Moscow has filed an official complaint to Germany over its alleged failure to properly investigate the 2022 Nord Stream sabotage, the Russian state-owned Ria Novosti reported on Monday, August 19th.
“We have raised the question of the fulfillment by Germany and other affected countries of their obligations arising from the U.N. anti-terrorist conventions,” Oleg Tyapkin, the head of the European department at the Russian foreign ministry said. “In this regard, bilaterally, the relevant claims have been formally submitted, including to Berlin.”
Tyapkin recalled that Germany has officially identified only a single suspect so far—a Ukrainian driver instructor named Volodymyr Z.—who was allowed to slip through the Polish-Ukrainian border last month, allegedly because of Berlin’s failure to include him on the international wanted persons list.
Right after the blunder became public last week, The Wall Street Journal also published the most detailed investigative report into the incident so far, implicating Ukrainian intelligence and military officials, high-level Polish collaborators, and even President Zelensky himself.
Yet, despite everything, Germany still insists that it uncovered nothing that would link its lone suspect and the operation to Kyiv or any other capital. That is why Moscow believes that, much like the Swedish and Danish ones, “the German investigation will also be closed without identifying the true culprits of the Nord Stream bombing,” Tyapkin said.
Russia has been calling for a UN-backed international investigation into the sabotage for the past two years, but its request has been consistently denied by the UN Security Council, which also includes the U.S., the UK, France, and China as permanent members.
Naturally, the recent revelations stirred up the water in Germany too, where populist parties both on the Left and the Right immediately called for stopping financial and military aid to Ukraine in retaliation. It turns out that—as revealed to German media over the weekend—Berlin did decide to halt all future aid packages, but for budgetary reasons.
August Hanning, the former head of Germany’s foreign intelligence agency BND, went as far as to suggest that Germany should seek compensation from both Ukraine and Poland as the sabotage operation caused billions in damages to the country’s economy.
Krzysztof Gawkowski, Polish deputy prime minister, strongly denied all allegations that Poland had been involved in any form and accused those suggesting it of spreading “Russian disinformation.” Polish PM Donald Tusk put it even more bluntly when he addressed the “patrons” of the Nord Stream who expressed outrage after following the WSJ report’s publication: “The only thing you should do today about it is apologize and keep quiet.
