This is an absolutely stunning
development. I think you'll remember
that in September 2022, seismologists
um in the Nordic countries uh noticed
these explosions 17 hours apart and they
detected these on the Nordstream
pipelines. Now to reme remind people
what they were, these were these huge
pipelines that brought gas essentially
from Russia to uh Western Europe,
specifically Germany. And they went
under the Baltic Sea. They were really
important around 35% um of gas came
through them. Then there were these huge
explosions. It took Nordstream one
totally off that had been operating from
2011 to 2022. Now Nordstream 2 had never
actually got up and running uh because
that was stopped due to the war in
Ukraine. But that also uh got damaged
and essentially three of the four
pipelines were damaged. And following
that Denmark, Sweden and Germany all
launched their own investigations.
Denmark and Sweden um said that they
believed it was sabotage um but they
didn't come to any conclusions as to who
was responsible. But the Germans have
continued to keep investigating and
suddenly we've got this news that a man
a Ukrainian national who's being named
as Siri K I'm told by prosecutors he's
49. He was arrested overnight in the
Remany area of Italy uh in collaboration
with Italian forces. And we're told by
prosecutors that they alleged that he
was a coordinator of this attack. And
they say that essentially he and a group
hired a boat from Rosto, which is in uh
northern Germany using fake IDs. They
then traveled to the pipeline area off
uh the island of um Bourne home in the
Baltic and laid explosives. Um so
they're saying that he was the
coordinator of this. They've now applied
to extradite him to Germany. I
understand that will take potentially a
little while, but it's here that he will
face justice. But this is a huge
development because for so long there
has been mystery around who was
responsible. The US intelligence
agencies uh allegedly telling the New
York Times last year that it was
potentially linked to Ukrainian
nationals. Ukraine has always denied any
involvement. Others pointed fingers at
Russia. They've always denied any
involvement. So today we have this
development that a Ukrainian national
has been arrested. What we don't know is
the makeup of the rest of the group and
whether this was lone rangers or if this
was something part of a bigger plot. As
I say though, Ukraine has always denied
any involvement.