German Warrant for Alleged Nord Stream Saboteur Reignites Questions About What the U.S. Knew

A recently issued arrest warrant in Germany for Ukrainian national Serhii Kuznietsov has reopened debate over responsibility for the 2022 sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines in waters near Denmark and Sweden. If investigators' accounts are borne out, the warrant could strengthen long-standing allegations that Ukrainian operatives — rather than Russia — carried out the attack.

Reports say a Ukrainian whistleblower allegedly warned U.S. officials years earlier that a six-person Ukrainian special forces team planned to rent a boat, dive to the seabed and detonate the pipelines. The operation has been linked in reporting to Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyi, who was commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces at the time. These claims remain under investigation and have not been proven in a court of law.

In the months after the explosions, U.S. officials and many reporters pointed to the possibility of a Russian false-flag operation — a narrative that critics say deflected attention from other plausible leads. At the same time, Washington continued to provide large-scale assistance to Kyiv; U.S. support for Ukraine has since exceeded an estimated $180 billion.

European responses to the probe have differed. A Polish court recently blocked the extradition of a suspected Ukrainian operative to Germany, ruling that the act was committed in the name of a just war. By contrast, an Italian court ordered the extradition of Kuznietsov, whom prosecutors consider a central figure in the alleged plot. Investigators say the scheme involved leasing a yacht from the German port of Rostock, using forged identification documents and a layer of intermediaries. Kuznietsov maintains he was serving as an army captain for Ukraine at the time.

These developments raise two related lines of inquiry: whether Ukrainian operatives conducted the attack, and whether U.S. officials were aware of credible intelligence pointing in that direction. President Biden publicly warned against believing Russian claims in the aftermath, saying that "the Russians are pumping out disinformation and lies" and urging trust in allied investigations. If U.S. agencies had prior knowledge of different intelligence, questions remain about what was known, when, and how that information was communicated to the public.

There are also specific questions about U.S. intelligence agencies: were they warned in advance, did they brief allies, and did any agency tacitly permit or fail to prevent covert actions that targeted infrastructure in the exclusive economic zones of NATO countries?

"The first casualty when war comes is truth," the aphorism warns. When governments withhold or shape information, public trust and democratic accountability suffer — especially when taxpayers are asked to underwrite foreign engagements.

As German authorities and their international partners continue to investigate, the outcome could reshape the historical record of the Nord Stream attacks and prompt uncomfortable questions about transparency and accountability during a pivotal period of U.S. foreign policy.

Author: Jonathan Turley, Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law, George Washington University. The opinions expressed here are the author's.