Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Tuesday it is “not in Poland’s interest” to extradite the Ukrainian man suspected of sabotaging the Nord Stream pipeline at Berlin’s request.
Instead, Tusk said the pipeline should not have been built to begin with and pinned the blame on “Russia… some European countries, German companies, and Dutch companies.”
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“The problem for Europe, Ukraine, Lithuania, and Poland isn’t that Nord Stream II was blown up, but that it was built,” Tusk told a news conference in Warsaw while speaking alongside Lithuanian Prime Minister Inga Ruginiene, according to Polsat News.
“Russia, with funding from some European countries, German companies, and Dutch companies, built Nord Stream II against the most vital interests of all of Europe,” Tusk added.
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Tusk said he voiced the same position when the suspect, Volodymyr Z, was arrested in September.
“Many months ago, I presented Poland’s clear position to the previous German Chancellor and the President of Ukraine – from our point of view, the only people who should be ashamed and remain silent regarding Nord Stream II are those who decided to build it,” Tusk said.
Tusk said it is ultimately up to the Polish court to decide whether to extradite the suspect, but he added that he believes it is “not in Poland’s interest to prosecute or extradite this citizen to another country.”
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“The decision will rest with the court,” he added.
What happened?
The Nord Stream is a pair of underwater gas pipelines running through the Baltic Sea, designed to transport natural gas from Russia to Germany.
The first line, Nord Stream 1, was built between 2010 and 2011, while Nord Stream 2 was completed in 2021 but never became operational following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
In September 2022, explosions and gas leaks were detected in the seabed by the pipeline, with the blasts severely damaging Nord Stream 1 and 2, cutting energy flows from Russia to Europe.
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While it remains unclear who carried out the attack, the Washington Post and German outlet Der Spiegel, citing unnamed sources, wrote in November 2023 that a senior Ukrainian military officer played a role in the incident.
In August 2024, The Wall Street Journal reported that the attack was approved by senior officials in Kyiv, alleging that former Commander-in-Chief Valery Zaluzhny was aware of the planned operation and initially supported it but later failed to prevent it.
President Volodymyr Zelensky has denied that he or his government had any knowledge of the attacks.
In September 2025, Volodymyr Z (unrelated to the Ukrainian president), a diving instructor whom German investigators allege sailed from Rostock to the Baltic Sea to carry out the attack in September 2022, was arrested in Poland.