A second suspect has been arrested in relation to the Nord Stream gas pipelines explosions in 2022, Germany’s federal public prosecutor general said on Wednesday.

The German prosecutors said the suspect was a “trained scuba diver” who belonged to a group of people who “planted explosives” on the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines near the island of Bornholm in September 2022.

Croatian police, acting on a European arrest warrant, arrested in the morning of August 19, 2026, the Ukrainian national in Pula, Croatia.

The man, according to the authorities, is suspected of jointly causing explosions, anti-constitutional sabotage, and destruction of buildings and structures.

The German prosecutor’s office said the suspect participated in the necessary dives.

“To this end, he and his co-perpetrators departed from Rostock on board a sailing yacht. Intermediaries had previously rented the yacht from a German company with falsified IDs. The explosives detonated on 26 September 2022, causing substantial damages to both pipelines,” it added.

The suspect shall be brought before the Investigating Judge at the Federal Court of Justice upon his extradition from Croatia.

This is the second arrest in one year and this time in Croatia.

The other suspect was arrested by Italian police in the province of Rimini on August 21, 2025, in execution of a European arrest warrant and extradited to Germany in November 2025.

Germany’s federal prosecutor’s office filed an indictment against the national, also Ukrainian, over the explosions of the Nord Stream gas pipelines.

According to an indictment filed on June 30, prosecutors accuse the man of acting as a co-perpetrator in a war crime involving an attack on civilian objects, causing an explosion, destroying buildings and disrupting public services.

German courts have treated the case as falling within German jurisdiction because ​the pipelines run from Russia through the Baltic Sea to Lubmin, Germany.

He and the other members of the group allegedly boarded a sailing yacht suitable for the open sea, which had been previously chartered from a German company in Rostock by intermediates using fake IDs, prosecutors said in a statement.

According to the prosecutors’ release, the accused and his accomplices comprising of several professional divers, a skipper and an explosives expert, allegedly transported large quantities of high-performance, military-grade explosives through international waters to a location near the Danish island of Bornholm, where the pipelines run along the seabed.

As they said, the group led by the accused placed various explosive devices fitted with time fuses on the pipelines.

They said the plan was to “destroy the “Nord Stream 1” and “Nord Stream 2” gas pipelines” in 2022 and described the accused as “military personnel.”

Prior to the incident, ‘Nord Stream 1’ had been used to transport approximately half of Germany’s annual natural gas demand for energy production.

Kyiv has denied involvement in the case, media reports say.