The latest news in the Nord Stream case said that the Ukrainian court allowed bail for a high-ranking military officer suspected of directly participating in the sabotage of the gas pipeline in the Baltic.
Earlier this week, the Ukrainian law firm Katerynchuk, Moor & Partners reported that the court of appeal in the Kirovohrad region granted bail in the amount of 9 million hryvnya (218,000 USD) to former Special Forces Colonel Roman Chervinskiy.
Chervinskiy was the person the Washington Post described last November as the suspect who played a coordinating role in the 2022 attack on the Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines.
Nord Stream sabotage suspect Roman Chervinskiy was arrested last April on charges of abuse of power.
According to the investigation, the allegation is related to a failed hijacking of a Russian plane, leading to a Russian missile attack on Kanatove airport in the Kirovohrad region in July 2022, killing 1 Ukrainian soldier and 17 others. injured.
In November last year, in an article about the Nord Stream case, the Washington Post described Roman Chervinskiy as an accomplished officer in the Ukrainian army with "deep ties" to the country's intelligence agencies.
The Washington Post said that this man "played a central role" and was the "coordinator" of the attack on the Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines.
According to the news report, Roman Chervinskiy "received orders from higher-ranking Ukrainian officials, who ultimately reported to General Valeriy Zaluzhniy" - Ukraine's highest-ranking officer at the time.
Ukrainian and European officials as well as “others knowledgeable about the details of the covert operation” provided information to the Washington Post in its report on the Nord Stream case and the main suspect Roman Chervinskiy.
Through his lawyer, Roman Chervinskiy denied accusations of being involved in sabotaging the gas pipeline between Russia and Germany running under the Baltic Sea.
Explosives were attached and detonated on the vital Nord Stream gas pipeline in September 2022, causing a large gas leak. The attack on the Nord Stream system is considered a dangerous attack on European infrastructure half a year after the Russia-Ukraine conflict broke out.
Nord Stream is majority owned by Russian company Gazprom and has supplied Russian gas to millions of Europeans. This gas pipeline is considered a major effort by Russia to bypass Ukraine in the process of transporting Russian gas west to the EU market.
For many years, the US warned that the Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 pipelines were a security risk to Germany and other European countries, causing these countries to rely on Russian energy exports.