Earlier this month locals in Zagreb noticed something odd outside an art deco building. Sandbags and barricades appeared in front of the Esplanade hotel, along with a film crew and extras sporting Ukrainian military uniforms. Soon afterwards the actors Sean Penn and Adrien Brody were spotted on the set in the Croatian capital, together with Doug Liman, the Hollywood director of the Jason Bourne movies.Liman had come to shoot his latest fictional political thriller. Its subject: the 2022 Nord Stream explosions, in which a team of Ukrainian divers allegedly blew up a pipeline supplying Russian oil to Germany. One of the chief suspects, Volodymyr Zhuravlev, had twice eluded the Germany authorities: once allegedly slipping out of Poland in the boot of a diplomatic car, and on another occasion freed by a court.Volodymyr Zhuravlev had twice eluded the Germany authorities. Photograph: Rafał Guz/EPAOn Wednesday, however, Zhuravlev’s luck ran out. He was detained in the Croatian city of Pula – where, in an incredible meta-twist, German media said he had been acting as a consultant on Liman’s movie, Snake Island, which dramatically reconstructs Zhuravlev’s alleged act of watery sabotage.Photos in Croatian newspapers showed two police officers leading Zhuravlev away, a middle-aged figure in a blue T-shirt and brown cap. In an interview before the Ukrainian’s extraordinary arrest, Liman confirmed parts of the movie would be shot in Pula, an ancient Roman port on the Adriatic coast, known for its clean, crystal clear sea. “It’s a little hot [in Zagreb]. I’m excited to be by the water,” he told a TV crew.Who tipped off the authorities, and what exactly Zhuravlev was doing in Croatia, is unclear, and the film’s production company has yet to issue an explanation. German federal prosecutors said local police forces detained him on a European arrest warrant. They described Zhuravlev as a professional and experienced scuba diver, and said he was part of a group led by another Ukrainian, Serhii K, who was extradited in 2025 to Germany from Italy. Both had links to Ukrainian state entities, the prosecutors suggested, and had planted explosives on behalf of their shadowy intelligence bosses.The Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline exploded in 2022. Photograph: Swedish coast guard/AFP/Getty ImagesThe two Ukrainian divers have denied any involvement in the undersea blasts, which took place off the Danish island of Bornholm. The Ukrainian government said it had nothing to do with the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines and said it wanted to establish the “true circumstances” of the incident, noting it happened amid Russia’s “aggressive war against Ukraine”.Zhuravlev’s lawyers will now seek to stop their client from being sent to Germany, where he is likely to face a lengthy prison sentence if convicted.But if he stays in Croatia, his Polish defence lawyer, Tymoteusz Paprocki, said the case will once again be “precedent-setting” – because a Croatian court will effectively hear a matter already decided in Poland, another EU member state.Last year a Polish court ruled against executing a European arrest warrant issued by Germany, arguing that Germany had no jurisdiction and that the destruction of Nord Stream could be seen as a justified action by Ukraine as part of a defensive war. Most of the billions used by the Kremlin to fund its vast army come from oil exports.The ruling aligned with Poland’s longstanding opposition to the pipeline project, seen as a symbol of Berlin’s overly-close relations with Russia under successive German chancellors. The Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, has publicly said that “the problem with Nord Stream 2 is not that it was blown up. The problem is that it was built.”Paprocki said: “It’ll be a case against the same person, with the same facts, the same relevant laws and European conventions, and the same European Arrest Warrant, brought by the same country, Germany.