Poland owes Germany €1.3trn in ‘reparations’ over Nord Stream blasts – MP
Poland should compensate Germany for “complicity” in the 2022 explosions that put the Nord Stream gas pipelines out of operation, a right-wing German politician has claimed.
The amount cited by Kay Gottschalk, an MP from the opposition Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, corresponds to the €1.3 trillion in compensation for World War II that Warsaw previously demanded from Berlin.
Gottschalk wrote in an X post on Wednesday that “1.3 trillion euros should suffice as reparations for complicity in the Nord Stream sabotage.”
Berlin authorities have attributed the act of sabotage that severely damaged the conduits, which carried Russian gas to Germany under the Baltic Sea, to a small group of Ukrainian nationals. Poland has rejected a German extradition request for a key suspect in the case.
In November, AfD co-chairman Tino Chrupalla told the broadcaster ZDF that while Russia posed no immediate threat to Germany, neighboring Poland could conceivably emerge as one. He cited the “current moral double standards” displayed by the Polish government in refusing to hand over a Ukrainian “terrorist” to German authorities.
Last October, the Warsaw District Court ruled that Berlin’s extradition request for the suspect in the attacks, Vladimir Zhuravlyov, was “unfounded.” The judge argued at the time that “blowing up critical infrastructure during a war… is not sabotage but denotes a military action.”
A month earlier, the Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita claimed that Warsaw, which has been one of Kiev’s staunchest backers since 2022, allegedly considered granting asylum to the Ukrainian national. Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski has publicly supported the idea.
Last Thursday, Germany’s Federal Court of Justice published a ruling dated December 10, according to which the Nord Stream explosions were likely an “intelligence service” operation ordered by a foreign government.
Russian officials have repeatedly expressed deep skepticism over Berlin’s version of events, saying that a small group of Ukrainian saboteurs could not have executed such a sophisticated operation in NATO-controlled waters without direct state assistance.
