October 2025 |
251004 |
ENERGY CHRONICLE |
Poland is unwilling to extradite 46-year-old Volodymyr Z. to the German authorities, who is accused by the Federal Prosecutor's Office of involvement in the bombing of the two Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea on September 26, 2022. The Ukrainian was therefore to be arrested in August 2024 and handed over to the German authorities after the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office had issued a European arrest warrant to the Polish authorities. However, this was not enforced because Z. was able to leave the country for Ukraine with the tolerance or even assistance of the authorities (240801).
After his temporary escape, the wanted man returned to Poland, where he had previously lived. On September 30, he was finally arrested by the Polish authorities in the town of Pruszkow near Warsaw. “After his transfer from Poland, the accused will be brought before the investigating judge of the Federal Court of Justice,” according to a press release from the Federal Prosecutor's Office. The hearing on the requested transfer to Karlsruhe took place on October 17 at the district court in Warsaw. During the hearing, Z. claimed that he had not been involved in the attack on the pipelines and had been in Ukraine at the time in question. “You are free!” the judge declared at the end of the hearing, rejecting the extradition request and lifting the pretrial detention.
However, it was not the rather implausible denial of involvement in the crime that helped the arrested man gain his release. According to the Polish agency PAP, the judge responsible justified his decision on the grounds that it did not matter whether the allegations were true. Rather, the decisive factor was that the actions Z. was accused of were not illegal at all. They were even justified, rational, and fair. Attacks on an attacker's critical infrastructure by armed forces and special units during a war were not acts of sabotage, but acts of diversion (“aktem dywersji”), which could in no way be considered criminal offenses. The bombing of the Baltic Sea pipelines took place during a “bloody and genocidal attack by Russia on Ukraine,” which had already begun in 2014 with Russia's annexation of Crimea. Therefore, at most, the Ukrainian state could be held responsible for such a justified defensive measure against the Russian aggressor.
The Polish public prosecutor's office immediately announced that it would accept the court's decision. In Poland, the construction of the Baltic Sea pipelines has always been rejected and perceived as a threat, as it clearly served the purpose of devaluing and rendering superfluous the transit gas pipelines running through Ukraine and Poland. Similarly, across party lines, the blowing up of three of the four pipes was met not with outrage, but with satisfaction. When it then emerged that the perpetrators were most likely Ukrainians, this made them national heroes in the eyes of most Poles. Added to this is a deep-seated mistrust of Russia based on painful historical experiences, which is even greater than the resentment toward Germany, also rooted in history, which has been fueled by the construction of the Baltic Sea gas pipelines. All of this must be taken into account in order to understand the decision of the Warsaw District Court, which would hardly stand up to review by the European Court of Justice.
In addition, liberal-conservative Prime Minister Donald Tusk is under strong pressure from the nationalist right-wing PiS party, which wants to regain the political power it lost in 2023. At a rally on October 11, PiS politician Pawel Jablonski accused the “Tusk state” of wanting to hand over the arrested Ukrainian to the Germans. At the same rally, opposition leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski warned that Tusk even wanted to establish a “German protectorate” in Poland.
It is not known whether or to what extent Tusk was involved in the subsequent arrest of Volodymyr Z. In terms of foreign policy, it certainly helped Poland's damaged reputation in the EU. The failure of the authorities a year ago still fits into the picture of a severely damaged constitutional state, which prompted the EU Court of Justice to impose a daily penalty payment of one million euros on the PiS government (230613).
Domestically, however, Tusk can only lose if the opposition's propaganda succeeds in portraying him as the initiator of the arrest or as a supporter of the German extradition request. He therefore emphasized that it was now in the hands of independent judges to decide on the further fate of the arrested man. On a purely personal level, however, he rejected extradition to Germany, he assured – which a not-so-independent judge could, of course, also understand as a request to decide in line with the head of government's wishes.
“It is certainly not in Poland's interest, nor in the interest of decency and justice, to prosecute this citizen or extradite him to another country,” Tusk said on October 7 during a visit by Lithuanian Prime Minister Inga Ruginiene to Warsaw. And on the same day, he posted the following statement on the social media platform “X”:“The problem with Nord Stream 2 is not that it was blown up. The problem is that it was built.”
Under these circumstances, the German federal government, consisting of the CDU/CSU and SPD, will not want to clash with the government in Warsaw over the extradition of Volodymyr Z. At least that is what CDU foreign policy expert Roderich Kiesewetter indicated in a statement to the Handelsblatt newspaper (October 17):“In my view, Germany's highly questionable behavior with regard to the construction of Nord Stream has been and continues to be a strain on relations with our allies.”He said he could“fully understand that Italy and Poland have no particular interest in prosecuting these citizens.”Kiesewetter even considered it possible that the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office would drop the investigation. However, he said that was a decision for the office itself to make. The Federal Public Prosecutor's Office declined to comment when asked.
A second European arrest warrant issued by the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office against another named suspect from the seven-member sabotage team has also not yet led to the extradition of the arrested person. The suspect is 49-year-old Ukrainian Serhij K., who was arrested by Italian police on August 21 in a resort town near Rimini while vacationing there with family members (250805). Initially, a court in Bologna had granted the German extradition request in mid-September. However, at the request of K.'s lawyer, the Italian Supreme Court in Rome overturned this decision due to procedural irregularities and ordered a retrial. On October 27, the lawyer announced that the appeals court had also approved the extradition, but that he would again appeal this decision to the Court of Cassation in Rome. Like Volodymyr Z., Serhiy K. denies having been involved in the attack.