The indictment, July 2 -- The arrest nearly three years in the making finally has a courtroom to match. German federal prosecutors on Wednesday charged Serhii Kuznietsov, a 50-year-old Ukrainian national, as the on-board coordinator of the September 2022 sabotage of the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines - the most expensive act of peacetime infrastructure destruction in modern European history. He has been in German custody since November, extradited from Italy where investigators say he made a critical mistake: speaking too freely on the phone.

one that neither NATO governments nor Kyiv have been willing to fully illuminate until now.

Kuznietsov's downfall began with phone calls. While held in Italy following his arrest in ...