Proceedings opened on Wednesday at Hamburg's Higher Regional Court against Serhii K., a former Ukrainian military officer accused of leading the team behind the 2022 explosions that damaged the Nord Stream gas pipelines beneath the Baltic Sea.
The 50-year-old, identified in earlier extradition documents as Serhii Kuznietsov, is the first person to stand trial over the sabotage.
German prosecutors accuse him of organising a team that included divers, an explosives expert and a boat captain.
They allege that he entered Germany in early September 2022 using a forged Ukrainian passport, before the group boarded a yacht hired in Rostock and sailed towards the Nord Stream pipelines near the Danish island of Bornholm.
American journalist accuses US Navy of Nord Stream pipeline attack
The allegations
According to the indictment, military-grade explosive charges fitted with timers were attached to the pipelines on the seabed.
Several blasts were recorded on 26 September 2022, damaging three of the four Nord Stream pipelines and sending large plumes of methane into the atmosphere.
Nord Stream 1 had carried Russian gas directly to Germany, while Nord Stream 2 had been completed but never entered commercial operation.
Serhii K. faces charges including causing an explosion, destroying infrastructure and disrupting public services, as well as complicity in a war crime involving an attack on civilian infrastructure.
Prosecutors allege that the operation was carried out on behalf of unidentified Ukrainian state bodies and was intended to deprive Russia of revenue from gas sales used to help finance its war in Ukraine.
Serhii K. denies involvement in the sabotage.
Ukraine denies involvement in Nord Stream pipeline sabotage
A politically sensitive case
His lawyers have challenged the German court's jurisdiction and may argue that the pipelines were legitimate military targets as part of Ukraine's defence against Russia's full-scale invasion.
He is not expected to testify. His defence has reportedly said that former Ukrainian special forces personnel are barred from publicly discussing their military activities.
Kyiv has consistently denied orchestrating the sabotage, although Ukrainian officials have welcomed the destruction of the pipelines as a blow to Moscow's ability to finance the war.
Moscow has rejected suggestions that it was behind the blasts and says it expects the trial to establish both who carried out the attack and who ordered it.
Russia's Prosecutor General's Office has also opened a criminal case over what it describes as an act of international terrorism, according to the Tass news agency.
What happens next
Serhii K. is the only defendant in the Hamburg trial.
Croatian authorities have arrested another suspect, Volodymyr Z., who is alleged to have been one of the divers involved in the operation. Croatia has approved his extradition to Germany, although he is appealing the decision.
The hearings are scheduled to continue into February 2027.
The trial will provide the first public examination of evidence gathered during Germany's long-running investigation into one of Europe's most politically sensitive acts of infrastructure sabotage.
(with newswires)
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