Nord Stream sabotage suspect extradition approved in Croatia

A Croatian court has approved the extradition of Ukrainian Volodymyr Zhuravlyov to Germany over the 2022 Nord Stream pipeline bombings, his lawyer Ljubo Pavasovic Viskovic told AFP on Thursday.

Viskovic said the court in the northern Adriatic town of Pula approved extradition on September 18, but the ruling is not final and will be appealed.

The 2022 attack destroyed three of four pipelines in the Nord Stream gas link between Russia and Europe. German prosecutors say Zhuravlyov is a trained diver and accuse him of helping plant explosives on the Baltic Sea pipelines between Russia and Germany.

German investigators believe a Ukrainian state agency ordered the attack to deprive Russia of energy revenues used to finance its invasion of Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said his government knew nothing about any plan to blow up the pipelines.

Zhuravlyov was arrested in Croatia in August under a European arrest warrant issued by Germany. Prosecutors also accuse him of working closely with Serhii Kuznietsov, another Ukrainian who was extradited from Italy to Germany last year. Kuznietsov is due to face the Hamburg Higher Regional Court on October 14 in a trial expected to last until February.