Sweden announced on Wednesday that it was dropping its investigation into the 2022 explosions at the Nord Stream pipelines that carried Russian gas to Germany.
Sweden’s prosecutor said he had no jurisdiction in the case but handed over the evidence discovered to German investigators.
The multi-billion-dollar Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines were transporting gas under the Baltic Sea. They were severely damaged in a series of explosions in the Swedish and Danish economic zones in September 2022, releasing huge amounts of methane into the air.
No country has claimed responsibility for the blasts. Swedish prosecutor Mats Ljungqvist told Reuters:
“We have a picture of what has happened, and what that picture consists of we cannot go into more detail, but it leads to the conclusion that we do not have jurisdiction. It is not Sweden’s task to continue this investigation.”
Ljungqvist said the main task had been to establish whether Sweden or Swedish citizens were involved in the attack, which he said had taken place in international waters. He noted:
“The answer to that question is ‘no’ and there is nothing in this case that poses any risk to Sweden’s security now that we have seen how things stand.”
Secrecy laws prevented Ljungqvist from making the evidence public, but he said the investigation was broadly based and the findings were passed on to German investigators.
Denmark and Germany are conducting separate investigations. Danish police said Wednesday that they expect to provide more information about their investigation “within a short time.”
A German government spokesman said Berlin remained interested in solving the case. Germany told the UN Security Council in July that it had found evidence of underwater explosives on a sailing yacht that may have been used to transport the explosives and that trained divers may have attached the explosives to pipelines.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday that Russia will now monitor what Germany will do to investigate the bombings. He noted:
“Of course, now we need to see how Germany itself reacts to this, as a country that has lost a lot in relation to this terrorist attack.”
