2022 Nord Stream Explosions Strain Berlin-Kyiv Relations

The 2022 sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines, which cost up to $19 billion to build, is seen as a symbol of the failure of Berlin's 'change through trade' policy, which aimed to soften Moscow's hardline leadership through commercial ties, according to some analysts.

Gas was pumped from Yamal, Russia's Arctic peninsula, to Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany's Baltic region. However, on September 26, 2022, multiple underwater explosions created a bubbling column of natural gas several kilometers wide, becoming the worst methane leak in history and halting gas flow through the pipelines.

Considered an act of sabotage, the incident drew the attention of Hollywood director Doug Liman, known for films like The Bourne Identity and Mr & Mrs Smith. Oscar-winning actors Sean Penn and Adrien Brody will star in Liman's new film, titled Snake Island, about Ukrainian divers descending into the Baltic Sea to blow up the world's longest subsea oil pipeline.

Meanwhile, at the scene, one of the suspected divers, Volodymyr Zhuravlev, 46, a father of three with over two decades of freediving experience, once served as an advisor to Liman's film crew in Croatia. He was arrested in the Croatian city of Pula on August 19 and will be extradited to Germany.

Last year, another suspect allegedly involved in the sabotage group, Serhii Kuznetsov, was arrested in Italy and extradited to Germany. The 49-year-old is believed to have worked for Ukrainian intelligence and complained that he had been 'abandoned by the country and the president.'

The arrests and upcoming trials have highlighted the sabotage that shocked Germany's economy, completely transforming its export and energy consumption landscape – and still affecting relations between Berlin and Kyiv.

'The Nord Stream sabotage reinforces an important lesson from the 2022 energy crisis – Germany became too dependent on Russian fossil gas,' Claudia Kemfert, professor at the German Institute for Economic Research in Berlin, told Al Jazeera.

The pipelines were designed to carry 110 billion cubic meters of natural gas per year and made Germany 'hostage to Russia,' as US President Donald Trump said in 2022. Nord Stream 2 never became operational but still contained pressurized gas at the time of the explosion. Nord Stream 1, along with other Russian pipelines, supplied 55% of Germany's natural gas. This gas was used to heat homes, generate energy, and power the economic pillars of Europe's largest economy, which is export-oriented, including the chemical and steel industries.

The alleged sabotage 'fundamentally changed the debate on energy security,' Kemfert said. 'Today, security means reducing dependence on fossil fuel imports through diversification, renewables, efficiency, grids, and storage.' The crisis also spurred the rapid expansion of liquefied natural gas (LNG) infrastructure. 'The central lesson is clear: the less Germany depends on imported fossil fuels, the more resilient its economy and energy system will be,' Kemfert said.

Meanwhile, unanswered questions surrounding Nord Stream 'remain politically sensitive' in Berlin-Kyiv relations, she said. After Trump withdrew Washington from the political chessboard of the Russia-Ukraine war, Berlin became Kyiv's largest and most steadfast Western backer. But Germany seems determined to prosecute the sabotage group.

'It's a matter of principle for the German government, but also a matter of the rule of law,' Cristian Vlas, an expert at ACLED, an international consultancy, told Al Jazeera. And Ukraine's most coveted postwar dream – joining NATO and becoming an EU member – could be hindered if the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) comes to power. The AfD opposes military and financial aid to Ukraine, wants to block its EU and NATO membership, lift Western sanctions on Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine, and resume Russian energy imports.

Ukraine's EU and NATO accession could be 'even further away,' Kyiv-based analyst Aleksey Kushch told Al Jazeera, but the alleged sabotage still succeeded in severing the 'umbilical cord' of the Berlin-Moscow alliance, which was detrimental to Ukraine economically and politically. In 2008, Berlin and Paris blocked NATO membership invitations for Ukraine, arguing it would 'provoke' Russia. After Nord Stream 1 became operational in 2011, Kyiv lost half of its $3 billion annual transit fees for Russian gas pumped westward through Ukrainian pipelines. Berlin also refused to transfer weapons to Kyiv after Moscow annexed Crimea in 2014.

After Russia's full-scale invasion began in 2022, Berlin admitted it had been wrong about its 'change through trade' approach to Moscow's aggression. 'We failed at many points,' German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier told ZDF in 2022. 'It's true we should have paid more attention to the warnings of our Eastern European partners, especially regarding the period after 2014.'

After the pipeline explosions, no country or group claimed responsibility, and commentators pointed fingers at Washington, which opposed the pipeline's construction, and Moscow, which some believed would benefit from higher natural gas prices and chaos in European energy markets. Conversely, Moscow accused 'Anglo-Saxon powers' of being behind the explosions. It took German prosecutors nearly two years to zero in on the sabotage group and accuse Kyiv of orchestrating the bombings. But Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has repeatedly denied Kyiv's involvement. 'Germany knows very well that Ukraine was not behind the execution and the very concept of conducting this specific operation,' he said recently at a press conference.

So far, the upcoming trials of Zhuravlev and Kuznetsov have not affected aid from Berlin. 'Germany still has a huge credit line for Ukraine; however, that won't stop prosecutors from doing their job and completing the case, nor courts from convicting ordinary executors,' Nikolay Mitrokhin of the University of Bremen (Germany) told Al Jazeera. But alongside the pipeline explosions, tensions have previously surfaced between German politicians and Ukrainian officials. In 2022, Andrii Melnyk, then Ukraine's ambassador to Berlin, criticized then-German Chancellor Olaf Scholz for not providing sufficient lethal weapons, calling him an 'offended liver sausage.' Also in 2022, Dmytro Kuleba, then Ukraine's foreign minister, expressed frustration with Berlin's slow weapons deliveries, calling them 'disappointing signals.'

'For Ukraine's future, things are bad because the [Ukrainian] elite is convinced that this is the way to get things done, and this style, not this particular case [of sabotage], could cost them EU membership,' Mitrokhin said. 'Germany remembers everything, and after [German Chancellor Friedrich] Merz, who is kind to Ukraine, someone else who is not so kind could come to power,' he said.