The Nord Stream trial: Ukraine’s strategy of silence

Germany’s star suspect won’t talk, and his defense team thinks that building the pipeline was the real crime The trial of Nord Stream bombing suspect Sergey Kuznetsov is underway in Germany, and the Ukrainian veteran’s defense team have revealed their strategy: say nothing and blame Russia.Kuznetsov arrived at the Higher Regional Court of Hamburg under heavy security on Wednesday. The hearing is the first of 24 sessions scheduled between now and February, as German prosecutors attempt to prove that the Ukrainian military veteran led the sabotage operation that destroyed the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines in September 2022, an act that they say constitutes a war crime.What is Sergey Kuznetsov accused of?The allegations against Kuznetsov largely follow the German government’s version of events, which have been drip-fed to Western media outlets in a series of leaks over the last four years. Kuznetsov, prosecutors claim, entered Germany in September 2022 using a forged Ukrainian passport, rented a pleasure yacht with six accomplices, and planted explosives on one of the four undersea lines comprising the Nord Stream project while his team sabotaged the remaining three, a...