Italian police have detained a Ukrainian national, named by German authorities only as Serhii K., on a European arrest warrant that accuses him of helping to coordinate the September 2022 explosions that crippled the Nord Stream gas pipelines between Russia and Germany. The overnight arrest took place in the Adriatic province of Rimini, and the suspect is to be transferred to Germany to appear before a federal judge in Karlsruhe. Prosecutors in Karlsruhe said the man was part of a group that sailed from the German port of Rostock aboard the rented yacht “Andromeda,” using forged identity papers, before planting explosive devices on Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 near Denmark’s Bornholm island. He faces charges of jointly causing an explosion, anti-constitutional sabotage and destruction of property. The underwater blasts on 26 September 2022 ruptured three of the pipelines’ four strands, halting a major route for Russian natural-gas supplies to Europe and deepening the region’s energy crisis in the first year of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. No government or organisation has admitted responsibility, and investigations by Germany, Denmark and Sweden are continuing. German prosecutors said inquiries into additional suspects remain active.