HAMBURG, October 14. /TASS/. The Office of Germany’s Federal Prosecutor believes that the actions of Sergey Kuznetsov, a suspect in the Nord Stream blast case, should be considered a war crime.

The trial is underway at the Hamburg Higher Regional Court. The first hearing today lasted a little over two hours.

"Since he committed the acts while being a Ukrainian army officer and with the knowledge of Ukrainian government agencies, they should be regarded as a war crime," the prosecutor said. The Ukrainian is charged with carrying out the blasts, destroying structures and disrupting the operation of a public enterprise.

The German prosecution believes that Kuznetsov, who allegedly led a subversive group, and his accomplices devised a plan to blow up the gas pipelines on orders from Ukrainian state agencies. Another Ukrainian citizen was detained in Croatia recently. Investigators believe that the saboteurs used forged documents to rent a sailing yacht from a German company and transported explosives to the Nord Stream pipelines. Kuznetsov was detained in Italy in 2025 and transferred to Germany.

The court has scheduled 24 hearings through the end of the year. Further hearings are planned for February, but they have yet to be finalized. The next hearing is set for October 27.