German news agency Der Spiegel reported that suspect "Vladimir Z" used a Ukrainian government car to leave Poland.
The Ukrainian diver accused of being behind the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage has escaped a German arrest warrant with the help of Ukraine and possibly Poland, Der Spiegel writes.
The Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines under the Baltic Sea were damaged in a series of explosions in September 2022, cutting off the flow of Russian gas to Germany. No one has claimed responsibility for the explosions, but some Western media outlets have alleged that the sabotage was carried out by a group of Ukrainian citizens.
In early August, German media reported that Berlin had issued an arrest warrant for “Vladimir Z,” a former Ukrainian military diver who they accused of planting explosives on the Nord Stream pipeline. Russian media identified the suspect as Vladimir Zhuravlev.
According to an investigation by Der Spiegel published on August 29, Zhuravlev was actually in Germany in May and in Poland at the time the arrest warrant was issued.
Polish authorities did nothing to arrest Zhuravlev, who may have crossed into Ukraine on July 6 in a vehicle belonging to the Ukrainian Embassy in Warsaw.
"Why should we arrest him? For us, he is a hero!" - Der Spiegel quotes German security officials paraphrasing the words of their Polish counterparts.
The German news agency noted that Zhuravlev and his family entered Germany in May, en route to Denmark, and claimed to have identified the apartment in the Bryggen Syd district (Copenhagen), where the Zhuravlev family lived. On May 26, the family took a ferry to Rostock and stopped in Berlin, on the way back to Warsaw.
Zhuravlev was already on the radar of the German authorities, but Berlin had not yet issued an arrest warrant. Berlin only acted in the first week of June, and it was not until June 21 that the European arrest warrant was transmitted to Poland. However, Warsaw did nothing.
Zhuravlev fled Poland on July 6, crossing the border into Ukraine at Korczowa at 6:20 a.m. Security sources told Spiegel that he was in a car with diplomatic plates, used by the Ukrainian embassy in Warsaw.
Spiegel's security sources said Germany was "very angry" with Poland and would not forget Warsaw's "deceitful behavior".
Responding to media reports of the attack, former German intelligence chief August Hanning said earlier this month that Poland and Ukraine may have collaborated. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk responded by demanding that all “initiators and sponsors” of Nord Stream “apologize and remain silent.”
Reports that a group of Ukrainians working on chartered yachts — with or without the approval of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky — were responsible for the Nord Stream sabotage only emerged after Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh claimed that the US government was behind the explosions.
