukraine began in February 2022, Russian exports accounted for more than 55 percent of Germany’s total gas demand.

Germany’s state-run DW TV reported:

Ukrainian state authorities were behind the 2022 sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines linking Russia with Europe, German prosecutors said on Thursday.

In a statement detailing the charges brought against suspect Serhii K. on Wednesday, prosecutors said that he and six accomplices had acted “on the orders of state authorities in Ukraine.”

According to prosecutors, K., now 50, was an “officer in the Ukrainian army” at the time of the operation, and his accomplices were also “military personnel.”

Prosecutors said the plan was to “destroy the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines” with the objective of “permanently halting gas supplies via the pipelines and preventing Russia from using the revenue from natural gas trade to finance its war efforts.”

The escalation comes at a highly inopportune time for President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. On Wednesday night, Russia launched one of its largest aerial attacks on Kyiv in the 52-month war.

“Russia launched hundreds of drones and dozens of missiles at Ukraine’s capital Kyiv in the early hours on Thursday, killing at least 21 people, wounding scores more and damaging around 130 buildings ​in one of the biggest attacks of the war,” Reuters reported. “Multiple explosions shook central Kyiv and reverberated across the capital throughout the night as thousands of residents rushed to bomb shelters and underground metro ‌stations. Huge columns of smoke filled the skyline.”

The pipeline’s destruction unleashed an energy crisis that Germany is still fighting to overcome. President Donald Trump was the leading, if not the lone, voice warning Berlin about its fatal reliance on Russian gas. “Germany, as far as I’m concerned, is captive to Russia because it’s getting so much of its energy from Russia,” he warned during the 2018 NATO summit. Germany pays “billions of dollars to Russia, and we have to defend them against Russia,” he added, referring to the Nord Stream.

Much to the delight of mainstream media, German officials mocked the U.S. president to his face. “Trump accused Germany of becoming ‘totally dependent’ on Russian energy at the U.N. The Germans just smirked,” The Washington Post observed on September 25, 2018, referring to a German delegation to the Trump White House.

In 2021, President Joe Biden waived U.S. objections to the Russo-German pipeline, reversing the Trump administration’s opposition to the project over security concerns. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz returned the favor by endorsing Biden in the 2024 election.

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