Nord Stream Trial: Who Ordered the Sabotage?

TVS News AI, editorially supervised, presents Nord Stream Trial: Who Ordered the Sabotage.

In Hamburg, the trial over the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines is getting underway these days. At its center stands a man the Federal Prosecutor's Office (Bundesanwaltschaft) views as the leader of the sabotage team – and the question of whether he acted on behalf of state authorities in Ukraine. The podcast 11KM takes up the indictment in a new episode. If you're wondering what it means when the biggest infrastructure attack in recent German energy policy may have been ordered by a European state: this episode delivers answers straight from the source.

What the new 11KM episode covers

The episode, titled "Attack on Behalf of Ukraine?," runs 33 minutes and was published on October 14, 2026, at 6:00 a.m., according to Tagesschau. Reporter Jörg Diehl lays out why the Federal Prosecutor's Office, in its indictment, assumes that the defendant did not act on his own behalf but on instructions from Ukrainian authorities. The episode is available on NDR and also as a YouTube video.

What the Federal Prosecutor's Office charges the defendant with

According to the Tagesspiegel, the Federal Prosecutor's Office assumes that the plans for the attacks on the Nord Stream pipelines were developed on behalf of state authorities in Ukraine. The accused has been in German pretrial detention since November, according to the Frankfurter Rundschau; the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) has declared the indictment chamber of the Hanseatic Higher Regional Court in Hamburg (Hanseatisches Oberlandesgericht) competent. What this means for you: in court, it is not a lone perpetrator who is on trial – the role of a state is officially being adjudicated.

What evidence is in play

As Tagesschau, NDR, and WDR report jointly, the US intelligence agency CIA warned Ukraine months before the attack not to strike the Nord Stream pipelines. That is just one piece in a web of circumstantial evidence that the Federal Prosecutor's Office has built up, according to the Tagesspiegel. The authority does not wish to comment on further details while proceedings are ongoing. Die Zeit poses what is so far the most open-ended question in its accompanying coverage: Did Ukraine perhaps commission a war crime with the sabotage?

The technical fallout – to this day

According to the findings of the BGH's ruling, summarized in a Wikipedia entry on the criminal case, two strings of Nord Stream 1 and one string of Nord Stream 2 were completely or partially destroyed and permanently rendered inoperable. To this day, the damaged lines have not been put back into service. The attack thus continues to have effects not only in legal terms but also in energy policy.

What this means for German-Ukrainian relations

Germany has supported Ukraine militarily and financially for years. At the same time, a criminal trial is underway in Hamburg whose subject is the suspicion of state-ordered sabotage on German soil. Die Zeit makes clear: the consequences of this case reach far beyond the courtroom. Whether the indictment will ultimately hold up will be revealed in the trial. One thing is already clear: the answer concerns not just the defendant, but an entire relationship between states.