The man, identified only as Volodymyr Z., is wanted by German authorities over his alleged part in the 2022 blasts.
“Whichever Ukrainian citizen participated in these activities, considering the war in Ukraine and the fact that the owner of this infrastructure is a Russian company that directly finances the war in Ukraine, it is difficult to believe that these actions could be considered a crime,” Paprocki told the Polska Agencja Prasowa (PAP), Poland’s national news agency.
The Nord Stream pipelines are owned by Moscow’s state energy giant Gazprom.
Piotr Antoni Skiba, a spokesman for the District Prosecutor’s Office in Warsaw, also confirmed the arrest to PAP and said that proceedings related to the European arrest warrant were underway.
In a separate statement, Paprocki said: “My client has done nothing wrong and pleads not guilty. My client has not committed any crime to the detriment of Germany.”
The Epoch Times reached out to Paprocki for further comment but did not receive a response by publication time.
The German Federal Prosecutor’s Office, which first issued the warrant for the arrest of Volodymyr Z. in June 2024, said the suspect is “strongly suspected of jointly causing an explosion, anti-constitutional sabotage, and destruction of structures.”
The German prosecutor’s office described Volodymyr Z. as a “trained diver” and said that he “belonged to a group of individuals who, in September 2022 near the island of Bornholm, placed explosive charges on the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines.”
The office said the suspect participated in the dives during the operation.
“For transport, he and his accomplices used a sailing yacht that departed from Rostock,” the prosecutor’s office said. “The yacht had previously been rented from a German company through intermediaries using forged identity documents. The explosive charges detonated on 26 September 2022, causing severe damage to both pipelines.”
Volodymyr Z.’s arrest comes a month after another Ukrainian man suspected of involvement in the attacks was arrested in Italy.
The 2022 blasts in the Baltic Sea wrecked three out of four Nord Stream pipelines, releasing record-breaking quantities of methane into the atmosphere.
Along with Germany, both Sweden and Denmark also conducted investigations into the incident, but both Scandinavian nations closed their probes in February 2024.
Ukraine, Russia, and the United States have all previously denied responsibility for the explosion.
Reuters contributed to this report.
By Guy Birchall
