// BBC WORLD NEWS — MONDO
Germany puts Ukrainian on trial accused of blowing up Nord Stream pipelines
Serhii K was extradited to Germany from Italy late last year
Four years after one of the most dramatic acts of sabotage in modern European history, a Ukrainian man goes on trial in Hamburg on Wednesday accused of blowing up Russia's Nord Stream gas pipelines to Germany.
Serhii K, as he is identified by German prosecutors, is accused of plotting with other Ukrainian military personnel to destroy the pipelines and stop Russia financing its war with gas revenue.
The case is highly sensitive in Germany, seen as one of Ukraine's closest allies since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, seven months before the attacks took place.
Serhii K, extradited to Germany last year, will become the first suspect to go on trial for the blasts.
He denies the charges, as does a second suspect who is fighting extradition from Croatia.
In the months after explosives destroyed three of the four gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea off the island of Bornholm on 26 September 2022, Western suspicion looked towards Moscow without directly apportioning blame.
Russia had already shut off the flow of gas to Germany in Nord Stream 1 weeks before the attack, and Nord Stream 2 had never been turned on. Berlin had frozen the multi-billion dollar project shortly before the invasion and there were reports of suspicious Russian naval movements before the blasts.
As investigators from Sweden, Denmark and Germany tried to find out who carried out the attack, Russia's Vladimir Putin accused the US and its UK allies, blaming "the Anglo-Saxons" - which they denied.
Eventually, after Denmark and Sweden shut down their inquiries, German prosecutors focused on a group of deep-sea divers who had rented a yacht called the Andromeda in the northern German port of Rostock.