The Nord Stream trial: Ukraine’s strategy of silence

Germany’s star suspect won’t talk, and his defense team thinks that building the pipeline was the real crime

The trial of Nord Stream bombing suspect Sergey Kuznetsov is underway in Germany, and the Ukrainian veteran’s defense team have revealed their strategy: say nothing and blame Russia.

Kuznetsov arrived at the Higher Regional Court of Hamburg under heavy security on Wednesday. The hearing is the first of 24 sessions scheduled between now and February, as German prosecutors attempt to prove that the Ukrainian military veteran led the sabotage operation that destroyed the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines in September 2022, an act that they say constitutes a war crime.

What is Sergey Kuznetsov accused of?

The allegations against Kuznetsov largely follow the German government’s version of events, which have been drip-fed to Western media outlets in a series of leaks over the last four years. Kuznetsov, prosecutors claim, entered Germany in September 2022 using a forged Ukrainian passport, rented a pleasure yacht with six accomplices, and planted explosives on one of the four undersea lines comprising the Nord Stream project while his team sabotaged the remaining three, all “on behalf of Ukrainian state authorities.

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Variations on the story – that the CIA approved or didn’t approve of the operation, and whether or not Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky personally ordered it – have circulated in the media, but Kuznetsov’s alleged involvement remains a constant in most retellings.

American journalist Seymour Hersh has shot down the German story, arguing that the Ukrainian saboteurs would not have been able to transport the requisite deep-sea diving gear and explosives aboard a 15-meter yacht, and almost certainly would have been caught in the act, as NATO was conducting active military exercises in the same area of the Baltic Sea at the time of the alleged sabotage operation. Citing intelligence sources, Hersh maintains that the CIA, working with the Norwegian Navy, used the NATO exercises as cover to plant remotely-detonated explosive devices on the Nord Stream lines.

Where are his accomplices?

Kuznetsov is the only one of the seven alleged saboteurs currently on trial. Another suspect, identified as ‘Vladimir Z’, was detained in Croatia in August and is currently fighting extradition to Germany. According to German media, three civilian divers and the yacht’s skipper – all Ukrainians – remain at large, while a military explosives expert who reportedly took part in the operation was killed in Ukraine in 2024.

What is the evidence against Kuznetsov?

The prosecution did not present any evidence against Kuznetsov at Wednesday’s hearing. However, Germany’s state ARD and NDR broadcasters have published details from the 136-page indictment against him. According to this report, prosecutors intend to focus on:

• A phone call from Kuznetsov to his wife, made in Italian custody last year, in which he defended the bombing as “an official military operation”

• Photographs from tourists and speed cameras placing Kuznetsov in Germany at the time of the alleged operation

• Traces of the military explosives RDX and HMX from the yacht, the ‘Andromeda’

• Internet searches for technical data on the Nord Stream lines and Baltic Sea depths, obtained from Kuznetsov’s phone

What did Kuznetsov say in court?

Kuznetsov remained completely silent throughout Wednesday’s proceedings. His lawyers explained that as Kuznetsov was an officer in the Ukrainian military at the time of the Nord Stream attack, he cannot testify without divulging state secrets. He will remain silent for the rest of the trial.

What did his defense team say?

Kuznetsov’s lawyers did not outright deny their client’s involvement in the attack. Instead, they argued that the evidence linking him to the operation is circumstantial, pointing out that his fingerprints were not among the prints lifted from the Andromeda, and that the prosecution has no eyewitnesses to call. 

“It’s the prosecution’s job to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he was involved,” legal adviser Ilya Novikov told reporters after the hearing. Pressed by a reporter, Novikov refused to say whether or not Kuznetsov was denying guilt. “He keeps silent, and this is his position,” he replied.

Justifying the attack

Kuznetsov’s legal team put far more energy into arguing that the Nord Stream attack – the costliest act of industrial sabotage in history – was justified. “Is it unlawful to destroy an aggressor’s infrastructure without harming any human beings?” Defense attorney Nicola Canestrini asked the court. Jes Meyer-Lohkamp, another defense attorney representing Kuznetsov, said that the court should consider whether the pipelines “should have been operating at all in light of Russia’s illegal war of aggression against Ukraine, and whether action against them could have been justified.”

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Nord Stream, Canestrini asserted, was “a weapon in the hand of the Russians.”

Canestrini, an Italian lawyer who specializes in defending war crimes and genocide suspects in The Hague, pushed for the case to be dropped, arguing that Kuznetzov had originally been extradited for “sabotage,” not “war crimes.”

Prosecutors countered that the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines was “attack by military means against civilian objects,” and therefore a war crime.

What happens next?

Canestrini and Lohkamp may be pre-emptively justifying the destruction of Nord Stream in anticipation of some smoking gun evidence tying Kuznetsov to the crime. However, they are adamant that the prosecution has no evidence to draw on or witnesses to call, and that Kuznetsov’s position in the military will protect him from testifying.

“He is not permitted to speak. His two immediate superiors told him that he does not have authorization to make any statements – not even to his lawyers,” Lohkamp told the court, adding that under German law, “Anyone who cannot speak out cannot be convicted.”

As such, the case will ultimately rest on the strength of the prosecution’s evidence. However, with no fingerprints and no witnesses, securing a conviction will be no easy task. Given the fact that a guilty verdict would implicate the Ukrainian military in a war crime against Kiev’s largest foreign donor, a logical next question is whether the trial is set up to fail.

Stick with RT for all the latest news on the Nord Stream trial over the coming months.