A German court will next month put a Ukrainian man on trial over the 2022 bombing of the Nord Stream seafloor gas pipelines linking Russia with Europe, the tribunal said Thursday.
Serhii Kuznietsov will face the Hamburg Higher Regional Court from October 14 in a trial expected to last until February.
The Baltic Sea sabotage attack came months after Russia's February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine and destroyed three of four pipelines of the major energy link.
German investigators believe the attack was ordered by a Ukrainian state agency with the aim of depriving Russia of energy revenues to finance its war in Ukraine.
The court said there was sufficient suspicion that "the accused was a co-perpetrator of the war crime of employing prohibited methods of warfare through an attack on civilian objects, causing an explosion, destroying structures and disrupting public utilities".
German prosecutors say Kuznietsov used forged identity documents to charter a yacht, which departed from the German city of Rostock to carry out the attacks.
The public broadcaster ARD said that seven suspects had been identified, one of whom had since died fighting Russia.
Russia had already stopped gas deliveries through the pipeline at the time of the attack, citing technical problems, though the move was widely seen as a response to Berlin's support for Kyiv.
Kuznietsov was arrested in August 2025 while on holiday in Italy and later extradited to Germany.
An alleged accomplice, Volodymyr Zhuravlyov, was arrested in Croatia last month while reportedly working on a Hollywood dramatisation of the attack.
The case is awkward for Germany and Ukraine, as Berlin has strongly backed Kyiv in its fight against Russia.
German government officials, when asked about the issue, have pointed to the independence of the judiciary.
Ukraine denies orchestrating the sabotage but has made no secret of its satisfaction, deeming any attack that weakens the Kremlin's ability to fund its war effort to be legitimate.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said his government knew nothing about any plan to blow up the pipelines.
