On: Nord Stream trial: How German police followed the evidence - to Ukraine

10 October 2026

Four years. One man. A trial in Hamburg at last.

The story of the pipelines burst in September 2022, and from that hour the public was handed a buffet of explanations. A state actor, said some. Russia, said others, sabotaging its own pipes to manufacture alarm. A rogue crew on a rented yacht, said the later reports. Each version arrived with confidence and none arrived with evidence.

What I note today is the method, not the man. German investigators traced a passport, a boat, a rental agreement, a trail of small transactions. They did not announce a conclusion and hunt for support. They gathered the residue - receipts, fingerprints, phone pings - and let the residue point. That is the only honest direction for an inquiry to travel: from the shard to the story, never the reverse.

And I note what the record still withholds. One suspect in the dock. Reports speak of a team, of accomplices, of divers and a ship chartered under borrowed papers. Where are the others? Who paid? Who knew in which ministry, in which capital? A trial that answers the question “who touched the pipe” while leaving “who ordered it” untouched is a trial with a floor missing. The man on trial may be guilty of what is charged. He cannot be the whole account.

I have spent a life learning that the first story told about an explosion is almost always wrong, and that the correction comes slowly, from documents nobody wanted found. The pretext shifts - terrorism, sabotage, provocation - while the bodies of fact stay fixed. Follow the fixed things. The yacht’s registration. The date of departure. The name on the passport.

Count what is known. Mark what is withheld. The gap between the two is where the truth about governments usually lives.