The Nord Stream pipelines were a legitimate target, even if Ukraine was behind the 2022 blasts, Czech President Petr Pavel said on Aug. 21 in the Czech news outlet Novinky's podcast PoliTalk.
Pavel added that he had no verified information on whether Kyiv was involved in the operation to blow up the gas pipelines.
The Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines in the Baltic Sea were built to supply natural gas from Russia to Europe.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Aug. 14, citing its undisclosed sources, that a number of high-ranking Ukrainian military and businesspeople had planned an operation to blow up the Nord Stream gas pipelines in 2022.
Kyiv has repeatedly denied connection to the Nord Stream blasts.
Pavel told Novinky that if the goal was to cut off gas and oil supplies to Europe and prevent Russia from profiting from it, then the pipelines were a legitimate target during the war.
"We already had a range of alternatives at that time, so the Nord Stream was not a critical pipeline on which energy security in Europe depended," Pavel said.
"It certainly caused some complications, but not complications we could not cope with," the Czech president added.
German authorities issued an arrest warrant for a Ukrainian national in connection to the explosions of the Nord Stream pipelines, according to a media investigation by several German news outlets published on Aug. 14.
The man, a diving instructor introduced simply as Volodymyr Z., was last seen in a Polish town west of Warsaw but has now gone into hiding, the investigation by ARD, Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ), and Die Zeit said.
This would be the first arrest warrant issued concerning the 2022 explosions at the gas pipelines connecting Germany with Russia. Other media outlets have supported the story, while Germany's Federal Prosecutor's Office has declined to comment.
The Swedish outlet Expressen, which has cooperated with the German outlets, said the suspect's full name was Volodymyr Zhuravlov, aged 44. He is suspected of an anti-constitutional sabotage and of causing an explosion.
German journalists said they reached out to the suspect but the man denied involvement and quickly hung up.
The media investigation claimed that two other suspects – a man and a woman – are also Ukrainian citizens but uncovered no evidence of the Ukrainian government's involvement.
The Kyiv Independent news desk
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