Published by Global Banking & Finance Review®
Posted on October 7, 2025
2 min readLast updated: January 21, 2026
Add as preferred source on GooglePoland denies extraditing a Ukrainian suspect in the Nord Stream case, citing national interest. The court will decide his fate, amid ongoing tensions.
WARSAW (Reuters) -It is not in Poland's interest to hand over a Ukrainian man wanted by Germany for suspected involvement in explosions which damaged the Nord Stream gas pipelines, the Polish prime minister said on Tuesday.
Donald Tusk said that ultimately it was for the court to decide whether Volodymyr Z., who was detained near Warsaw in late September, is handed over. But he reiterated Poland's long-standing opposition to the pipelines, which Warsaw says were key to making Europe too dependent on Russian energy.
"The problem of Europe, the problem of Ukraine, the problem of Lithuania and Poland is not that Nord Stream 2 was blown up, but that it was built," Tusk told a news conference.
"It is certainly not in the interest of Poland... to hand over this citizen to a foreign country," he added.
German authorities did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A Polish court ruled on Monday that Volodymyr Z. must remain in custody for another 40 days while a decision is made on whether to transfer him to Germany based on a European arrest warrant.
Described by both Moscow and the West as an act of sabotage, the explosions in 2022 marked an escalation in the Ukraine conflict and squeezed energy supplies. No one has taken responsibility for the blasts and Ukraine has denied any role.
Another Ukrainian man suspected of coordinating the attacks was arrested in Italy in August and plans to fight extradition to Germany.
Volodymyr Z's Polish lawyer has said his client has done nothing wrong and that he will plead not guilty.
Germany's top prosecutors' office said in an earlier statement that the diver was one of a group of people who were suspected of renting a sailing yacht and planting explosives on the pipelines, which run from Russia to Germany, near the Danish island of Bornholm in September 2022.
He faces accusations of conspiring to commit an explosives attack and of "anti-constitutional sabotage", the German prosecutors added.
(Reporting by Alan Charlish, Barbara Erling, Anna Wlodarczak-Semczuk, Marek Strzelecki in Warsaw, Sarah Marsh in BerlinEditing by Gareth Jones)
Extradition is the formal process by which one country surrenders a suspected or convicted criminal to another country, typically based on a treaty or legal agreement.
The Nord Stream pipelines are major natural gas pipelines running under the Baltic Sea, connecting Russian gas supplies to Europe, specifically Germany.
Legal custody refers to the legal authority to make decisions about a person's welfare, including their detention or imprisonment.
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