The Swedish national seismic network picked up two explosions within kilometers of the reported gas leak locations yesterday.
The time of the first explosion: Yesterday, Monday morning at 02:03 am, second one Monday evening at 7:04pm (local time, CEST).
The reports of the gas leaks came at 1:52pm and 8:41pm, respectively - by means of ships reporting bubbling at the surface level.
One of the two events registered at magnitude 2.3. They were picked up by stations all over the country.
It's clear from the registered seismic waves that the events are not earthquakes.
- You can clearly see how the waves bounce from the bottom to the surface. There is no doubt that it was a blast or explosion. We even had a station in Kalix [quite far up north, some 1300 km away] that picked this up, says Björn Lund, who is a lecturer in seismology and director of the Swedish national seismic network, which measures Swedish earthquakes and explosions.
So that doesn't look like an accident. I have difficulty imagining accidental ignition in an underwater gas pipeline. Where would the oxygen come from? Plus it's more than one explosion on the same day - can't be a coincidence.
The next question is, who did it? It doesn't seem like something in Russia's interest, they've been wanting to get that pipeline approved and operational. They invested huge sums of money to build it after all. So was this an EU country? The USA? The Ukraine doesn't have resources in the Baltic, right?
Common theme I've heard here (Kyiv, Ukraine) is that this sabotage is in Putin's direct interest. There are rumours of political infighting among Russia's leaders and that there are several factions trying to seize power, however since there is no clear winner, those guys need powerful allies, EU being a very important one. The idea is that Europe really wants to buy Russian gas, but not from Putin, so if Russia somehow gets a successor, he (or she) would stop the war, blame everything on Putin, beg for lifting of sanction and resuming the trade. Since Europe needs gas they'll gladly agree to this. But if there is no gas, then the potential successor would have much less of a value to offer. Basically with gas on the table the upside is high enough to warrant an attempt of an extremely risky coup, but without the gas it's a much less interesting proposition.
An alternative POV is that somebody (USA?) does not trust Europe/Germany/... to not "relapse" to the "gas needle" when the things get dire.
Why is Putin direct interest destroy a source of income and leverage to the country!?!? Now Germany can buy gas from 2 sources: Ukraine and USA. This explanation makes no sense to me.
It should be extremely clear that the health of Russia as a country isn't Putin's primary goal. If (and it's a big "if") destroying a source of income or leverage to the country can make Putin safer against assassination and coup attempts, I don't see why he wouldn't do it.
Winning the war in Ukraine, however, is a primary objective. Wasn't his whole plan to energy-starve Europe over the winter until they came crawling back?
The only way Putin has a remote chance of winning the war at this point is if western support stops, destroying the one mechanism that might actually do that seems counterproductive.
“The Dictator’s Handbook” is a great book that argues (convincingly) that countries “act” not in their “own” self-interest but in the self-interest of their leader.
Which is always to stay in power (and maximize their power).
So I agree as short-sighted and bad it would be for Russia to do this, if it helps Putin stay in power right now, it makes sense.
Emperor has no clothes scenario. Everyone is telling him his army is strong and can steam roll Ukraine. Meanwhile his army consists of untrained men in rain boots whose leadership has no idea how to fight but is really good at stealing everything not nailed down.
Helps to stay alive and in charge when your economy is still benefiting from the massive revenues the pipleline brings. It's amazing the lengths some people will go to distort reality to fit their preconceptions.
I mean, we could also start with basic logic: Who gains from disabling the pipeline? This absurd theory that Putin doesn't benefit from the revenue isn't even worth addressing. On the other hand, Pompeo explicitly stated the US would do "anything" to prevent Nordstream 2 from coming online, Biden alluded to the same:
Biden in Feb 2022: "If Russia invades...then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it."
Q: "But how will you do that, exactly, since...the project is in Germany's control?"
Biden: "I promise you, we will be able to do that."
Add to that the Polish FM (husband of The Atlantic hack Anne Applebaum) thanking the US for destroying the pipeline on Twitter. Maybe you could try doing your own research-- outside of the security state stenographers like WaPo and Wikipedia.
Like on any crime scene, who profits from the crime?
Well, a few things first:
1- NS1 along NS2 are (were) shutdown and clearly these were not going to re-open, not before the end of the war - not politically acceptable for Putin, even less for Germany
2- The war is going to last for many more months (best case scenario) or a year or two or ... No matter how long it will really last, Europe, after having survived Winter 2022 will not be reliant to Russian gas anymore. It's clear to everyone that NS1 / NS2 will likely never re-open again.
3- Based on #2, you can assume that NS2 like NS1 are just dead ...
So again, who profits from the crime?
1- USA: why would they take the risk to destroy the pipeline knowing Germans won't buy Russian gas in the foreseeable future? Their utmost priority is that Ukraine defeats Russia to send a strong message to China. They can't care less about NS2 at the moment, but they care most about unity among western countries, that's how Russia will lose and that's how they will win. Of course, Germany becoming dependent on US gas is a good thing for them, but it's not really a strategic objective, at most tactical ...
2- Russia: they are losing the war and now throwing conscripts with not a day of training on the front. That's pretty desperate move to say the least. Whenever they escalate, they see that as a chance to break unity among the west. Blowing up their (now useless) pipeline is in line with another desperate move: at least try to make something useful out of it. If Russia loses the war, Putin is just dead (at least politically). He can't care less about Russia economy at the moment.
3- Eastern Europe: their hate for Russia is very strong and they obviously welcome such a move. But like for the US, they want very hard Ukraine to win, and blowing up such a pipeline is not clear the immediate benefit. Besides, it's still a risky operation and it's not clear whether they just have the capacity to carry out such an operation without taking the risk of being detected.
It's interesting you wrote a very long response and yet you presented no concrete arguments that the US could be behind this.
We can agree that most EU countries will not support such an incident. The only two countries who have the technical capability and the political reasons are the USA and Russia. Both are evil and ready to blow the world for their own gains.
> why would they take the risk to destroy the pipeline knowing Germans won't buy Russian gas in the foreseeable future?
Because they know their "allies" will cave. They've been trying to push them from Russian gas for a long time now but it didn't work.
> Their utmost priority is that Ukraine defeats Russia to send a strong message to China.
They are not trying to send a message to China. They are being engaged in a proxy war with Russia since the cold war. Now things are heating up again as they are closing in on their prey.
That’s because there are no reasons for the US to do it. Europe is staying aligned just fine right now. Germans think Russia is an unreliable business partner, and don’t want to deal with them again. Germany is already expanding LNG port capacity to buy more North American gas. It would be a tremendous risk to be discovered; Denmark could trigger Article 5 against the United States. The US needs to show strength in Asia, not that it’s entangled in European affairs. It’s all too much malarkey for Dark Brandon to tolerate.
Sure, right now. When the winter comes and heating bills skyrocket, there will be those in Germany who want to turn the gas back on. Or... would have been. That option is gone now, at least for this winter. That's what the US might have gotten out of it.
> It would be a tremendous risk to be discovered
The US has taken more severe risks before, such as tapping the undersea cables in the territorial waters of their nuclear armed adversary during the Cold War, in principle risking global nuclear annihilation. The primary rule clandestine submarine operations play by is "don't get caught". If the US did it and did it properly, nothing will ever be conclusively pinned on America.
> Denmark could trigger Article 5 against the United States.
But why now? There is no wavering at the moment. They could have waited a month or two, to see if it's actually needed, because the downside of discovery is so high. And why does the CIA warn about attacks then? False flag?
Another option is that somebody wanted to plant explosive devices for future use, and something went wrong. Hard to see how both pipelines would blow up then, but maybe a possibility.
If Germany and Russia were about to kick off negotiations to bring nordstream back online then it would all but confirm that an ally did it (probably America). This would be far more likely to happen next month as Germany really starts to suffer.
Whoever did it picked pretty much the perfect time from the perspective of deniability.
Your argumentation is missing a crucial event, which threatens USA’s position: The win of a right wing party in Italy. If this trend continues in Europe, then a friendly disposition of Europe towards Russia becomes probable. If this happens, it would threaten the core geopolitical interests of USA. It would also become lonely around the USA.
Its not what I want but an attempt at an unbiased assessment.
Anyone with access to either end of the pipeline had the technical capability to do this. Slip a time bomb into the pipe and have it get pumped out to sea before exploding.
1. NS1 and/or NS2 were ready to reopen according to Putin if Europe were to lift sanctions.
2. EU is trying to stop being reliant on Russian gas, so far it isn't fait accompli.
3. Based on 1+2 we could assume someone wants to push EU as far away from Russia as possible as fast as possible(regarding gas supplying, to be clear)
So again, who profits and has the means to do accomplish such feat:
1. USA: very vocal against NS2, wouldn't be affected by such destruction of foreign infrastructure, stands to gain when adversaries lose. Germany becoming dependent on US gas is a massive bonus. Imagine being able to control EU's largest economy on a whim.
2. Russia: assuming they would want to destroy the pipes, and not the much easier land infrastructure, why not let the world know about it ASAP?
3. Eastern Europe: only Poland has the means and maybe motivation to do so.
How hard is it to destroy a pipeline? Do you actually need an underwater UAV, or might lowering explosives on a rope and a timer from a small boat do the job?
Remember - water transmits compression waves really well, and the pipe is the only compressible thing around. The sea there is only 200 meters deep, so lowering it on a rope at slack tide and with a good GPS on the boat, I'd imagine you'd be able to get explosives landing within 10 meters or so of the pipe.
Relatively hard to get right. You have to deploy a ship (maybe merchant ship) and a specialized crew to the actual location, undetected, at the right time. A lot can go wrong.
I suppose Austria, Hungary, Romania, Czechia, et al do not have the resources to pull this off. Remember, it's only been a couple of months that this gas stand-off is this tense. The only countries in Europe who have the means to act fast on this are the UK, France, Italy, Spain, maybe Greece (I don't think any of them would do it - there's no reason for it whatsoever), and Poland.
China benefits greatly, Russian oil and gas now have only one reliable buyer for the foreseeable future. Invading Taiwan is now easier since blockading the shipping lanes from the ME will have little impact on the Chinese war machine if they get reliable oil from Russia.
Except Russia has no east west gas or oil transmission infrastructure. Whatever they extract from the west they need to export west, and whatever they extract in the east must go east
> 1- NS1 along NS2 are (were) shutdown and clearly these were not going to re-open, not before the end of the war - not politically acceptable for Putin, even less for Germany.
"Meanwhile, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has criticised German leaders' calls to initiate talks regarding Nord Stream 2. "Calls by some German politicians to launch NS2 for a little while and close it later are totally irrational. This resembles drug addiction when a person says “Just one last time!” without realizing the devastating consequences of each “last time”."
So there is political support for German government if they needed it. And it was in play. Important people were tweeting about it. :}
> Not politically acceptable to Putin.
I think he is not happy today, at all. Russians are supposedly running to borders to leave, the famous Operation is a shitzkrieg, his last move is dig in, annex, and hope and pray Medvedev's mad russian act has convinced opposite number psychos over here who are in charge of our end of world weapons that "we are not bluffing".
Imagine the PR if great Uncle Vodya like father christmas opens the pipes to a freezing Germany ("gratis!" Its our gift). Is the German goverment going to say "Nein"?
To sum, you must be joking. This Nord Stream was Russia's ace in the hole. Now it is gone.
> 2- Russia: they are losing the war and now throwing conscripts with not a day of training on the front. That's pretty desperate move to say the least. Whenever they escalate, they see that as a chance to break unity among the west. Blowing up their (now useless) pipeline is in line with another desperate move: at least try to make something useful out of it. If Russia loses the war, Putin is just dead (at least politically). He can't care less about Russia economy at the moment.
You forgot to mention how Russia is supposed to profit from this whole situation.
> Blowing up their (now useless) pipeline is in line with another desperate move: at least try to make something useful out of it
Isn't it obvious what the advantages would be for Russia?
IF the Russians did it they get ;
1.Blowing up NS1&2 creates more energy and gas uncertainty in Europe in a period where they need to put on the pressure and try to limit military support for Ukraine as they are loosing the war in Ukraine. Its an assertive move.
2.They get to do big power signaling with a direct threat to other infrastructure in the north sea which is significant and all of which supplies Europe with gas.
I would also like to point out that the Russians [unconfirmed but its basically what went down] sank the passenger ferry Estonia with 852 dead because it was used in the transport of stolen military hardware.
So these explosions is not out of the realm of possibility - quite the opposite - I would say that it is basically how the Russians operate - with force.
> Their [US] utmost priority is that Ukraine defeats Russia to send a strong message to China
Not exactly, as it's a serious double payoff. We want to break Russia too - that's what the Middle East wars have been about (including Syria, Libya and Iraq). We just expected their military to be considerably more potent than it actually is.
Norway-Poland gas pipeline opened up on the same day that the N-2 pipeline blew up. Also, those waters are HEAVILY controlled by NATO nations. We all know who benefits here - and it isn't the Russians.
PS: US has blown up Soviet gas pipelines covertly before while condemning the act the same time. Read "At the Abyss: An Insider's History of the Cold War".
The physical pipeline is still there and mostly fine. Fixing the holes is expensive and requires the right expertise and equipment, but most experts I've seen quoted in the media seem to agree that it could definitely be done within a year, and probably faster, if everybody involved really wanted to.
Edit: Other experts are now claiming that the damage is more substantial and that repairs might not be possible
Well, yeah, but the CEOs of one company in Germany with the hardware and people to do that, and who was also charged with monitoring the pipelines, just died in an unexplained private jet crash two weeks ago.
> 2- Russia: they are losing the war and now throwing conscripts with not a day of training on the front. That's pretty desperate move to say the least. Whenever they escalate, they see that as a chance to break unity among the west. Blowing up their (now useless) pipeline is in line with another desperate move: at least try to make something useful out of it. If Russia loses the war, Putin is just dead (at least politically). He can't care less about Russia economy at the moment.
Russia isn't losing the war; they have a temporary setback. They have completely won the south but only have ~80k troops total in the country which limits their ability to organizationally maneuver and defensively hold territory simultaneously in the North. The HIMARS introductions has damaged Russia's logistical ability to resupply the large number of arty rounds needed to prosecute an arty heavy war.
Some of the Russian mobilization impacts those with previous military experience, and their reserve forces.
Remember, until this recent collapse in the North, they were rototilling the Ukrainian Army into the ground with Arty each day.
300k conscripts gives them the defensive force they need to hold space, freeing up their Army and Wagner to handle the offensive side of the campaigns.
With new Iranian drones entering the fray, and North Korea potentially entering the campaign to gain combat experience, this is likely to continue a great deal. Because North Korea uses Russian style artillery tactics, they are an instant fold-in to Russia's conventional arty dominant war.
The real question from a combat perspective is whether or not the mobilization of forces will enable the Russian supply lines to better hold.
The biggest gamechanger still on the table is that we haven't seen yet the introduction of true strategic (non-nuclear) weaponry on the Russian side, or, the targetting of Ukrainian infrastructure. The latter is likely to happen soon because the West is exploiting the Russian's soft touch towards seizing Ukrainian territory by sending a nonstop stream of heavy weaponry and resupply.
Russia has over 50k KIA and have lost many thousands of heavy vehicles, aircraft and even battleships. Hundreds of these vehicles are now being used against them by the Ukrainians.
Russia may get support from Iran or N. Korea but so what? The support is in the form of equipment generations behind what is being delivered to Ukraine by the US and on tap to arrive from Europe. They are about to send 300k untrained men in as cannon fodder. These men will just be chewed up. Ukraine will definitely experience setbacks but Russia is going to be set back as a regional power for at least a generation. Thousands of men are fleeing Russia to avoid being drafted. Ukraine has reclaimed thousands of square KM of terrain in the last few weeks.
The Russian gas pipelines were just destroyed; meaning that for Europe, yielding to Putin's energy blackmail is not even an option anymore, he has nothing to offer now. They will support Ukraine as they find other energy partners. Italy just secured a source from N. Africa. The US will now become a major energy supplier to Europe, costing the Russians long term. The Russian economy is flailing and they cannot even replace parts required to keep their vehicles running.
Most importantly on a global scale, the illusion that they are a near US military peer has been destroyed. Sweden and Finland shrugged at Russian threats and joined NATO. Russia has been exposed as a weak, poorly led military that would get steam rolled by Europe even without US boots on the ground. The united states would obliterate them. The only card they have is nukes, besides that they are weak. Russia likely becomes a vassal state to China.
If this is Russia winning then yes, you are correct.
> Sweden [...] shrugged at Russian threats and joined NATO.
Alternate take: Russia is behaving so irrationally and dangerously, their actions persuaded the Swedes to break two centuries of neutrality to cozy up with a defensive pact. They could have joined NATO in the 90s when the threat was nil, but instead they maintained their neutrality until things got dicey.
If Russia were supplied with precision weaponry they would be trading casualties more evenly with Ukraine, but they aren't getting anything like HIMARS or Javelins. Most of it falls under sanctions and there's little reason for erstwhile allies and trading partners to help, because they recognize that a Russian loss here is an invitation to plunder what's left of the country. The ability of the world to shrug off loss of Russian energy is directly correlated to Russia's bargaining position here, and now that a major pipeline is down, the issue has been forced.
What the battlefield figures point to is that while Russia can hold a line, it's using much more ammo to do it, and this strains their supply logistics, which are further pressured by long-range missle systems. Adding more troops when you're already supply-constrained means falling back on a Soviet-era strategy of throwing bodies at every problem and, most likely, letting some freeze to death stranded without even entering combat.
However, modern Russia doesn't have the demographics necessary to hold out in a meatgrinder. The Red Army was able to do that successfully because they were drawing from a younger and more agrarian population that could be "born to die". As soon as your draft starts eating into older urbanites with skills, careers, and families, unrest is going to get out of control and put national sovereignty at threat.
There's a reason why modern armies have moved towards a professionalized approach since the mid-20th century: it's a lower-footprint method that sustains high tech industries, and therefore is easier to gain support for. The entire narrative changed when it stopped being a "special military operation" and they announced mobilization: there's no more illusion of it being a professional war.
Some counterpoints: The Ukrainians were fighting with "the army they had", and only recently are new units with new weapons and new training being brought to bear.
The West has near-infinite appetite to provide arms to the Ukraine. Why?
- the military industrial complex gets profit
- Putin is a ghoul and disliked throughout all levels of Western governments
- there is strong popular support for Ukraine
- strategically a strong buffer state of Ukraine neutralizes Russia long term
- once Ukraine wins, Belarus will be surrounded by NATO or just-as-good-as-NATO nations, and Lukashenko will be toppled, and a NATO friendly government installed. So that's not just Ukraine as a buffer state, that is the Baltics, Belarus, and Ukraine. Westernized, trained, militarily capable, integrated with NATO.
The conscripts are useless, have no equipment, and are being delivered to the front for WINTER. They won't have winter equipment. They won't be supplied. Existing forces aren't being supplied. This will be a humanitarian disaster. Supply lines? Russia won't supply them, and that which is sent will be plundered or redirected.
The elite of Russia's armed forces have already been gutted and defeated.
Theses strategic weapons... are they like Russia's air force? What heavy weaponry? The heavy weapons that were sent are destroyed, the artillery is being neutralized by superior HIMARS. Russia knows each escalation of weaponry results in better arms being sent to Ukraine, and a more militarily capable Ukraine in the long run.
Why are you portraying the South as a permanent victory? Were you portraying the North as a permanent victory as well a month ago? Russia's southern victory is temporary. Russia lost the north because they sent all their forces to the South... where 20,000 soldiers reportedly were abandoned or trapped across a river.
And... does Putin have cancer? He does appear increasing ill.
While winter will slow a counterattack, likely it will further devastate Russian morale.
In WWII, the Russian conscripts were trapped between Russian machine guns if they retreated, or annihilation by the Germans. The Ukrainians will accept them as POWs, and provide aid. This is a key difference. What percentage of conscripts will simply surrender as soon as possible?
Russia's soft touch is debatable: is it restraint, or a non-functioning military? So far it appears to be non-functional.
If Russia keeps saber-rattling on nukes, and the west views Ukraine as a functional state, NATO can provide Ukraine with nukes. But I suspect Putin will be toppled if he continues to threaten nuclear armageddon.
Why is Putin direct interest destroy a source of income and leverage to the country!?!?
Because there's no political will to re-open it for the time being. Pushing the narrative that this was an American action benefits Putin in two ways:
- Spreads discontent in Germany (and elsewhere). While the EU is okay shutting down NS 1+2 for now if things are particularly bad this winter (weather, value against the dollar, inflation) being able to turn on pipeline again is a relief valve. Blowing it up and blaming the Americans makes it easy to push a narrative that lack of independence from America is putting the EU (especially Germany) at risk.
- While it would be really hard to spin an American attack on NS 1+2 as a rationalization for escalating the war (e.g. nukes), it does create a nice narrative that America is actively hurting Russia unfairly. Sanctions are a lot easier to lift than that pipeline is to repair. That kind of narrative could help popularize recruitment.
Look. Russia is already losing their war badly. The Russian draft is wildly unpopular and the US stands to lose a lot by antagonizing the American left (over environmental issues), Germany, and even Russia. If blaming America can help staunch the mass exodus in Russia and undermine NATO unity then blowing up the pipeline is a small price to pay.
This is the classical conspiratorial judo-move. Who does this benefit? It seems to benefit A in every meaningful way, but that's too obvious, so clearly it's B doing it to make A look bad! False flag!
Usually it's Russia doing this kind of rhetorical judo move.
But this clearly benefits Norway, Ukraine, the US and maybe the Baltics in roughly that order, and hurts Russia, Germany and to some extent Netherlands. If you think the US is too noble to play dirty on a powerful European ally, I've got an Airbus to sell you.
Russia has condemned it and called it a terrorist act. The US, conspicuously, has not. At least one prominent US commentator has suggested that the US did it and that this was good.
The sabotage happened in Swedish and Danish waters, not in Russian ones. No evidence implicating Russia has been presented, although we know that the US and allies are much better than Russia at presenting evidence - when they want to.
> Why is Putin direct interest destroy a source of income and leverage to the country!?!?
The logic isn't unreasonable. Nordstream is very clearly NOT a source of income, currently. But it could be, if Putin were deposed. Now the Russian gas interests are stuck with Putin, they don't win anything (in the near term) via a coup.
Add to that that clandestine adventurism like this is very much Putin's MO and not the USA's (we do our adventurism with giant flags and 24/7 news coverage), and... it seems the most reasonable guess.
Really the US doesn't have that much interest here, certainly not enough to provoke further escalation. If Ukraine were to straight up fall to Russia, we'd deal with it. That's what we all assumed was going to happen back in the spring anyway.
Just because doing something has a negative outcome it doesn't mean not doing it can't have a worse outcome.
i.e. if a car jacker threatens to shoot you if you don't hand over your car that doesn't mean handing over your car was a great outcome.
In this hypothetical Putin had the choice between having a higher chance of accidentally falling down the stairs/out a window, or weakening his country economically. Putin doesn't mind watching Russia suffer more if it means a better personal outcome for him so the hypothetical choice is easy.
How do you know that Putin is suffering? I think this is really outlandish to say so. Putin is still selling its energy to the largest economies in the world while Europe is stocking up on wood so they dont freeze this winter. I will leave it to your own device to determine whose economy sounds more fragile.
This is tinfoil-haberdashery. No, Biden did not authorize a clandestine attack on Russian infrastructure just to boost the US auto industry, nor did he subtly broadcast his nefarious intent months ago as part of some game to throw red meat to the conspiratorialists, Q-style. The US would have nothing to gain and everything to lose by engaging in such an action, and has absolutely no impetus to since it already currently has the upper hand in the overall geopolitical conflict. The pipeline can be repaired within months, and the sanctions were already going to last for at least that long. It buys the US none of the the things you mention, even in the fantasy world where someone thinks that those would comprise the US's grand strategic goals.
To be clear, with our current information, the sabotage makes sense for nobody, not for the US, not for Russia. The only reason people are attributing it to Russia is because, of all the people currently in the room, Putin is the one acting the most generally irrational. But if we assume irrationality, it could just as easily be any random entity; Iran, or North Korea, or Greenpeace, or mermaids, or the shambling, zombified corpse of Abraham Lincoln.
I beg to differ. To at least consider that the sabotage is in US interest, is sound logic.
Of course there are many factors at play and a lot we don’t know.
The arguments in your post carry a hint of denial in them. Read other posts that outline the benefits to the US position after the sabotage, and consider them without bias. Not saying its the only explanation- but the case is worth considering.
I have no particular love for the US government or its foreign policy. At the same time, it is neither "a hint of denial" nor "bias" to reject the above claims as nonsense. There is simply no motive. NATO solidarity is at an all-time high, none of the imaginary economic benefits to the US would be worth jeopardizing that solidarity, especially since the US isn't remotely at any point of desperation. In practice it will achieve nothing (other than an environmental disaster), and even the things people imagine it might be intended to achieve are eye-rollingly petty compared to the US's actual strategic objective right now, which is holding NATO together.
> Now even if they wanted to, they can't try to get gas from Russia.
You have no idea what you're talking about. Nord Stream is the largest pipeline, but by no means the only one. Despite the fact that Nord Stream has been shut down for over a month, Germany continued and still continues to buy Russian gas.
> The US on the other hand benefits both by wrecking Germany's industry and opening up a market for their LNG.
Again, you have no idea what you're talking about. The US is a beneficiary of German industry, it has no financial motive to wreck their industry, let alone the geopolitical implications of wrecking the industry of their key ally. And the US has already been selling gas to Europe literally as fast as it can. There's no new market to open up, the status quo continues.
And the last half of your points appear to be completely irrelevant? None of the sabotage here will have any noticeable effect on the war in Ukraine, let alone have the effect of extending it, which is what you appear to be suggesting.
What's with the authoritative tone? You have no clue what American submarines have been up to, and if you did know, you'd be breaking the law by telling us anything about it. And it's absurd to pretend that the premise of submarines doing clandestine illegal stuff underwater is an outlandish "Q-style" 'conspiracy'.
Can you point to the commenter here who does know what any nation's subs have been up to, and isn't pulling stuff out of their ass to satisfy their geopolitical soap opera fantasies? What's "absurd" is pretending that a nation state would either need or even want to use submarines for an operation like this; reports indicate that these pipelines are at a depth of 80m, which is well within the depths that professional deep-sea divers regularly access undersea pipelines.
In practice there's not a single state on Earth that benefits from the temporary disabling of this unused pipeline, but of all the states that have something to lose from being discovered as the perpetrator, the US is near the top of the list.
It has nothing to do with the depth. Surface ship diver tenders work great if you don't mind everybody seeing what you're doing. For something like this, it would be stupid.
> In practice there's not a single state on Earth that benefits from the temporary disabling of this unused pipeline,
Severing this tie between Germany and Russia benefits America. If you don't understand this then you haven't been paying attention. Furthermore, doing it in a way that takes the blame off the German government is beneficial to the German government. The German people will be uncomfortable in the short term, but in the long run severing this link between their country and Russia will be good in the long run for them and the rest of NATO.
> Furthermore, doing it in a way that takes the blame off the German government is beneficial to the German government.
No, the German government knows it needs to weather the winter, and have been relying (and continue to rely upon) Russian gas to fill their reserves. Their goal was to have their gas reserves filled to 95% capacity by November, and they appear to have been at around 75% before Russia started playing games with Nord Stream 1 last month. Of all the states most negatively impacted by this, Germany is probably #1 (yes, even more than Russia).
> it could just as easily be any random entity; Iran, or North Korea, or Greenpeace, or mermaids, or the shambling, zombified corpse of Abraham Lincoln.
Obviously a rhetorical flourish but Iran and North Korea would have substantially less capability for an attack of this nature. It’s not impossible but certainly there are more likely perpetrators.
The tap was already turned off. I think everyone at the time understood Biden's comments to mean the nordstream 2 pipeline wouldn't be operational because of diplomatic pressure on Germany. And that's exactly what happened, Germany decided not to certify it and it was left functional but not pumping any gas (the current leak was likely just enough to keep the line pressurized).
I also don't think the US sees Germany as a "rival" in this way at all, they are a strong trading partner.
The motivations are not that clear for any actor really. Someone wanted to burn a potential bridge between the EU and Russia, but it's not clear to me why the US would want to lose their biggest carrot (immediately dumping cash into Russia if sanctions were lifted and gas could be bought), or why Russia would want to lose a pipeline they invested so much into, sitting there and just tempting the west to Germany to ease sanctions.
My university announced an call for applications to an initiative supporting Ukrainian students and one of the bullet points read “impact on Indigenous and minority peoples of Ukraine”
Now Roma aside, the only Ukrainian law about this covers Tatars, Krymchaks and Karaim in occupied Crimea (not even Hutsuls) so basically they wrote the law because EU told them to, and in such a way so they wouldn’t have to lift a finger
Online I've seen some takes that America is responsible for this. I get why. America's foreign policy has done and continues to do some appalling things (eg any number of coups). The idea is that the US doesn't want Europe to be reliant on Russian gas or that Russia may be able to use the prospect of that gas (coming into winter) to sway Europe with respect to Ukraine.
I don't buy it. The blowback potential would be enormous. It's also not America's style. Coups? Sure. Unjustified military action? Absolutely. Directly destroying infrastructure of critical importance to supposed allies? I have trouble seeing it.
If this is by human action (which seems entirely possible) then Russia seems the most likely suspect. The counterargument is that why would Russia destroy something that they're dependant on? Sure Russia isn't selling gas today but the possiblity of them selling it in the future has value (to Russia and Europe).
But Russia, like probably every country and certainly the US, is not a monolith. There are competing interests. Putin is reportedly facing dissent for how badly the war in Ukraine is going. Russia has hardline nationalists, those who are anti-war and other factions.
The example I'm reminded of from history is Cortez who 500 years ago upon arriving in South America burned his ships. Why? So there'd be no way out. There could be no mutiny if there was no means of escape.
So sabotaging the pipeline could be to undermine the anti-war movement who might seek to oust Putin and resume trade with Europe. It might well solidify any wavering nationalists. Who knows?
Another theory: Russia is demonstrating a capability. I think that makes less sense.
The question no one asks is "how long does it take to repair a break in the pipeline?"
The whole pipeline is still there, this is damaged sections. This would be a known risk of an undersea pipeline: stuff undersea gets damaged by ships all the time [1].
I would wager, were we in normal circumstances, we'd be talking 6 months. There'd be big money at stake, vital infrastructure, and that's about as long as you've got till winter in Europe normally. We would have spare pipe sections, we've still got all the plant and equipment for putting them in place. Basically, this is not unplanned for event.
But does Russia, Putin specifically, think the pipeline will be of any benefit to them over the next 6 months? If Russia withdraws from Ukraine, sure. But why would that happen? Because Putin has been deposed (and is probably dead) - and the main way to accrue the sort of allies you'd need to do it would be to promise them a bigger cut of the new revenue to the state provided they played ball.
Taking the pipelines out of circulation in the short term cuts off internal negotiating power for would be usurpers for Putin specifically. Which for current day Russia, is the only consideration that matters.
6 months of political bickering over whether we should do it or not is an eternity over turning a valve on an already functional and apparently pressurized pipeline ready to go.
I won't pretend to understand the motivations here but it definitely further drives the wedge between the EU and Russia.
there are overland pipes through ukraine, poland, belarus, czech republic and austria too, so any likely putin usurpers could easily use those. wheres the rational for russia to blow them up really?
those countries didnt want ns2 because it cut out their middle man charges. most likely culprit is any of those countries (cough poland cough)
That supply, of note, has been running this whole time through the war[1] - but suddenly there is a reason to start breaking contracts right as a bunch of pipelines explode?
EDIT: Although on closer review, this might be coincidental since it's "just" arguments over payment. Conversely, the timing is a heck of a thing and Russia has escalated payment disputes into "and so we're cutting gas" previously.
Given the ridiculous number of oligarchs getting defenestrated of late, it doesn’t seem Putin has lost his ability to cow them.
The USA would be entirely right not to trust Germany, but the risks of blowback should it be caught would make it too risky, and Biden doesn’t strike me as a gambler, unlike some.
Ukraine would be a good potential suspect but probably doesn’t have the capability. China could also be, turning Russia into a permanent vassal state would have its advantages, but it’s far-fetched.
This reminds me of the persons unknown who have been sabotaging Egyptian undersea fiber optic cables.
There is Yamal, Brotherhood and Turk Stream - more than enough capacity. I don't think anyone is willing to buy more than 10% from Russian, ever. It's too risky. China is keeping it under 15%.
There is no way to shut the gas production down for long enough for Europe to transition to renewables, the most they could do would be to cause Europe an immense amount of suffering while everyone rushed in to post-Putin Russia to repair the sabotage.
On the one hand, the US explicitly, publicly, and repeatedly threatened to unilaterally stop the pipeline if Russia invaded Ukraine. The US has a clear benefit in the sense that they remove the option for European allies to buy Russian oil. The US also has the ability to do it in the form of ships in the area.
On the other hand, perhaps it's in Putin's interest to destroy his own pipelines for some reason.
The key point is that "they" is the Ukrainian war propaganda machine, which is obviously not a reliable source of news or analysis.
It is also a classic propaganda technique to differenciate between the awful dictator and its poor people/country.
I do not know what happened and if it was deliberate it is not obvious who did it. People should be prudent and not buy into propaganda from either side.
"They" specifically referred to /u/yznovyak here, I don't know if they're part of a war propaganda machine or not. But /u/yznovyak talked about what's in Putin's interest, /u/mytailorisrich argued that no, it's not in Russia's interest. All I was doing was pointing out that /u/yznovyak was talking about Putin's interest, which might not perfectly overlap with Russia's.
And you're right, pointing out that there's a difference between a dictator and their country is a common propaganda technique. But it's also just true, and if it's not part of your analysis you're probably doing it wrong.
And to be clear, I'm not arguing in favor of either side, I don't have any clue who did this and I'm not trying to pretend I do.
The person I was replying to wrote "Common theme I've heard here (Kyiv, Ukraine)". They (Ukraine) are at war so everything in their media or stated by government and President is part of their war propaganda machine. That's how war works.
The West is effectively part of the war so we cannot trust anything we're told there, either.
The only thing we can do is think for ourselves.
Oh and I've just realised that my initial comment has been flagged! You could not make this up... Very disappointing.
I wonder what would be the bare minimum required to stage an operation like this, if one were willing to take big risks. Like, combat divers operating from an inconspicuous sailing yacht or the like? Sail into position, go down (80 meters should be doable with Trimix), place explosives with timed fuses (set to a few weeks?), go back up, throw the equipment overboard later, sail into Kiel with no one the wiser? Not that such a scenario is very likely, but there have been a lot of crazy stunts in this and other wars.
I'm certain that there will be investigations from NATO navies soon, and we will have some explanation. Whether or not that's actually what happened or not will depend on who did it and who is most beneficial to pin it on, but I'm sure there will be pictures that are illustrative.
They have combat divers (one of the special forces units is even the 1st Underwater demolitions Unit, apparently) and the average depth of the Baltic is 50m. So my guess would be: yes they have the capability in principle.
> they've been wanting to get that pipeline approved and operational
Not recently. Recently, they pulled out a string of excuses to send less and less gas over (turbine bing repaired, sanctions, etc.) to show Europe their leverage. They don't feel any lack of money currently, and they know with current hydrocarbon prices, they have options to sell, even if at discount, and no money shortages currently. So they're betting on European population being weak and European energy infrastructure being dependent on Russian hydrocarbons, and thus citizens pushing the politicians to make nice with Russia.
The fact that they invested a lot of money in it means nothing. They have money. They have oil and gas that they can sell for money. What they need is for the West not to send so much weapons and ammunition to Ukraine that Russian army, numerous but weak and disorganized, will be completely crushed and expelled from Ukraine. Cutting off the flow directly would expose them to contractual sanctions, which can be leveraged against assets Russia still has in the West. But cutting off the flow by "mysterious explosion" reaches the same goal while providing Russians with tiny veiled plausible deniability. That's how they always operate. I'm sure in 5 years or so they'd admit it openly. Just as they admitted that "insurgents" in East Ukraine and Crimea were actually Russian military and intelligence officers, or Putin's private military "Wagner Group" exists, was created by a close Putin ally - which they were denying for years - and is operating in Ukraine.
They stopped sending gas over on Nord Stream 1 with the excuse of maintenance and repairs specifically as leverage for Germany to sign off on opening their brand new pipeline Nord Stream 2 for business.
Now, both pipelines have been blown up. It doesn't make any sense for it to have been Russia.
Why not? If it is stopped by the Russian order, Russians violated the contract. If it is stopped because unknown terrorists blew up the pipeline, it's force majeure, Gazprom is in the clear.
Also, they have one more pipeline left. Which they are also threatening to - guess what? - shut down.
Still doesn't make sense. NS2 was held offline by Germany and could easily have had technical difficulties as well if that were to change. NS1 could have been left offline pretty much indefinitely without serious attempts at such contractual plays, because this sort of thing would of course have ended any chance of future Russian deliveries. Besides, there isn't much left that sanctions don't already target.
However, them being destroyed for now will take a lot of pressure to appease Russia out of German domestic politics, lots of political figures were gearing up for trench warfare on opening NS2, and Russia could have used NS1 as a bargaining chip to get Germany to desert Ukraine. There's good reason to suspect the German electorate might have been quite open to such an arrangement by late winter, and imagine what that would have done to western unity. Why throw away such leverage, especially as you can still blow them up later?
This also takes any plan B involving Russia off the table entirely, meaning that Germany will absolutely have to double down on LNG and renewables and restructure its industry, with obvious consequences for future business opportunities.
> Besides, there isn't much left that sanctions don't already target.
Frozen Russian assets, AFAIK, for now remain frozen. They could be un-frozen and directed to other owners. There's pretty much zero political risk towards Russia - nobody cares what they think anymore - but there's a problem that the Western legal system isn't really happy with just taking somebody's property because you hate them, and establishing such precedent might not be politically good. But if you have some good reason - e.g. voluntary violation of contracts - then it's different business.
> as a bargaining chip to get Germany to desert Ukraine
Germany didn't really "sert" Ukraine that much. They just recently declared they won't - on the 8th month of war, when Russia is mobilizing its reserves - give Ukraine any tanks because it's too hard for Ukrainians to operate them and it'd take too long to teach them. I mean, they are giving some things, but way below their capabilities and try to slow-walk it a lot. Of course, they could stop completely, but that'd probably be political suicide for whoever is in control. "Work as much as you have to not be fired, but not even a little more" is the strategy here. Would it be ever non-suicidal for German government to openly cave to Russians (with the full knowledge that from now on and forever, they are Russia's bitch)? I don't think so.
> Germany will absolutely have to double down on LNG and renewables and restructure its industry,
They really don't have much choice here, if they're not going the "Russia's bitch" road. The war is not really done, and it's not going well for Putin, so he'll squeeze anything that can be squeezed. He's cashing in (did I mention the mobilization?). There's no long term soft influence plan anymore - there's the fire sale plan now. If Germany does not capitulate - and I don't think Germans are inclined to - Russia will squeeze them and they'd have to find the alternative.
Stop thinking that Russia is doing what's good for Russia. Because it's not what's happening: Putin is ordering Russia, to do whats either good for Putin, or just what Putin wants.
And what's good for Putin right now is not having an easy source of income for someone to distribute to his keys to power in exchange for supporting a coup (plus side-benefits like all the people leaping to blame the US).
America would blow up oil pipelines in Chile when it was getting dangerously close to Democracy, Allende said so in his final address. Plus it's business.
NS2 still has an intact set of pipe and can operate-- if the West falls on its sword and allows NS2 to open.
And a clear statement of capability has been made: whomever has done this can also target pipelines in the North Sea that provide Europe's remaining gas.
Also, if someone is thinking of succeeding Putin, this step makes it hard to think one can walk back to the status quo (especially if the last NS2 parallel segment is rigged to blow).
This makes no sense. Without the gas, Russia loses leverage and there would be no dependence of Russian hydrocarbons. Germany always could buy more expensive gas from Ukraine and USA, and now they have no other choice.
The whole war makes no sense. Putin had lost his senses.
1. Putin seriously cite Dugin[1]. Putin acts like he believes this bullshit.
2. There was a lot of people who on different occasions told "Putin wouldn't do that, it would make no sense", so then Putin could prove them wrong later by doing it. This war is one of examples of that kind. Or MH17: why to hit a plane with a missile? There was no sense in it. But it just happened. Why to massacre people in Bucha? It makes no sense.
So, when you talk about Russia the argument "makes no sense" doesn't mean anything. If it made no sense in an alternate reality were Putin resides, then it might be an interesting argument. But in his alternate reality it makes perfect sense to stop selling gas to EU.
It makes sense to stop selling gas to the EU, but Russia already did that weeks ago.
What makes little sense is then blowing up the pipeline. Russia were already not selling gas, why would they take the extra step of blowing up the pipeline? That removes it as possible leverage for future negotiations.
And if you have the capability to blow up pipelines, why not blow up all the other pipelines transporting gas from Scandinavia to the rest of the EU? Make Nordstream the only option.
It actually makes more sense for Germany or one of their allies to have blown up Nordstream, to remove the temptation to for Germany to open it back up in the middle of winter when they are suffering massive gas shortages.
My experience of such discussions hints that they lead nowhere. It is a classical mystery. It is impossible to solve without additional information. But if we need to guess based on our current knowledge, then Putin is the best bet: he is a liar, he disrespect all the rules, he likes sudden unexpected moves, he likes to act undercover. I know no other entity that can have reasons to blow up pipelines who matches better.
But Putin has been operating with good internal logic this entire time (even if the assumptions driving that logic have been flawed at points).
And I'm not really sure what logic would cause him to attack Nordstream. The two best ideas I have are:
1. He wants to remove an option of retreat for Germany. Putin things that with Nordstream inactive, Germany can wait until they get low on gas in the middle of winter before crawling back to Russia and conceding in exchange for gas. But if it's damaged, Germany kind of need to start repairing it now, and Putin can force them to concede sooner. And Putin probably feels short on time.
2. Putin is already planning for a civil war, and doesn't think he will control Nordstream during a civil war. By destroying Nordstream, it will be harder for some civil war faction to turn it back on.
Neither are great theories. At least without some extra evidence to suggest Putin is thinking along one (or both) of these lines.
It makes all the sense. The problem is that most don't care for reality or other side's points, but would rather make assumptions based on impressions, based on propaganda narratives.
Obviously, the more the assertions are based on values and politics rather than reality, the less sense it would make.
> 1. Putin seriously cite Dugin[1]. Putin acts like he believes this bullshit.
You didn't link an actual reference, just Dugin's wikipedia page.
> Or MH17: why to hit a plane with a missile? There was no sense in it. But it just happened.
Ukraine had been conducting air strikes over that territory at that time.
I don't think this is the case - when pipes are installed, they are exposed to seawater, and they are segmented, and there must be a way to replace the damaged segment without having to redo the whole pipeline. It won't fill the whole pipeline even if there's a hole in it.
The USA is the country that threatened an attack against the gas pipeline.
"If Russia invades, that means tanks or troops crossing the -- the border of Ukraine again, then there will be -- there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2," Biden said during the press conference with Scholz, who did not go as far as Biden, but insisted the U.S. and Germany remain "absolutely united."
He meant what he had said and that is that the US will prevent the pipeline from working properly.
We have no information to reason about how it was meant to be achieved then or how far would one go in case of some contingency.
We can infer though that the circumstances had changed (Russian mobilization and referendums) and that the US ends up profiting the most now that the NS1/2 can't be turned back on.
It's a serious stretch to read this as threatening an attack on the pipeline itself. Not only is it from over 6 months ago, but it doesn't make any sense: NS2 is controlled by the Germans themselves, and there's no strategic value in blowing it up rather than just turning it off (or on).
The more sensible interpretation is that Biden was threatening to fully support Germany's plans to become energy independent. And that's, so far, what we've seen the US commit to.
Really, either speculation is equally valid (or should I say, invalid) without:
(1) An understanding of the facts of how successful the EU has been at diversifying away from Russian gas and whether NS2's natural demise was all but an inevitability.
(2) How much the repairs will cost.
If the repair costs are low, it's probably Russia, because of the propaganda value.
If NS2's demise was highly likely, again probably Russia because they're leveraging a sunk cost to their benefit which is just smart.
But so many people are making confident assumptions about (1) and (2) in this thread. If you don't know the answer to those questions, stop forming strong opinions!
> The more sensible interpretation is that Biden was threatening to fully support Germany's plans to become energy independent.
I don't think that Biden was threatening to blow up the pipeline, but what you've given is a somewhat sugar-coated version of the American approach towards Germany and Nord Stream 2.
Long before the Russian invasion of the Ukraine, the US began sanctioning German companies involved in NS2. The American approach to NS2 has been rather blunt, given that Germany is a close ally that usually toes the line, even to its own detriment.
At the time, I read Biden's statement as a promise that the US would sharpen sanctions on German companies involved in the project if the Germans did not willingly exit the project themselves.
> At the time, I read Biden's statement as a promise that the US would sharpen sanctions on German companies involved in the project if the Germans did not willingly exit the project themselves.
While I don't doubt the factuality of this, I didn't get that from this specific briefing (given that it was with Scholz, who expressed unity with the US's position).
In other words: unless Scholz is saying one thing and doing another, there would be no specific need to threaten German companies with additional US sanctions; Germany's government would (and eventually did) take action on its own.
(I don't mean to sugar-coat the US's foreign policy, which can be succinctly and accurately described as "uniformly nasty until we get what we want.")
I think Biden thought that Germany would end NS2 if Russia invaded the Ukraine, but that he was also prepared to sharpen sanctions if the Germans didn't do so.
I wouldn't read too much into Scholz' expression of unity with the US position. The German government almost never criticizes the US government (with some very rare exceptions, such as in 2003, in the lead-up to the Iraq War). If you ever want to hear German government spokespeople tying themselves into knots, just listen to them try to explain their position on the US prosecution of Assange,[0] or on whether Germany would give asylum to Snowden.[1]
Doesn't matter if it's a follow up to Biden's threat or not.
It was probably a joint US-Polish operation.
The Poles wanted to stick it to Putin and ze Germans for historical and more recent inter-EU spats.
The US has obvious reasons, no need to elaborate here.
In case things go south the Poles will be exposed as rogue agents of NATO and take full blame.
If everything goes well, then I guess we'll be reading about it in about a decade from now. Maybe there will be a wikipedia page as well.
NS2 still has an intact set of pipe and can operate-- if the West falls on its sword and allows NS2 to open.
And a clear statement of capability has been made: whomever has done this can also target pipelines in the North Sea that provide Europe's remaining gas.
Biden did say that if Russia invades Ukraine, "there will be no longer a Nordstream 2" seven months ago. When a reporter asked "how he would do that, since it's under German control," he stated "we will, I promise you, we will be able to do it."
The problem is that the technical resources required to pull something like this off don't seem to be all that high. You need a ton or so of explosives which is the hard part, a delayed fuse, a water proof container, a camera and light that work underwater, and some winches to deploy the camera and then the bomb. It wouldn't surprise me if almost every nation in Europe could pull this off if they put their minds to it, and a wide variety of sub-national groups as well.
I think the real reason states don't typically do this is that we rely on undersea cables and pipelines for a lot so it is not a good idea to throw stones from glass houses.
There are lots of options, mostly intelligence agencies of various sorts taking matters into their own hands. Maybe a European or American group which doesn't want Europe bought off or a Russia group which wants total victory rather than a peaceful compromise. One could imagine an ecoterrorist group wanting to do this in the confusion of the war but the timing so soon after Russia's mobilization makes it look like the explosions are related so probably not that.
GreenWar: a hypothetical sibling of GreenPeace. Of course I don't actually believe this.
However, considering the war and today's sabotage purely from a global warming perspective, it could be net positive in the long run. Accelerating the transition away from fossil fuels.
I wonder if the sheer amount of methane dumped into the atmosphere from the damaged pipelines would be an acceptable cost for the hypothetical GreenWar? I couldn't see it, myself. The pipes weren't empty, and thats a lot of quite bad greenhouse gas now making things worse.
It's a tricky calculation for sure. Depends on the likelihood and duration of those pipelines ever being used again, and the take-up of alternate, renewable energy sources - or just doing without.
> The next question is, who did it? It doesn't seem like something in Russia's interest, they've been wanting to get that pipeline approved and operational. They invested huge sums of money to build it after all.
NS2 never entering service was settled for good over 200 days ago.
NS1 has been shut down by Russia, but it was at best dubious before this whether it would ever be used operationally again.
It wasn't "settled for good", that's silly, it was still there pressurized and ready to go. Germany recently saw protests by people who wanted to open it, and some politicians saying it needed to be opened, and it is safe to assume that if things got really bad in Germany this winter they would have opened it.
Clearly, whoever has attacked these pipelines knew perfectly well that the story about Russia being unwilling to sell gas was nonsense, and also knew perfectly well that European sanctions would collapse in the face of rotating blackouts. Apparently someone very powerful cares more about fucking Russia than fucking Europeans.
>Germany recently saw protests by people who wanted to open it, and some politicians saying it needed to be opened
The protests were made up of AfD supporters and Russian/Serbian immigrants, and the the only politicians saying it needs to be opened are from the AfD.
They are not representative of German public and political sentiments.
Whoever did it - any further debate along "let's make friends again with Putin and go back to the cheap Russian gas as it once was" lines is now settled. That alone will have interesting consequences across EU.
IDK about the details underlying the argument (whether the contract is actually structured this way, etc.), but https://mobile.twitter.com/nierobmitak/status/15747490369129... mentioned the possibility that the contracts entail fines for non-delivery (which they might not have to pay if the pipeline is unusable).
The OP link goes to "forsvaret.dk" wich is the Danish military.
I am a Dane. I think I may be able to offer a perspective on this that
non-Danes will simply miss.
While being a regular reader, for posting this I have created a new
account that will not be used again.
Please excuse me for being a bit verbose, as this is not simple:
ONE
First, I am not positive if this technically happened inside our
territorial waters or just outside, but it seems at least some of it
happened inside. Meaning: We didn't defend our own waters properly.
The area as of now has been blocked for traffic, and we have sent a minor
military vessel there (a fregate) to at least signal that the matter is of
some interest. We can not boast of a large navy or a particularly large
military at that.
TWO
The only part of our military that is in some way of significance is...
our Divers Corps. We have excellent divers, which are given tasks comparable
to those of the more well known US Seals (only more specialized as the
Divers Corps is smaller than the Seals Force and not able to span such a
large set of roles). Suffice to say that they sould be considered
competent in all things on and below water.
These competent people will most likely be capable of investigating the
technical side of this matter fully and rather quickly if they are allowed
to, which it does not seem like.
THREE
In stead it seems like our intelligence agencies (in cooperation with
our so-called "allies") will be tasked with that job. We all know by now
how these information exchanges work (thanks, Snowden) and if there is
even a remote possibility that one of these "allies" have been involved,
we should not expect that to surface from any investigation.
FOUR
Our intelligence agencies... (we have two: A Police Intelligence Agency
and a Defence Intelligence Agency) are more or less at war. The civilian
agency (Police) has literally arrested the head of the military intelligence
agency on charges somewhat similar to "high treason" for what amounts to
be evidence falling totally apart (or so it seems).
FIVE
Also, we are facing a general election. Very soon. The government is going
to fall in less than two weeks - we know this for sure as it has been
declared by their support party. Why?
SIX
Our head of government and the whole administration has tecnically broken
the constitution (on a matter entirely unrelated to Gas or Ukraine).
SEVEN
It seeems there is at lest 50% chance that our current government will not get
re-elected
EIGHT
We operate a multiple-party system, and this election will see at least
two new parties of unknown -- possibly big -- impact (as they were formed
recently by some voter magnets that broke out from previous parties and
have a less than complete policy in place)
NINE
Our current government is dominated by a party (Social Democrats) which
is notoriously "America Friendly". They have sold out critical infrastructure,
engaged widely with the likes of Boston Consulting Group, etc. and ..well,
let's just say examples are legio. This netted a former Head of State a
very well paid job in some Facebook Ethical Committee, and other former
ministers have also been rewarded for their support of American interests
in similar fashions.
TEN
So, we have a coastline. A significant harbour (Esbjerg) is right now being
refactored in order to be able to receive the largest American Navy vessels with the
stated aim of arming Eastern Europe. A pretty large US ship, IIRC, "Endeavour"
recently practiced unloading of tanks and other stuff there. [0]
ELEVEN
The deal has been struck betweeen the government and NATO and/or USA. The
population as such was not consulted on the matter, as we have what is
known as "representative democracy". It was hasted through in the aftermath
of the Ukraine invasion as if it was a necessity for Danmark.
TWELVE
Our defence minister visited the USA a few weeks ago (Sept 1). In extreme
secrecy our government is negotiating a deal with the US that will allow
USA to set up permanent military presence ("bases") on our soil.
TWELVE (B)
This is the same government that will fall in a few weeks, and be replaced
by who-knows-what
THIRTEEN
One possible relevant location of one of these bases has been mentioned
to be... the island of Bornholm
FOURTEEN
This island lies strategically at the entrance to the Baltic Sea. You can
not enter or exit the Baltic Sea without passing it.
FIFTEEN
Russia is not amused. Especially since American forces were preacticing
"extended fire capabilities" there in May. Russia claims that it is a
violation of an agreement tat the Danish govenment as well as USA does
not seem to recognize [1][2]
SIXTEEN
This island is in the general neighborood of the damaged pipelines. That
is, very close.
SEVENTEEN
Few monts ago a large Naval excercise called BALTOPS22 took place in the
general vicinity of said island. The US navy participated [3] eg. "by
executing complex multi-vehicle UUV missions with modified U.S. Navy fleet
assets." - allegedly in the field of mine detection.
EIGHTEEN
UUV means "unmanned underwater vehicle". In [3] it is stated that
increasing the distance these UUVs can be controlled from was important.
NINETEEN
Incidentally, a few years ago, in 2015, the Swedish military actually
found a (cable-controlled) drone loaded with explosives near a Nord Stream
pipeline. The communications cable was "cut off" so it could not detonate.[4]
TWENTY (and closing)
As stated above signifcant US military interests hinges on support from
a Danish government that is about to fall in mere weeks. The current
government has been "very cooperative" to US interests (to put it politely),
and the future government is unknown.
CONCLUDING
Feel free to connect these 20 dots as best you can.
As an outsider, I still don't understand what this all hints at.
That the current Danish government was behind this to win the elections as the safer bet against Russian aggression?
That the US is behind this to justify a US base in Bornholm island?
How does the timing of explosions fit into all this? Specifically the Norway Poland pipeline coming online and Russian threats to NATO (implying nuclear weapons to defend occupied Ukrainian territories isn't a bluff).
ONE the world is falling apart
TWO half the internet thinks the Russians are the aggressor
THREE half the internet thinks the country that nuked Japan, decimated Vietnam, bombed Cambodia, illegally invaded Iraq, supports brutal dictatorships world wide, … is to blame for pushing its hegemonic grip a tad bit too much
FOUR the effects of this are spreading… the world is falling apart
> I have difficulty imagining accidental ignition in an underwater gas pipeline. Where would the oxygen come from? Plus it's more than one explosion on the same day - can't be a coincidence.
There may not be a need for ignition; the news articles are saying pressures in Nordstream 1 dropped from 105 bar (1,522.9 PSI) to 7 bar (101.5 PSI). The water pressure at 100m where the pipe is is ~10 bar, so about a 1377.9 PSI difference in pressure.
A pipe with 1,377.9 PSI difference pipe that's 1.1m in diameter rupturing seems like it would cause a blast even without igniting.
I could also be way off-base. My physics and chemistry classes were a long time ago, and had nothing to do with explosions.
It possibly is in Russia's interests. If they predict that Europe is on the verge of successfully becoming energy independent and the demise of NS2 through non-sabotage means is all but an inevitability at this point, then it's optimal for them to use that sunk cost for their own benefit, in this case framing the Ukrainians or US in order to turn Europe against Ukraine or to fracture NATO an EU cohesion by stoking distrust.
It's an intelligent leveraging of a sunk cost when most don't realize it's a sunk cost or don't understand the concept of sunk costs.
It's exactly how the Russians would play an excuse to escalate. Russian gas is going nowhere in Europe for decades this is clear. So they lost nothing but now they can blame the west.
Maybe the Russian military has some factions, and a faction is thinking surrender. Destroying the pipelines would advantage the faction against surrender, because then the surrenderists would be weaker, since they have less to offer to the EU. Which faction Putin would belong to is a different area of speculation.
Or it's really Putin's way of saying "I'm not bluffing, in fact, here's how serious I am, see these pipes for that possible future gas sale?". If he really is destroying something that could make him money in the future, maybe he's really in an "If I can't win then let me flip the board" mood. Which I'd extrapolate to him being in a "Get the nukes warmed up" mood.
I wonder what discussion inside the intelligence community is like currently. It'd be amazing. Maybe watch what the senators connected to the intelligence committee are buying/selling.
Reading that the Norway-Poland pipeline just happened to open today...
Sounds like a loud a clear message to me, along the lines of "Gas pipeline seems to be very fragile around here, let's just hope nothing happens to yours".
If you add factions into the mix, I would say that this might be what makes the most sense.
There's also the fact that it just shakes things up a bit. Russia isn't benefiting from the pipeline now. Leaving it intact leaves long-term opportunities and risks that strategic actors with time on their side can turn against Russia (or against Putin in particular). Blowing a hole in the pipeline creates confusion, disruption and opportunities today. For what? Unclear, but Putin seems to thrive on short-term crises.
destroying something as vital as the poland-norway pipeline or other norwegian gas infrastructure could be seen as a trigger for article 5.
Mind you, this is something russian claims it wants (the war against the west and all that), but actually triggering it or something like it which allows to poor even more weapons into ukraine will result in an even weaker russia.
Hilariously, this is the husband of Washington Post person "Anne Appelbaum", a noted historian and alleged "dingbat" [1] who, among other things, can be relied upon to give strong cover to her husband's racist BS. Appelbaum and Sikorski are big anti-Russia types, and cursory glances at their social media feeds shows how thirsty they are for war, and how willing they are to send others' children off to do it.
(Much as I dislike the guy, Sikorski's probably right about the US doing the pipeline bombing [2].)
Methane is a significant greenhouse gas and I just don't see an attack that results in a large methane release being approved by the current administration. If they wanted to permanently shut the pipeline they'd do it differently.
>Methane is a significant greenhouse gas and I just don't see an attack that results in a large methane release being approved by the current administration.
You have a much higher standards of the current administration than I do. I haven't noticed any significant morality in the office of the POTUS since I've been alive. Carter was the last even halfway decent president we've had.
Especially when you are aware that the US military is the single largest consumer of petroleum products on the planet and it gets a bigger budget every single year.
Russia's greatest leverage was Europe needing their gas, and eventually agreeing to stop supporting Ukraine in order to get the gas turned back on.
Now if the pipelines are destroyed, no matter how cold and angry citizens in the EU get, EU leadership has no reason to give in to Russian since that now won't get the gas turned back on.
If anything, this points to Ukraine or the US doing it.
This is not an act in the same level as the Ukraine-Russia war. This is a very top level geopolitical attack. This appears to be in international waters so it will be interesting when forensic results are published.
It can not possibly be in Russia's interest. They could easily nix NS2 at source. And now, even if diplomacy or desperation brings Russia to reach a peace deal with Ukraine, NS2 is out of commission for a long time. Does not compute.
US and UK certainly did not want NS2 and Biden did promise to "end it" if Russia invaded Ukraine. And the same day a Polish pipeline opens. But this is exceptionally risky if forensics turns up evidence that points to them. For one, it's an act of war against a fellow NATO member (Germany) and Russia; two, it sets a precedent that an island nation such as UK (with a lot of strategic pipes running in and out of it under Atlantic) can ill afford. So the risk factor seems to argue against that (though motive and who-benefits are clearly there).
Germany? It is possible that German deep state is not united. There are Atlantists and those who assert that German and Russian coexistence is optimal. The former faction could have done this to basically close that temptation/option to German government.
So that last group is imo the most likely culprit. [Honest question: if CIA acts covertly with say German special services (and not telling the guy in DC, you know, "need to know" and all that /g) and they do this, does that technically mean US committed an act of war or only CIA?]
p.s. whoever did this, it is a great advertisement for LNG delivered by ship escorted by blue water navies. This event just showed that gaspipelines are not and can not be strategically reliable energy conduits. They are trivially taken out of commission and repair (even if possible) will require great deal of time and resources to complete.
> Germany? It is possible that German deep state is not united. There are Atlantists and those who assert that German and Russian coexistence is optimal. The former faction could have done this to basically close that temptation/option to German government.
It eliminates a potential threat to the present Germany government; their rivals promising to turn the gas back on if they're put in power.
I think it was the Russians trying to sow discord and distrust within the western allies. Nobody was going to use this pipeline in the near future anyway, so there is no immediate cost for Russia. If there really should be a lifting of the sanctions then there would be enough time to repair the pipeline....done and paid by the germans.
As I mentioned this, or other variants I've seen being posted in twitter, with Russia doing this does not compute.
A kilometer wide gas bubble on surface indicates substantial damage. I think it safe to assume that sea water in pipe further damages an additional length of pipeline. German government (or any future one with surprise ala Italy) no longer has the option of giving in to economic and social pressures and making up with Russia before this winter. That option is gone. Russia would be monumentally stupid to lose that option. That was a negotiation card! This is what NS going bye bye means.
Someone mentioned elsewhere that this is the response to the referendums that RF just held. This somehow sounds right.
Generally don't like to be pessimistic, but this action (whoever did it does not matter, unless some random terror group) indicates that whoever did it has already determined that there will be war. [The real thing not the far away affair on social media] They know this but they are not going to announce it to us until absolutely necessary. There is no way there can be global peace after powers start destroying infrastructure at this level. There will be a contest of strength (we're past the will part) after which pipelines and satellites will once again be safe.
p.s. in case it is not clear, I've changed my opinion a bit in this reply. "Risks" may not be relevant because it is understood (and this action was basically a turn in the game with an escalation) that there is going to be, has to be, a showdown. There will be war.
Germany has enough gas for the winter and given the current sentiment I dont think there is any chance before spring/summer of any accommodation with Russia. I guess Russia REALLY needs to break up the (mostly) united western alliance to reduce arms and financial support for Ukraine.
Paying for this with some temporary broken pipeline that wouldnt have been used anyway is most likely acceptable for the siloviki.
It's not clear to me what you are saying. This is what I got from your post:
'Russia destroys its own pipeline so as to cause fracture in the alliance.' Not sure how is that supposed to work! Care to explain?
Also, would Russia blowing this constitute an act of war on Germany by Russia? Is that like Putin saying "we don't have enough on our plate. Lets go to war with Germany"?
Russia is the -loser- here. Why is this not clear?
"'Russia destroys its own pipeline so as to cause fracture in the alliance.' Not sure how is that supposed to work! Care to explain?"
Sure, just look at this discussion where the majority opinion is that the US or some other western nation did this. This is gold for all the Orbans and Salvinis in europe to change popular opinion.
See, the US wants us to freeze and pay enormous sums for their LNG. Lets go back to our russian friends with their cheap oil and gas. Who cares about those corrupt Ukrainians anyway.
That is right now far more important for Russia than some temporary shutdown of a pipeline that is not in use anyway.
For me the main indicator is that this is a reckless, desperate and somewhat stupid move. The US is none of that things while Russia...
I see: A false flag by Russia, followed by coordinated propaganda, to convince certain European nations that they just got fucked by US. This then results in a change in popular opinion which forces German government to sit down with Russia and beg for forgiveness.
If RF managed to send special forces in that highly monitored and shallow stretch of waters there will inevitably be forensic evidence. How was it done and what clues remain as to how it was done. Can this be sourced then, right to Russia? So there is the competence issue, and subsequent evidence issue. Not to mention, hey, Russia now is at war with NATO. Something that they are clearly, desperately, trying to avoid.
Second, I honestly don't think this propaganda reaches a majority of the targeted nation's population. (Same for our propaganda). There is basically a usual suspects demographic in any society that eats this stuff up. They are not influential, in general. Sometimes, like in the past 2 decades, excesses of the ruling class effective inflate the number of people who flip to a counter-narrative and it can be a force. Is that the situation in Germany?
Next, you and I disagree about the degree in which "popular opinion" has any influence in immediate and short term strategic decision making by governments. Are Germans going to follow the example of Iranians and revolt in the streets? I just don't see it.
(Long term, sure. Public opinion matters.)
~
"the US wants us to freeze and pay enormous sums for their LNG."
Btw, this is not what US wants. It's not the money. We print that shit since our CB is blessed by heaven so we can print without consequence ... until we lose global power.
No. US wants the EU dependent on energy flows that are subject to the famous "Anglo-Saxons". That would keep EU in line.
This would not lead to war with NATO. Russia already has used nerve agents and radioactive poisons on european soil without much consequences.
The only consequence would be some contradicting statements: We didnt do it, but here is evidence that the US,UK..... spiced up with a video of some CoD game footage showing scuba divers.
Thats the other part of the cui bono argument. What happens if you get caught? That would be pretty devastating for the US who tries to hold this coalition together through the coming winter but for Russia its nothing. There will always be enough doubt, that they themselves created, for them to continue unabated.
I can see some baltic or polish actor doing this but 2:1 my money is on Russia.There have been some suggestions in this thread that the pipelines might be completely destroyed. In that case I would have to reevaluate my position. But it seems to me, that would be a rather fragile pipeline if any wrong anchoring or earthquake could destroy it.
This is not an act of war with Germany. This happened in international waters. The pipeline is already shut down. This does not affect Germany's gas supply, as they were already receiving no gas from Nordstream 2.
Additionally, the assumption that Germany would declare war on Russia unilaterally over something like this is flawed. Sure, if this were a verifiable and identifiable attack on German territory, maybe. To suggest that any attack on international infrastructure in international waters with no mechanism for identifying the actor is intended to do anything other than instill fear is mistaken.
I think it depends on how they want to take it. NS ownership is apparently is Russian state property and German private firms. So if an attack then an act of war on Russia and depending on how a German government looked at it either a loss of private property or an indirect blow to German state itself.
It can be construed as such, but certainly not by Germany. They are not strong enough to make a stink about it. Powerful states can take offense at the smallest thing. Weaker nations put up with lots of shit. (Is not, for example, what is done to Russia economic warfare? Do you see them declaring war? No. Because they are weaker.)
So boundary of what constitute an act of war is somewhat fuzzy not completely crisp.
> This happened in international waters.
Yes, and NATO waters.
> The pipeline is already shut down. This does not affect Germany's gas supply, as they were already receiving no gas from Nordstream
Addressed multiple times in this thread. Options closed. Decision trees altered. Game theory.
p.s.
A nice map to go with this thread. The remaining functional gas pipelines from Russia to Germany both go through Poland and Ukraine. Both Poland and Ukraine have 'difficult' relations with Germany and 'hostile' relations with Russia.
The Lusitania had nearly 1,200 of its passengers killed when it sank. It was clearly sunk by a German submarine. That was a much more overt act of war.
There is no such thing as NATO waters, only the territorial waters of NATO members, who must choose to invoke Article 5.
In the sense that it is chuck full of NATO military naval bases and must be monitored extensively.
I had the same thought regarding passengers as you when posting that item, so your point is well taken. It was in the sense of it doesn't have to be state property: anything that ultimately is deemed a malicious act directed at a nation.
>Russia's greatest leverage was Europe needing their gas, and eventually agreeing to stop supporting Ukraine in order to get the gas turned back on.
That boat has sailed some time ago - you don't need to destroy something that's guaranteed it won't be used for decades probably, if ever again.
No country in the West will do any trade with Russia under Putin. There's simply no turning back when you throw diplomacy and international laws out the window, and hide under nuclear threat.
In my point of view this was clearly a message that ANY gas that passes through that sea might have the same faith - even in NATO territory.
It's hugely positive for Ukraine. They'd have done it on day-one if it wouldn't have looked bad. Less income for Russia, less for Russia to divide its allies with.
This is a strong negative for Russia. They had control of the pipeline and thus could dangle the offer of gas, now they cannot. Their leverage is gone.
Europe needs gas. Russia has gas. If EU citizens get cold enough and broke enough, they could entice their governments to give in and stop supporting Ukraine and get their gas turned back on. Idk about you, but if it came down to my grandmother freezing at home or a Ukrainian grandmother living in east Ukraine having to say she's now Russian, the Ukraine grandmother is going first.
I'm no expert in geopolitics, or international law - but what country would make any deal with the current Russian government?
A government that held the energy sector as an hostage to pressure other countries while they violate international law.
Do you see any possibility of everyone sitting at the table, sign new treaties on top of those that were violated, or new contracts that were torn? Because I don't.
There's no credibility left on one side - Russian government openly stated that they do what ever they want, and no law applies to them because they have nukes. What government on their right mind would do any deal with them? Besides China, India, and Afghanistan, that are getting great deals out of this, while remaining neutral.
>If EU citizens get cold enough and broke enough, they could entice their governments to give in and stop supporting Ukraine and get their gas turned back on.
Whatever may come, we've had it much worse in the past, and we made it through. I doubt anyone will freeze to death, like the propaganda is spreading, at worst some people won't be very cozy.
>Idk about you, but if it came down to my grandmother freezing at home or a Ukrainian grandmother living in east Ukraine having to say she's now Russian, the Ukraine grandmother is going first.
Sometimes it's about doing the right thing, even if it has a cost. You might not want to pay the price, others are, because it's better to stop the warmonger now, than latter at a MUCH higher cost. We should have done it in 2008... or 2014... now we're paying the price for it.
Ukraine has a sea coast and a Navy, so I have no doubt that they have combat divers. Thus the only issue would be a logistic one. My take is that it is trivial to send people to the Baltic along with access to diving equipment and boats. Via sea route it should also be very doable to ship explosives.
Any sort of underwater demolitions is pretty much the opposite of "trivial". How much diving have you done? The real world isn't like a James Bond movie.
I didn't say that underwater demolition was trivial.
I said that they surely had military trained in that sort of thing. Actually they even seem to have a 1st Underwater demolitions Unit, so...
It's getting those people to the Baltic that seems trivial to me. That does not mean I am accusing them, but that means they are on my list of suspects.
It's still possible enough for a nation that splintered off a previous world superpower. It's not like Soviet combat divers and their expertise just up and disappeared once the union dissolved in the 90s
BUDS is literally that, every SeAL does that. Not optional.
Not accusing the SeALs just the force I'm most familiar with.
A pipeline is impossible to guard so it's so so easy, it's a cakewalk. The real challenge is the impunity, you don't want to get accused like eg Allended accused CIA of blowing up its pipelines in Chile (gasoductos y olioductos) and the train line. It's a one-dimensional structure that is vulnerable along the entire distance, and more valuable the greater the distance it covers, so more valuable as it is more vulnerable.
Really to protect a one-dimensional resource conveyor, you need retal. There's nothing else. Everybody talks about protecting themselves, yeah and what wear a helmet to cross the street? No, no helmets! Yeah then make the pipeline's steel a meter thick, to protect it.
Retal.
America does that, when terrorists blow up its pipelines in Iraq for instance, they hunt them down and make them regret doing so. Not say they're sorry, make sure it turns out to have been a bad decision in hindsight. Those pipelines don't need to be any thicker. It's the thickness of the initiator's skull that must be overcome.
I'm fairly certain that BUD/S doesn't cover diving to the depths of those pipelines. Initial SEAL dive training is focused on open circuit compressed air and oxygen rebreather equipment. Deep, covert demolition missions like this would likely have to be done on a Mk16, and most SEALs lack that specialized training. I doubt the US Navy actually sabotaged those pipelines, but if they did then the diving was more likely handled by EOD or MDSU personnel.
Dude it's no problem. EOD can do it. SeAL can do it. Like splinter cell unit of the Army can do it. Every nation can do it. I could learn to do it in high school. Any diver. Anybody. Easiest shit. The issue is not getting caught. Not like diving a mile down like the guys at oil platforms, gotta live always under pressure, 80 meters, easy shit. And the difficulty is depressurizing, not pressurizing. And like 200 meters below sea level you go into like a trance...eh. Still can accomplish the mission, if they can translate into trance-ease.
It's nothing. Not a whole lotta guards from the Kremlin with their evil faces like movie bad guys (they're never not the bad guy) the whole time watching over the pipeline, let me tell you.
They do 100x harder shit than that every day. Navy SeALs are in 40 countries on any given day, that's just SeALs. Like no risk of death from that, no risk of needing to use SERE training, NOTHING, BUDS, basic underwater demolition, EASIEST SHIT!
This entire war has been an exercise in Ukraine using other people's resources to attack Russia. If they wanted to I'm sure the US and Ukraine could figure out how to get this done.
Because it’s a war of one-sided aggression. The rest of this comment tree indicates a tendency on your part to minimize that, so I’m providing the counterbalance.
During the entire war, Ukraine has only conducted a few small attacks on Russia. Almost all of their attacks have been on invading Russian troops inside Ukraine.
You are forgetting - A civil war of Western Ukrainians vs the Russian Eastern Ukrainians has been burning at varying levels of intensity for a number of years, which started with a US supported coup that overthrew a pro-Russian elected leader [1] (Article biased in favor of Western Ukrainians but gives a good picture)
Western Ukrainians firebombed Trade Union with the ~300 Ethnic Russians (Eastern Ukrainians) in it, and they were burned alive, in Odessa. [2]
Your take on Odessa is wrong on so many levels. For starters, the total number of people who died there was 45, not 300, and most of them weren't ethnic Russians, but rather locals (who are mostly Ukrainians, even if many of them are Russophone) who supported Yanukovich. Neither did it happen out of the blue - it was preceded by street fights involving firearms (and some of people carrying those firearms were later in the Trade Union House), said fights triggered by an attack by a pro-Yanukovich mob on an anti-Yanukovich protest.
Ukraine has active natural gas pipelines running through its territory right now. Why not blow those up? Would be easy enough to claim a stray Russian artillery strike missed and hit a pipeline.
Remove its only leverage is in Russia's interest? Until now, there was a possibility that EU get tired and get bend over. Now that possibility is gone.
That possibility is long gone. Damaging the Nord Stream pipeline however gives Putin reason to continue to not supply gas (rather than flat out breaking existing contracts) hence maximising the possibility for civil disruption in Europe over the Winter. The less gas there is in Europe the more chance of this occurring. No one knows for sure at this point but all these comments on this thread that there isn't reason or motive for Russia to do this is complete nonsense.
87.7% of EU gas storage is filled[1]. Which is pretty close to how it is usually every winter. Germany is at 91%.
Russia wasn't supplying gas via Nord Stream 1, claiming it needs maintenance and sanctions preventing this maintenance. Which is well...true[2]? Six turbines were stuck in Canada due to sanctions.
There are many ways to not supply gas to Germany and not break the contract that does not involve damaging nearly 20 billion dollar infrastructure (NS1 + NS2).
There a reasons and motives to do so, buy IMO none of them outweigh the damage.
> That possibility is long gone.
No, it's not. You contradict yourself in the very next sentence.
I'd vote for Russia too, not direct evidence obviously but makes more sense than anybody else. Elites who decide see that EU wants and will cut itself off from Russia anyway, just a question of when and its coming soon. So harsh punishment of this pesky EU right before winter starts to feel the consequences of daring to break away from Russian dependence.
Russia made tons of money in past months on oil and gas due to elevated prices. Money ain't what they need desperately now, rather massive civil unrest in EU to weaken Ukraine support and punish. Those who decide have stellar-size egos which are getting continuously humiliated by recent development. Don't underestimate pettiness of a ego-maniac person who has tremendous power and thinks about themselves as somebody larger-than-life and on a life mission. Anyway financial consequences of not selling gas anymore won't affect anyhow the folks on top, and clearly russian population is just cannon fodder for them.
Its political and military move. Realistically only US and Russia have the capacity to do 3 attacks like this simultaneously. This all benefits US too in some ways, but if I have to decide between those 2 options, for me personally its a no brainer.
Has anybody checked Russian reaction? Sometimes its quite obvious from how they say things / what they don't say whats really happening and how much they actually care. For me its not easy to see this in western media and I don't speak russian to check source directly.
This makes zero sense to me. What does Russia get by destroying their own pipeline? If they wanted to shutoff gas, thats just a turn of a valve.
Russia looses massive leverage by no longer being able to deliver gas, even if they wanted to.
Prior to this, if the public got cold enough, they could tell their government "forget Ukraine, we need gas. Go agree to get it or we will vote you out ASAP". Now.... There's no point in settling anything with Russia, since you're not going to get their gas anyway.
People need to stop thinking of 'Russia' (or any other country for that matter) as a single monolith. For example, a possible motive that may be bad for Russia but good for Putin is that maybe he wants to deter any would be assassination attempt coming from within the Kremlin by making it abundantly clear that there will be no going back to business as usual if he was to be eliminated. Blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines is a very good way to achieve that.
We as regular citizens have limited info, really we don't know what's going on. But don't assume it definitely isn't Russia because of whatever reason that happens to seem plausible to you.
This could be the same for the US or Ukraine. So considering that, all things being equal, it sounds pretty terrible for the main Russian goals, so I'm going to say no it wasn't Russia.
Nobody knows what the "main Russian goals" are. I mean, I'd hope that nobody is taking this whole "denazification" business seriously.
There's a very real possibility that the actual goal of this entire mess is/was for Putin to get into the history textbooks as one of the great Russian leaders before he dies from cancer (or whatever it is that he has).
This is exactly the same point the previous poster made. Sure we don't know the real hidden motives of Russia or Putin, but you could say the same for the US and Biden. So ignoring crazy random guesses, you can say that all things being as sane as you'd hope they are, Russia destroying their own ability to say "if you agree to this or that, we will turn back on the gas flow you need to provide affordable energy to your citizens" would be pretty foolish.
On the other side, Ukraine destroying the pipeline and making sure EU members don't give it to Russia in order to restore the flow of gas makes pretty good sense.. as long as you don't care about the EU citizens.
I was countering the idea that was being repeated throughout this thread which was "of course it couldn't be Russia who did this, it is they who stand to benefit if it is functioning". This conclusion is errorsome for all kinds of reasons as there are plenty of motivations for why Russia and more specifically Putin would do such a thing.
4. Gazprom needs to pay financial penalties to companies that signed contracts with them because they have stopped supplying gas, now they can claim force major situation and extend this indefinitely due to lengthy trials
If they just turn a valve, they break contract. If they pipeline blows up, its force majeure.
They can still pump gas using the other pipelines (yamal etc). But they will shut down all of them eventually. Why? Because they are past the point of no return.
A decent portion of EU citizens think going without Russian gas is a terrible idea. And that's this summer. Just wait until it gets cold.
Going back is very easy. Most of the public wants to go back, and you can go back.
You keep asserting in this thread that most EU citizens want to get russian gas right now. This doesn't really correspond with what I perceive in my country or understand to be the case in the rest of the EU... Do you have any public polling to back this up and are you talking about any regions in the EU in particular?
> Realistically only US and Russia have the capacity to do 3 attacks like this simultaneously.
I'm no military expert but why? From reading about the pipeline, sections of it are between 80 meters and 110 meters deep which technical scuba divers can reach and the subsea blasts were equivalent to 100kg of dynamite.
Seems to me basically any country could wrangle up a decent sized boat, a few technical divers, 3 100kg bombs, and some time delayed chargers and planted bombs on the pipelines weeks or even months ago.
> Its political and military move. Realistically only US and Russia
> have the capacity to do 3 attacks like this simultaneously.
No need to do 3 attacks simultaneously. An attacker could have placed explosives there some time ago and the detonated it remotely now.
Formar Naval Special Operator and now teacher in marine engineering and doctoral student at the Swedish Försvarshögskolan, Patrik Hulterström, alleged that "An experienced diver can in theory manage it himself" according to https://www.vg.no/nyheter/utenriks/i/4ozy8o/orlogskaptein-tr... ( in Norwegian).
> An experienced diver can in theory manage it himself.
This is incorrect for a different reason and it has nothing to do with capability, but instead, deniability.
Anyone could do it. But deniability and covertness is different.
Deniability for this requires covert operators with access to a top notch with great submarine with excellent acoustics (really lackthereof) for an underwater insertion and recovery.
Ding Ding Ding.
Suddenly the list of countries capable of doing became a great deal shorter
The H0 is it was Russia. Their competing intelligence agencies love to pull such shit. Maybe as a false flag, false false false flag or any other kind of rationalisation some paranoid mind in the Kremlin came up with.
To generate more fear and distrust in the european population?
If there was any way to bet on these things, i would love put some money on it.
But maybe there really is another involved actor who risked such a stupid move (some radical polish or baltic actors?)
EU has been adamant that this was not the good time to go all-coal for example.
They could have done just that but no, the whole population and the politics are against (except in a few illiberal "democracies").
Even in the US there is a lot of work done recently to patch the methane leaks in gas fields, for example, which have been spotted as big emitters (by negligence or lack of enforcement).
"Sustainability" (but not in the planet-preserving / extinction-event-avoiding meaning) of fossil fuel over the next century is not at all a problem, if we wished so.
1. The current administration in the United States is in general anti-fossil fuel development.
2. The United States is already at max capacity for its export capabilities. There is no incremental supply to satisfy demand.
3. Destroying foreign supply when demand can't be met only serves to destroy demand because it forces the market to move to alternatives (case in point: OPEC and how they try to not let oil prices get too high or low).
It's ludicrous to suggest the US has a significant economic interest in executing some sort of industrial sabotage on NS1/2.
Nice cherry pick. The president is likely referring to sanctions.
Your link doesn't support your claim that this is economically motivated.
"If Russia invades, that means tanks or troops crossing the -- the border of Ukraine again, then there will be -- there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2,"
Even if it were a threat to destroy the pipeline if Russia invaded, Russia invaded. So now what would you expect to happen?
Sure the US companies would love to sell more LNG, but my understanding is they don't have enough ships to sell them, i.e. they are selling every lb they can already and they just can't get capacity to sell more to the EU, which makes it a much less rational decision to do this.
That's the thing, there is high demand, and they have supply, they also can sell them contracts to build more infrastructure to increase the rate at wich supply is delivered
So the question is, why it is fine to let gas transit from Ukraine, is that to let them get their juicy royalties? so this sparks the question of corruption, who fuel and allow that corruption?
I do not pretend to know everything, but i read a lot and that's the best conclusion i can make, so far, there is clear evidence that the US doesn't want the EU to get their supply from elsewhere, Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict is yet another evidence, wich is where EU wanted to get some of their supply
Worse, US's gas production is illegal in the EU, they don't allow the production within their soil, so it's clear evidence that they were forced to buy US's supply
I can also predict the future, the US will build nuclear power plants int the EU, instead of EU getting them from France, all started when the US built them for ukraine back in the days, the motive was clear
Wich is why France sold their companies to the US, and had to loose some due to some shaddy stuff (Alstom), it's clear current French government works with US's interests in mind, same for Ursula von der Leyen and her team of european bureaucrats
It's just ridiculous to claim that the US somehow sabotaged the pipeline to help LNG gas' future potential. There is infinite demand for LNG today, hugely unmet demand. It will take a least a decade of increased infrastructure and ships to get even close to meeting current European demand for natural gas. The world is not a James Bond movie. Obviously everyone is doing things to help Ukraine today. We are giving them billions in weapons, plus training, giving them money and intelligence, sending our advisors there. Lots of countries have given up greenhouse gas reductions temporarily hopefully, to handle the current emergency situation. The US govt wishes it had all this conspiratorial influence you imagine. The US has tried to talk the europeans out of depending on russian gas for decades. Of course we want all the customers we can find, but there's no shortage of customers! Geeze. The world loves oil and gas so much you don't need to sabotage alternatives to get more customers.
>There is infinite demand for LNG today, hugely unmet demand.
Yeah, coz of the war. Before the war they couldnt shift it.
>The US has tried to talk the europeans out of depending on russian gas for decades. Of course we want all the customers we can find, but there's no shortage of customers!
There was in 2021. LNG is particularly unappealing to countries with a pipeline.
There's a reason that, much to America's chagrin, Germany have zero LNG port capacity.
> That's the thing, there is high demand, and they have supply, they also can sell them contracts to build more infrastructure to increase the rate at wich supply is delivered
Sure, but it's not like they can build large LNG cargo ships overnight.
Doesn't matter, keeps prices high. Besides that, one delivery of LNG amounts to a revenue of about 150 million USD/EUR/or something. So depending on the route one such thing could do that about once per month, or maybe once every six weeks.
This is not "gas production in the EU", these pipelines used to transport gas produced in Russia to the EU.
The termination of their operation has been a done deal for a while. The US has no interest in sabotaging them: it's already a done deal that the US will supply the EU with gas instead of Russia:
Absolutely anything that is neutral or requesting for peace or mentioning any of US activities is met with "Putin Bot" , "Kremlin Bot", "Russian Bot" accusations including xenophobic slurs of "what I think of Modi".
It's insane requesting for any civil conversation in this environment.
Like bruh, my name is from Trinidad. Entirely different continent from India/Asia.
Judging by your name was my mistake, my apologies, but if you want to stop people to be harsh with you, you can also just stop trying to defend a bloodthirsty dictator...
Also stop mixing facts of past governments and past eras with judging present nations.
Also, I don't have anything against Indians (on the contrary, I like India I even learned a little bit of Hindi, and I love bhajans), I just hate the part of this nation that thinks that the West is an enemy.
So please don't pull my leg saying that "it was a xenophobic slur" or whatever.
Your list of submissions nailed the coffin about what I think of you. Sorry dude.
While you're at it, why not speak of Petain and collaboration with Nazis? What is holding you back?
Why are you speaking of different times with a different government? And times when there was not at all the sense of climate crisis we have now?
The Macron government has been elected in the light of the AGW emergency (even if Macron is still trying to save the growth "en meme temps", but oh well).
The whole population, the mainstream politicians, and the media, have a total different mindset than at the time of the greenpeace ship bombing.
Not at all on a large scale. In France only one single plant is prepared to be restarted, among a lot of criticism from the population. This has nothing to do with "restarting coal" in a broad meaning.
> LNG
Lots of hesitation about that from the governments, too. Very criticized, but the rationale they are proposing is that the LNG infrastructure would be useful for hydrogen later (not my words), and that they are still doing the energy transition towards renewable, only it will not be done in time so they need the gas.
You see, the West (except some illiberal outsiders) is completely sure that the energy transition towards renewables is the solution.
The only variable is time, and whether the various populations are ready and willing to suffer during the first few winters or not.
> propaganda in the west
I'm sorry I think you are not seeing the reality: tons of diverse opinions in the West. But false claims are not just equal to true claims, in that fewer people believe them and fewer relay them. That is why most people are against fossil fuels, as they understand the mechanisms underlying AGW.
But on the other hand is there propaganda in India? Are the media free?
Is Modi an illiberal?
You broke the site guidelines badly. We ban accounts that take HN threads into flamewar like this. We also ban accounts that use HN primarily for political/ideological battle, which it looks like you've been doing.
If you continue to post like this, we will ban you, so please stop posting like this. Ideological hell battle is not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.
You broke the site guidelines badly. We ban accounts that take HN threads into flamewar like this. We also ban accounts that use HN primarily for political/ideological battle, which it looks like you've been doing.
If you continue to post like this, we will ban you, so please stop posting like this. Ideological hell battle is not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.
The government and their politicians never get judged by their results, but by the means they put in place. They will go harder next time and request more money, stricter regulations, and more power to fight global warming.
Who has something to loose, something to gain, and the ability to do a covert military operation in Swedish/Danish water.
Russia did built it but they weren't gaining anything from having a non-operational pipeline. Just as much gas is being sold now as it was yesterday, and with all the investment and political effort going into the European energy grid right now, it is very unlikely that those pipelines will ever be operational again. No country in EU will ever want to become dependent on Russia again after this winter.
Who might gain from a perceived attack? Is there a country that is known to spin this kind of thing for political gain?
And last, who has a history of having submarines in this region and a reputation for repeatably ignoring and intruding into Swedish and Danish territorial waters?
Nuclear fuel for those plants is generally produced in Russia, through Swedish manufacturer acquired in the previous decade the patents/designs to produces fuel rods that fit those plants.
Sure, it will still be hard to separated Rosatom from those power plants but it not impossible.
> It doesn't seem like something in Russia's interest, they've been wanting to get that pipeline approved and operational.
Once their invasion faltered, and with the recent escalation, they had no hope of that happening. The current Russian regime will never be able to repair relations with the west to the extent that will allow the Nordstream pipelines to resume operations. You don't come back from nuclear threats and committing massive massacres on this scale.
The next regime might be able to repair relations, but the current regime doesn't care about that: they'll be dead or imprisoned for life before any new regime can take over.
This is the Russian regime's way of abandoning the project while causing the worst possible damage to the hated Europeans who are supporting Ukraine against their illegal, atrocious invasion.
That doesn't make any sense. If the Russians wanted to stop the gas supply, they could just stop supplying gas. And they had already stopped.
Destroying the infrastructure doesn't give Russia an additional capability (degree of freedom). It removes the degree of freedom to restart supplying gas. And thus removes this option for Russia to use as a bargaining chip in negotiations.
I would say this is either the US, Ukraine or a EU state. To remove the threat that the EU later in the winter falters in negotations due to public pressure to turn the heat back on (literally).
The US has the additional incentive that they want to become the only gas provider to the EU via LNG terminals. That gives them an edge over the EU both economically and politically.
The Ukraine has the additional incentive that the remaining pipelines from Russia to the EU run through Ukraine. Removing the alternative options keeps the EU allied through dependence.
> Destroying the infrastructure doesn't give Russia an additional capability
Remember the many deaths of important people in Russia but also abroad?
It could very well be about "sending a message" while maintaining plausible deniability. Just like when the Russian oligarch was murdered in Spain a few months ago, and his whole family. Russia had nothing to do with it! But all the others got the message - you are not safe anywhere.
Similar here. There are a lot of other pipelines. If you look at the news, Poland opened a new pipeline from Norway exactly now! What a coincidence in timing?
The threat is that they can destroy any important infrastructure, cables and pipelines, under the sea, and there is no way to prove it was Russia.
It fist very well with how Russia operated this year. The many many different threats, direct and indirect, and demonstrations to actually carry them out.
To me, it's plausible. Much more so than "the US did it", or even Ukraine. Neither has any reason to stupidly risk their relationship with the Europeans for that, Ukraine least of all, and the US is already set to be the main supplier of LNG (German article: https://www.merkur.de/wirtschaft/usa-wird-wohl-wichtigster-l...). Gas exports for the US are nice to have, but not nearly essential, I think the US's own independence was the main driver in investing into domestic fossil fuel extraction, exports are a distant second. And they already got them, as I pointed out, no need for such a stupidly risky thing. Russia on the other hand does not need to gain anything, they can be content setting up a bigger threat scenario now that Putin escalated almost as much as he will be able to excluding using "WMD".
> Destroying the infrastructure doesn't give Russia an additional capability (degree of freedom).
It's not a bad strategy per se. As the parent comment said, this could be done to limit the choices that the future government of Russia will have. And in the present, this fact being public could be used by some political forces to create extra leverage.
There was a good game-theoretic example explaining why limiting your own future choices can be a good strategy which I can't find right now. So I'll try to re-tell it. Suppose you want to buy X, and you're willing to pay as much as $20 for it. You know that the seller is likely to agree even on $10, and they know that they know that you're likely to pay more for it. So for both of you the bargain happening is better than not happening as long as the price is within the range $10-20, but both of you know that both of you know this, so you both will be trying to squeeze as much as you can out of this deal.
In this case, artificially reducing your own capabilities and making it public can help convince the seller to sell it to you for less than $20. Say, you can sign an agreement with a third party saying that if you pay more than $10 for X, you will have to pay 11$ more to the third party. Now your possibilities are limited and you can't buy X for $20 anymore, so the only acceptable price for you is 10$, to which the seller has to agree because they know that otherwise the deal won't happen and they will lose.
It gets funnier if both you and seller sign these kind of contracts quietly, and then announce together making the deal impossible.
> It removes the degree of freedom to restart supplying gas.
Have you been following the news? The current Russian regime is threatening the use of nuclear weapons, and massacring thousands in war crimes in Ukraine.
The current Russian regime will never be able to repair relations with the west to the extent that will allow the Nordstream pipelines to resume operations.
The next regime might be able to repair relations, but the current regime doesn't care about that: they'll be dead or imprisoned for life before any new regime can take over.
With the EU shifting to other permanent sources for its energy supply, it's doubtful they'll want to switch back to Russian gas ever. Getting burned once by a rogue regime using gas supply for leverage is quite enough.
> The current Russian regime will never be able to repair relations with the west to the extent that will allow the Nordstream pipelines to resume operations.
The new supply chain isn't yet ready to a sufficient level. The pain inflicted by missing gas could become high enough for some "moral flexibility".
Apparently some state actor did see a greater-zero-chance for resumed operations. Otherwise, why blow up the pipeline...
Or Putin calculated the near zero percent chance of restarting the pipeline and found it a worthwhile sacrifice in pursuit of a false flag to rally domestic support (of which he is sorely lacking).
The Russians blew up their own brand-new pipeline, which they spend billions creating (jointly with the Germans) and is one of the few major "hopes" to salvage that relationship, especially as winter dawns.
That's frankly absurd.
Russia almost certainly sabotaged a LNG terminal in Texas a few months ago (industrial cyberattack). This act was almost certainly done by Washington or their proxies. It drives the wedge further between EU and Russia and makes the EU further dependent on Washington. The cui bono is pretty clear.
I don't understand why people here seem to think Russia is acting rationally. The fact they continue the invasion when losing is clearly irrational. They threaten mass nuclear bombardment of Europe nearly daily. I don't see any long term rationality in Putin's government in the slightest.
There will be no salvaging the relationship between Germany and Russia for a long time unless Putin gets replaced, even during winter. The absolute worst case scenario (the only one I see where Germany could have gone to Russia for gas) where people die from cold in their homes is never going to happen. Only yesterday BloombergNEF published a report saying Europe was ready for a complete cut off from Russian gas from October 1, and that includes commercial uses too which take up a big chunk and would obviously be redirected should there be any threat of people dying of cold.
> Russia almost certainly sabotaged a LNG terminal in Texas a few months ago
What evidence is there for this?
> It drives the wedge further between EU and Russia
On the contrary, should the EU find that the US was behind the explosions it would cause an absolute rift between the US-EU relationship, and in particular with Germany.
Have you genuinely attempted to understand the Russian perspective in all this? Like listened to what Moscow has been saying for the last decade? Have you ever read a single one of Putin's speeches, for example?
Reading Anne Applebaum screeds in The Atlantic is not seeking understanding, by the way.
How can you understand something if you don't attempt to understand it?
> What evidence is there for this?
No smoking gun, just cui bono + timing + no other plausible explanation has been put forth
> On the contrary, should the EU find that the US was behind the explosions it would cause an absolute rift between the US-EU relationship, and in particular with Germany.
If Europe had strong leadership. Even Merkel didn't really stand up to the spying revelations.
The nuclear brinkmanship is textbook deterrence. Whenever Russia escalates, expect nuclear threats to deter a full-blown NATO entry.
I think that Merkel and the other "strong" German leaders are the reason we are at this point (no surprise though, a good amount of them are/were on the Kremlin's payroll).
All the energy related decisions in the past 20 years seems to have been made with the purpose to make Germany dependent on Russia (Nuclear, lack of LPG terminals, etc), and to make sure that countries included in the imperialistic ambitions of Moscow (like Ukraine) could affect influence this relationship (NS1, NS2)
1-3 are predicated on an "official" declaration of war, which obviously hasn't happened yet. USA hasn't technically "invaded" Syria either, even though it is currently occupying parts of it. Russia is framing their military operation in a way consistent with Washington, which hasn't formally declared war on anyone since like 2003.
Do you have any examples that don't require clear technical misinterpretations?
The fourth example is just plain bad. I challenge you to find a single wartime leader that hasn't downplayed their losses. You are being deeply disingenuous if you think Putin means literally zero Russian soldiers have died. It's wartime morale management 101. Literally everyone does it, including your favorite world leaders.
What I'm really after is if you have any evidence of Putin (or Lavrov, now that you mention him) lying on the scale of "Saddam is gonna nuke the West" or "NATO will not expand one inch eastward". Or has Putin ever openly boasted about his lying prowess, as fmr Secretary Pompeo and fmr Ambassador McFaul did recently? These would be convincing examples.
If you genuinely think considering Putin's output as lies requires "clear technical misinterpretations", I'm not sure any argument is going to mean much.
However, taking just from his recent speech announcing the mobilization (I don't speak Russian and am relying on a translation from the Kremlin's transcript, but at least two independent translations are similar enough):
- Repeated claims that the purpose of the "special military operation" is to liberate Donbas from the "neo-Nazi regime" holding power in Ukraine
The Ukrainian government is not neo-Nazi. Volodymyr Zelenskyy is Jewish. (It might be common rhetoric in Russia since the Soviet Union and WWII days to claim opponents as "Nazis", but that's not what the word means to anybody else.) Repeatedly claiming that a country is being ruled by neo-Nazis with no reason or evidence, especially when there's reason not to believe that, is a lie. The claim of Ukraine being ruled by neo-Nazis is repeated enough in just that single speech that this claim alone would more than suffice.
- Claims of genocide in eastern Ukraine, and of a government in Ukraine being the result of a coup
There has been no evidence of a genocide (which is a rather strong term and claim to make in the first place), and there has been no coup. There have, of course, been governments unfavourable to and disliked by the current Russian regime. But that doesn't make their election a coup.
- Reference to the "Kyiv occupation regime"
An occupation regime is one that's occupying a country other than their own, or acting as a puppet of an occupying country, or possibly (at a stretch) a military regime holding power over their own country with force against the will of the people's majority. An elected government in their own country is none of these. Even if some parts of a population in a part of a country would prefer a differently aligned government, that doesn't make the government an occupation regime.
- The claim that the "Kyiv regime" announced a desire for obtaining nuclear weapons
An individual member of the parliament in Ukraine apparently expressed regret that Ukraine had given up Soviet-era nuclear armaments, or that (in his view) Ukraine might need to pursue them again. An individual member of a parliament (who AFAIK was not part of the government) expressing a view does not by any stretch mean the same as a government announcing that view. The difference is obvious to anybody who understands how democracy works.
I don't know how common it is in Ukraine nowadays to wish the country had nuclear weapons, although I wouldn't be surprised if that had increased as a result of Russian aggression and war. Either way, claiming a government has announced something when they haven't said anything to that effect is a lie.
--
There also lots of other claims in the speech, intended to gain the support of its audience, that amount to dishonesty or lying regardless of technical nitpicking. I'm not going to list them all here, as there are too many and there's no point, but an example would be the claim that western governments have resorted to "nuclear blackmail". Putin refers to "statements made by some high-ranking representatives of the leading NATO countries on the possibility and admissibility of using [nuclear weapons] against Russia". While it's hard to track down every statement made by every representative of a NATO country and prove that none of them ever said anything in that direction, the essence of claiming that western governments or countries are making nuclear threats against Russia is blatantly and obviously false.
Watching things from Europe, the only references to nuclear threat I have seen are concerns that Putin's regime is making them, even if vaguely, and concerns of the safety of nuclear power plants amidst the war. Absolutely zero governments are making any suggestions towards threatening Russia with anything nuclear. Nobody's also crazy or stupid enough to do so, and if an individual representative or politician actually did that, it would obviously get condemned immediately, because none of those governments would be crazy or stupid enough not to condemn it.
There are lots of statements and claims like that in the mobilization speech alone. And all of this is just from a single speech. Every speech Putin has given this year that I've seen or read about has been filled with untruths of varying degrees.
Many of his claims are either somewhat vague or otherwise difficult to absolutely verify as lies with mathematical precision. Some of them might not be lies from Putin's perspective. For example, he might well feel that his conservative regime is being threatened by a liberal opposition encouraged by western influence or western countries. The claims that Russia (as he understands it) is being threatened by the west may be true from his perspective.
However, many of the claims he makes in support of that view or to justify the war are simply dishonest, such as the allusions to nuclear threat from the west. There's no way those could be considered anything but either delusions or lies.
Generally, so many of Putin's claims are some kind of a combination of simply not true, baseless, and obviously motivated, that the whole definitely amounts to him lying or twisting the truth whenever it suits his purposes.
What is it that makes him seem more truthful to you?
I live in Odessa, Ukraine, and I have had to go to shelter from missile strikes and suicide drone attacks several times in just the past few days.
I have also lived in Russia. It can be awkward when the Ukrainians see my old Russian visa in my passport when I cross the border.
Where do you live? Ukraine? Russia? How close are you to this issue personally? Got any skin in the game? How many blatant lies are you going to ignore so your Nazi-apologist worldview isn’t compromised?
How would you like to see this notification near enough every day, sometimes several times a day?
В ОДЕССЕ И ОБЛАСТИ ОБЪЯВЛЕНА ВОЗДУШНАЯ ТРЕВОГА, ВСЕ В УКРЫТИЕ
ЧИТАТЕЛИ СООБЩАЮТ, О ВЗРЫВАХ В ОДЕССЕ И ПРИГОРОДЕ. Уточняем информацию
The Russian perspective is basically, "we had an awesome empire, now we want it back". All the rhetoric about teh evil NATO etc is just dressing that up.
I genuinely attempted to understand Russia’s perspective and tended to sympathize with it until February of this year. But the current war doesn’t fit into that understanding at all and I don’t know how to begin to reconcile it. Why spend months insisting you’re not going to invade, then invade while publicly insisting you’re not invading, then call up a partial general mobilization without identifying any goals for your war that you insist isn’t a war? Maybe there’s a master plan that has to be secret and continually lied about, but if that’s so then listening to more Putin speeches won’t help me understand him anyway.
Russia's perspective is that NATO (the US) has put military installations in former Soviet satellites (Poland and Romania) and that they're being pushed into a corner as NATO expands to the East. In fact those installations are purely defensive and Russia has become less relevant as a superpower largely because of corruption. This is even more obvious now as they have failed to properly execute a war against their neighbour. Putin and the Russians who support the war are frustrated because they've lost the former glory of the USSR and that Russia is becoming a second rate player in geopolitics. That's why he started this war. He wants the USSR restored. What he will get instead is even more dissent and separatist republics.
Exaggerated threats is standard soviet negotiation and the current leadership of Russia are creatures of that culture of negotiation.
Blowing up their own gas line makes no sense as it destroys any possible leverage. The only ones that have anything to gain is the US or other associated allies.
The pipelines represented zero leverage at this point. No gas was being supplied by them and it would be politically untenable for any European country to buy it using these pipelines while Putin is still in charge. So as far as Putin was concerned (not Russia) these pipelines have zero value.
It's really not that absurd. The fact that it looks entirely irrational for Russia to do this is exactly why they might have done it. Their intent is to cause division in the West. They could potentially hope for EU countries to blame the US or Ukraine for this. If you read Twitter trends you already see an army of Russian bots pushing the theory that the US has done this.
> The fact that it looks entirely irrational for Russia to do this is exactly why they might have done it.
Any analysis predicated on "the enemy is perfectly irrational and will not act according their interests" is not analysis. It's untethered from reality, which is convenient, because you can support any conclusion you desire.
Robert McNamara's #1 life lesson was "empathize with your enemy" (he dealt with the Cuban Missile Crisis). Sun Tzu said "If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles." This timeless wisdom has basis in reality.
Unfortunately, realism in Washington has been replaced with insane, petulant ideologues like Victoria "Fuck the EU" Nuland" and Michael "Of course we lied" McFaul.
People like Michael McFaul is exactly why the invasion happened in the first place because the Obama admin was weak on Russia after the 2014 invasion. They are the opposite of ideologues.
It is actually bipartisan idiocy. Goes beyond Obama/Biden perceived weakness and weird foreign policies. Don’t forget Bush ambassador to Russia - current CIA director who personally managed to convince Putin that entire former USSR is solely RF sphere of interest/influence
Putin was not content with having his fiefdom and threatened Western security interests by blowing up the post WW2 global order. He stepped out of line and now Russia suffers for it. That's the realism. China knows it and that's why they aren't backing him.
This isn't about ideology, democracy or human rights. This is warlord invoking the wrath of imperial gunboats.
>It's really not that absurd. The fact that it looks entirely irrational for Russia to do this is exactly why they might have done it.
Yeah, let's just forget all about Occam's' razor.
>If you read Twitter trends you already see an army of Russian bots pushing the theory that the US has done this.
Because it makes sense? US social media is 100% pro-Ukrainian propaganda and any slight dissent, criticisms or questioning is met seemingly instantly from multiple accounts alleging Russian propaganda. Meanwhile the biggest impact on American social media is American propaganda. Including about our alleged ally, Ukraine. And like Israel, they seem to be more trouble than they're worth as far as the interests of the average American citizen are concerned.
Ok, in the conference he specifically calls out Nord stream two but there is definitely a glint in his demeanor/timing that says "we can destroy it" when the journo exasperatedly asks "but how will you do that [put an end to NS2]"
Pretty sure the repair can be done before there is any chance the sanctions would be lifted. So Russia doesnt really lose anything important but is able to sow discord, mistrust and generally raise the fear level about gas supply.
That's possible, albeit a very expensive prank with no guaranteed upside. Why not just keep the valve shut and pretend you have no interest in opening it?
> The Russians blew up their own brand-new pipeline, which they spend billions creating (jointly with the Germans) and is one of the few major "hopes" to salvage that relationship, especially as winter dawns.
There is no "salvaging the relationship" for the current regime. No gas will flow in these pipelines while Putin is in power, and the EU has already prepared alternatives:
Thus these pipelines are worthless to the current regime, except as means to cause damage to the hated Europeans who are enforcing sanctions against them and arming Ukraine against their invasion.
You may argue that the relationship might be salvaged with the next regime, but Putin doesn't care. He will be dead or imprisoned for life whenever such next regime takes power.
I remember Tiananmen Square. People were horrified at the barbaric reaction of the PRC to peaceful protests. Thirty plus years later, they are one of the world's largest trading partners. Despite their barbaric treatment of the Uighars. So I don't believe that countries won't salvage their "relationship" with Russia given half a chance.
The hope in Moscow is that the people of Germany, etc will rise up and democratically remove the Washington proxies (Grünen) from their governments. Then the relationship may be renewed.
The notion that NS2 would enter operation is absurd. NS2 has been dead in the water for months, and the prospect of entering service have been dubious for some time before the Russians invaded Ukraine.
Washington had a very clear policy of never letting NS2 enter production (remember that ominous Biden quip before the war? [1]), which, by the way, is the opposite of absurd: Germany is a major consumer of natural gas and Russia is a major nearby supplier. NS2 is natural in a world without geopolitical drama.
"NS2 shouldn't exist" is a narrative manufactured in Washington (and delivered to Germany by Baerbock), that goes against basic economics and the interests of both Germans and Russians.
> NS2 is natural in a world without geopolitical drama.
As I understand it, most of the gas that would be delivered via NS2 would be the gas that wouldn't be delivered through Belarus/Ukraine (depriving them of transit revenue and providing more options for Russia to employ gas politics on its western flank). It rather seems to me that, far from being natural in a world without geopolitical drama, much of its purpose is actually to enable geopolitical drama.
And, of course, the main thrust of the argumentation against NS2 was that it was causing Germany to pursue an economic dependency on Russia that was unwise, given Russia's already-demonstrated penchant for using that economic dependency as a lever in global affairs. NS2 died when Russia's invasion of Ukraine demonstrated the lack of wisdom in pursuing economic dependency on Russia (compounded by Russia withholding gas flows to make Europe came back begging to Mother Russia).
So should Russia be obliged to pay for transit and provide gas to Ukraine?
Why wouldn't Ukraine pursue gas supplies from other sources? It had at least 8 years for that, but all the time was spent on opposing NS2.
"that was unwise" is a simplification, not a proper explanation. Russia is a cheap resource supplier, so it was beneficial for European countries to leverage it for their economy to be more competitive with US at least.
Saudi Arabia has its own bunch of issues with democracy (there is none, imagine), human rights (surprise), a war with neighbouring Yemen (sounds familiar?), but for some magical reason no one cares and alienates Saudi Arabia, and everyone is very forgetful and blind about their issues and doesn't interfere.
The key difference is that Saudi Arabia has not acquired new territory for itself. In the post-colonial era, there are very strong norms against countries annexing parts of each other, with Russia's actions in Ukraine being pretty much the first to happen since the 60s. If the Saudis had initiated the war in Yemen by pointing to some old border dispute and directly annexing the port of Aden, people would be much more angry with them.
For comparison, consider Iraq's attempt to annex Kuwait in the 90s. The world absolutely considered it a five-alarm fire, with the West immediately planning for war and even China and the Soviet Union authorizing a retaliatory blockade. Most people genuinely and strongly feel that the return of territorial conquest as a common practice would be a disaster for the world.
They use the same route. Your assertion that NS2 is somehow out-of-place and can only be explained by Russian "gas politics" is contradicted by the precedent set by NS1.
Where is the contradiction? NS1 has limited capacity that was not sufficient to allow Russia to bypass Ukrainian gas pipelines, NS2 would increases the capacity of this route.
It's not absurd if NS1 were damaged. Even if Germany didn't want the extra capacity that NS2 brings, it's an obvious backup if NS1 were to fail. Anyone wanting to cut off the option of Russia supplying gas to Germany this winter would have to hit both.
The amusing thing is that I saw this video popping up from Russian bots before I even saw the Nordsteam news. If you told me that they planned on blowing it up, then pushing the narrative that Biden blew it up, I'd totally believe it. This clip showed up _everywhere_ before the news of the pipeline had really spread far.
I would say the Ukrainians in cooperation with their biggest friends: the Polish government. It's in no interest for the Russians to destroy their own pipeline. They could as well just shut down the supply.
I don't wanna speak to negative about Ukraine. But don't forget that the country belongs to the most corrupt and dirty countries in Europe. The state is controlled by oligarchs. In fact the Oligarchs brought the Zelensky team into power to make sure their needs are executed.
In my mind, the Ukrainians are the only party who could blow the pipelines without being dirty. It's a strategic asset of a country they're in an active war with.
Yeah, but Ukraine requires a working relationships with the west and europe to sustain it's war. Whilst Ukraine is going to benefit from this, this sort of damage is too great for them to engage with as a primary actor.
Imagine if they did take credit for this, Russia could respond with nukes or chemical weapons. It could also bite them that deep in the cold of winter, when everyone is wearing coats in doors for months, that the Germans start to resent sending military equipment to Ukraine.
This act will put pressure on Ukraine. Also not super great for the environment. as well. Another often overlooked victim.
And it's a great way to make the rest of Europe never give in to Russian no matter how much they suffer. If enough people in Europe saw their grandmother shivering in January, they might rise up and say hell with it, we need our gas back no matter what the cost somewhere else in eastern Europe. But now they can't say that because it won't get the gas turned back on anyway.
Their ability to buy gas that is usually available to them.
People voted and lived in a society where things were handled. You voted and kept your government because things were handled. You voted the way you did because you were satisfied you could keep yourself warm in the winter at a fair price. Eventually, you consider that right yours, since it was described as something you have access to.
Then suddenly someone you voted for decides, "hey, I know my party ran on getting that pipeline approved, and we invested in green energy as a certain ratio based on getting this gas to you when you need it, but guess what.... We've changed our mind. There are outside things more important than your ability to heat your home for a price you can afford."
I'd consider that the politician turning off my access to affordable life sustaining gas.
You feel entitled to it at a certain price but it isn’t yours. Voting for it to be available to be yours doesn’t make it yours.
Just pointing out that it isn’t like you’re talking about your country’s national reserves that are being sold elsewhere instead of to you.
I don’t mean to sound disparaging but a good set of winter clothes will ensure survival through the winter better than whatever gas/price ratio you feel entitled to.
They did not blow the other pipelines passing through Ukraine, so why would they blow up NS? To deny themselves military aid from Germany? It doesn't make sense.
> The current Russian regime will never be able to repair relations with the west to the extent that will allow the Nordstream pipelines to resume operations
Well, yes: there was a regime change and the Soviet empire partially broke up, so over 30 years, the new Russian regime created friendly relations with many of its western neighbours. Pity an idiot in the Kremlin decided to burn all that work by invading UA, but a hypothetical post-Putin regime could start from scratch again.
Assuming the explosions are relevant, some possible causes, ordered somewhat (but not entirely) by my personal estimation of likelihood:
* Ecoterrorists -- I discount this mostly on the basis that they would have claimed responsibility by now.
* NATO sabotage -- this reduces strategic options for several EU countries (albeit a strategic option that isn't really being exercised and is almost universally disfavored).
* Russia sabotage -- this isn't terribly rational for Russia, but Russia has been unwilling to pursue rational options for a while. I can see someone in Russia thinking this will stoke anger in Germany (and the rest of Europe) that may create European pressure to force Ukraine to end the war (which is the most viable path I see at this point for Russia winning the war).
* Ukrainian sabotage -- pretty much the only actor for whom sabotage makes rational sense. Especially if it is a demonstration of Ukrainian cyberwarfare capabilities.
* Poor maintenance -- this strikes me as unlikely because NS1 is quite new infrastructure (2011), so it would have to be extremely substandard to have failed this quickly, and I believe most of the construction was done by European and not Russian firms, so I don't think that's at all plausible. But there may be some failure modes I'm not thinking of here.
Gas prices had fallen back to the lowest levels in 3 months, but because of the sabotage, prices have gone up again because this has created uncertainty in the energy market.
The kremlin wants to deliberately destabilize Europe and make it as difficult as possible with a big energy crisis, so support and aid to Ukraine falls. And its going bad for putin and his war now so he is also desperate, just look at the crazy mobilization of 300.000 russian to the war.
The russians already know that these pipelines are dead and the export trough them will end and sabotaging them is very much in the russians interest because of the consequences and as we can see now increased energy costs in EU which benefits the russian agenda.
Some say its US because Biden talk. But both pipes was already closed. Nordstream 2 was never used and nordstream 1 was shut down by the russians. The US hade no reason because no gas was flowing.
IMHO its no doubt its the russians, they are the only one that gain from this, in their energy war against EU. They also have submarines in the baltic sea. And its shallow waters between Denmark and Sweden (just 11-18m) that big subs from other countries can not easy pass without getting noticed and a lot of traffic that make it risky.
Why would keeping the pipelines operational not be a strictly dominant (over blowing the pipelines up) strategy if reducing EU support and aid to Ukraine is the objective? Having the pipeline there but not delivering anything through it results in the same lack of gas, but also adds the option of dangling the possibility of delivering some in return for support and aid being reduced.
The most obvious beneficiary of the pipelines being blown are those countries that would stand to lose from the option of resumed delivery being available (and potentially taken) by Germany, that is, Ukraine, Baltic countries (who have a cultural and geopolitical interest in its victory) and the US (which has a geopolitical interest in its victory and a financial interest in selling LNG to Germany). Why do you think that these potential benefits to the countries in question are not real?
I see Biden's talk as soft power rather than threats "they'll shut down NS2 themselves, we'll make sure of that". It's not like the previous administration hasn't warned Germany and the EU about NS1/2, Russian gas bad habits.
"We have a saying in Russia, “to bomb Voronezh.” Voronezh is a Russian city not too far from the Ukrainian border, but the phrase does not refer to bombings by Ukraine. It refers to the Russian authorities’ perverse habit of retaliating against their own citizens in response to the actions of other governments."
>> Sort of like invading your own country, or shooting yourself with a gun would be an effective show of force?
> Similar to shooting down your own satellites.
No.
When they do that as a show of force, they shoot down some worthless EOL satellite they don't plan to use ever again. IIRC, the US actually shot down one that was damaged and out of control: a show of force with a "safety" pretext.
You don't shoot down valuable, active infrastructure as a show of force. Russia blowing up Nord Stream would be like the US shooting down brand new GPS or spy satellites.
> NS2 wasn't an "active" infrastructure, NS1 was also less than active since august.
So? Both are perfectly serviceable, and neither is EOL junk, which is what matters.
Even with your distinction, blowing them us is like the US shooting down a new GPS satellite that just hasn't been officially "turned on" yet, which is pretty much the same loss as shooting down a similar sat that's "active."
Serviceable, yes, but there was no expectation that they will be used again, at least not as long as Putin's regime is in power. It wasn't politically feasible to launch NS2 both because of US pressure and shifts of public opinion caused by the invasion. With NS1 Russia painted itself into a corner by demanding to lift sanctions that somehow prevent them from operating it - there was no way to go back on it without losing face.
It can be argued that this destruction is a loss for Russia, but Putin didn't loose anything.
Yeah it's clear as day that this is the regular old Russian tactic to intimidate or attack and then deny, even tho everyone knows they are behind this.
The pipelines were already closed and will not open in a decade or two anyway because the war and politics. They do not lose any income so why not use it to terrorize and escalate, it's not their first time to mess with foreign underwater infrastructure.
Norway->Poland pileline opening is the perfect timing for that.
Another reason would be to disincentivize another faction from deposing Putin. No secret that oligarchs have been dying left and right. Putin could have done this to remove the appeal of replacing him and going back to pre-war "normal" if they can't resume selling gas.
We have indeed been hating NS since the first pipeline was planned and opened. The reason for it's very existence has always been to squeeze us out of the picture.
However, it would be an enormous risk for us to alienate NATO in any way. NATO is our only protection and we know it. Without NATO we are extremely easy to conquer - Stalin made sure of that when he drew our current borders.
My money would be on a more extreme internal fraction in Putin's Russia. The objective: close the door on any voices in Russia asking to go back to the way things were.
If it was a state level actor they probably has some level of US support. Many reasons the US would want nordstream taken out, but might be unwilling to do it themselves. Enlisting someone like Poland would make sense.
What I had in mind by factions is more that Russia is not a monolith. There are many different interests and groups who might be pushing in various directions. Such “factions” wouldn’t be executing something like this entirely on their own though. I’m imagining something more like them pushing through a plan like this within the Russian Navy on the Baltic and then maybe getting a green light from the top to execute.
This is at least my own understanding of Putin’s Russia - Putin only explains who the enemy is and what the Pravda is. Stakeholders vying for power in his orbit then respond by bringing forward complete solutions. He can then reward the ones he likes and punish for the ones that he doesn’t. This gives him a layer of insulation from responsibility. No one can ever say for certain that he ordered the execution of this journalist or was involved in that war-zone hospital bombing. He only has to integrate such events as they happen and refocus attention on who the enemy is. Those factions vying for his attention are also probably sabotaging each other all the time as well.
Anyways, with the conscription rolling ahead in full force and the Russian media proclaiming that enormous losses in Ukraine are due to NATO help; I think there are powerful factions within the Russian system who are pushing for a return to a healthy EU relationship with gas flowing and access to Western tech. And then there are other factions who would prefer the war to continue to escalate. Nothing quite shuts up the former group like the destruction of critical infrastructure needed to revert to the previous status quo.
I don't know. It would depend on the depth, but not even that necessarily.
Now those pipes are no thin drinking straw, but think of what a bundle of fragmenting hand grenades could do. Packed watertight, with ballast, if need be.
Downed from some trawler, yacht, whatever with good sonar to see where exactly, combined with with some contraption, maybe mechanical timer and CO2-cartridge blowing up a balloon which is pulling their pins. Or something more professional, which some rogue Spetsnaz surely would have access to?
Same delivery method, no divers needed. Could be almost anyone.
I can't help but recall that Igor Strelkov - the guy who, by his own admission, "started the war" (back in 2014, by occupying Slavyansk and Kramatorsk) - is ex-FSB, and ostensibly still very well connected there. And he is very much a hardliner wrt continuing the war, even if it means taking on NATO.
That's PR. Germany is one of the big weapons suppliers. For some reason we don't want to ship tanks, which the Ukrainians really want (I've read it's because our government is terribly afraid of German-built tanks rolling into Russia, which would give the populace there a visceral reaction).
But everything smaller than a tank, including lots of hardware that proved extremely valuable in this war, is being shipped.
"Contrary to popular perception, Germany has delivered significant amounts of arms and equipment to Ukraine to aid the country in its fight against the Russian military. In fact, the volume of arms deliveries by Berlin exceeds that of every other country safe for the United States and the United Kingdom. Nonetheless, Germany has faced severe criticism and even mockery for its perceived lack of support to Ukraine and its ill-fated attempts to keep its relationship with Moscow intact. While ultimately positioning itself as a reliable partner of Ukraine, it can be argued that Berlin's communication to affirm its Ukraine stance and explain foreign policy goals has been nothing short of an unmitigated disaster."
Also, they host import USA bases and helped in other ways.
If you think >750 million € worth of equipment is nothing, I want your budget :D
It's funny how public perception of that works. Yesterday saw someone getting mad that 1.3 million of arms exports (paid, not stuff given for free) into another country was approved, "while they refuse to export to Ukraine".
> it would have to be extremely substandard to have failed this quickly
Yes, but that’s assuming proper maintenance.
Russia doesn’t have domestic technology to build or maintain complicated infrastructure like these undersea pipelines. International sanctions against Russia are rather wide. For instance, Halliburton (a US oil field service company) no longer operates in Russia: https://www.halliburton.com/en/about-us/press-release/hallib...
It’s possible these sanctions affected the ability of Russians to maintain the pipeline, which might cause that thing to fail prematurely.
I’m not really sure how they could have both failed explosively (based on seismic evidence) within 24hrs … this is either the one of the unlikeliest un-exploded ordinance event in history… or someone did this deliberately.
Seismologists are pretty good at telling explosions from earthquakes and other things because they are one of the most common noises they have to clean out when studying natural events.
There is another option which is being discussed in Norwegian media now - that the Russians have used the pipelines essentially for storage of excess gas (Seeing as the pipelines are basically, combined, a 5M cubic meter pressure vessel)
That would go a long way towards explaining how several ruptures happened in relatively short succession - pipes being loaded up with too much gas (after all, the more gas stored, the more money in the bank for later on!)
Once the first one burst, someone probably re-evaluated that idea, but letting off gas in sufficient quantities fast enough may not have been possible.
Of course, if this was indeed the case, I assume it will very soon be very evident - I can't imagine that the rupture caused by an external force will be indistinguishable from that of it rupturing due to overpressure.
...but that would require flow, right? (that is, closing of the flow too fast will basically lead to a shockwave rupturing the pipe).
In this case, the pipes were basically being used as pressure vessels (I believe it was quoted in the media that pressure in one of the pipes was 105bar/1,500psi or so before the leak sprung).
With nothing but static pressure, I have a hard time seeing how such a pipeline may be sabotaged in SW alone - doubly so as it, as far as I can tell from media reports, really is the proverbial dumb pipe - valves and thingamajigs at either end, but the pipeline itself is essentially just a pipe with no shutoff valves throughout. (Which, in itself I find hard to believe, so I probably had better dig a little bit more!)
There have been three explosions in two different pipelines, North Stream 1 (the older one, which was in normal use until earlier this year) and North Stream 2 (the new one, which was pressurized but never delivered gas commercially).
>It’s possible these sanctions affected the ability of Russians to maintain the pipeline, which might cause that thing to fail prematurely.
even assuming they were cut off the moment the invasions began, are pipelines really that fragile that they explode if they're not maintained for 6 months?
The pressure in these pipes is rather high. Wikipedia [1] writes the nominal for these underwater pipes is 3200 psi. To compare, peak cylinder pressure in a gasoline car at full load is about 1000 psi, large heavy duty diesel engines peak at 2500 psi. A pipe failure at 3200 psi internal pressure might cause an accident similar to an explosion.
Still, you raised a good point. I have no idea how fragile these pipes really are. Apparently, Swedish police is investigating sabotage [2], we might get an answer eventually.
None of these make much sense. It's pretty idle to speculate, and the list is most likely incomplete and inaccurate. It only feeds the trolls. Then again, this whole thread is full of fingerpointing without evidence. If HN can't contain itself, what won't the twitter and facebook, and –may God forget– Truth Social do?
It does make sense. The pipelines were already shut down. So the tactical impact of blowing holes in the pipelines is to prevent them from being turned back on. Previously, it was possible that the EU would come to a negotiation with Russia to get gas back. Now, it's not possible, or at least much less possible.
That doesn't tell us who exactly blew holes in the pipeline. But it certainly makes sense as a maneuver in the geopolitical game, to take a certain set of options off the table.
None referred to the list of accusations. It doesn't make sense for Russia, NATO countries announced it and ruled (just now) it was sabotage (while they could have kept it hidden), and for Ukraine it would be really foolish if it was found out at a bad time, because it can turn public support. So there's no sensible candidate (with the current state of knowledge).
In this tweet from the US State Department's twitter account on 2022-01-22 (a month before the most recent invasion), a US official says: "... I want to be clear with you today. If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another, NordStream 2 will not move forward." It's not evidence, but contextually incriminating nonetheless.
A kind of operation like this would be known by very very few. Same with all conspiracy theories, people like to point to vague statements made by officials who would have absolutely zero idea about this kind of operation.
Note that NS2 has also been destroyed, and that's even more recent than NS1. It was definitely sabotage, it can't be anything else given the timing, and it has to be state sponsored given that the pipelines are under the ocean. Berlin apparently thinks it would require submarines or special forces.
US / Ukraine are unfortunately the only states for which this makes sense (perhaps US with back-room permission from some people in the German government):
1. Biden stated flat out he would never allow NS2 to go live. "There will no longer be a NS2, we will end it" and when asked by a reporter "how will you do that exactly" he replied "i promise you we will be able to do it". This makes the USA the prime suspect by far, worryingly and alarmingly.
2. Ukraine wants to keep Europe from supporting Russia via gas purchases but if the attack is traced back to them it would immediately kill public support for them, this would be an insanely risky and counter-productive move.
3. Russia has no reason to blow up its own pipelines and every reason not to. They were hoping Europe goes back to buying their gas, maybe even ending sanctions to get it. This ends that possibility for a while.
We do really need to cut it out with the absurd "Putin is a 4D chess grandmaster" explanations, they make the west look collectively crazy.
Russia has an enormous reason to sabotage NordStream 1 and 2, because russia has contractualized massive amount of gas to sell to Germany and other for decades, it explains why Uniper has to be bailed out. If Gazprom fails to meet its expectations it is liable for a reimbursement so it wants to avoid going to international arbitration that would use all the russian money frozen, so it has organized plausible deniability with the turbine, and now with NS1/NS2, and is currently messing up with the one transiting in ukraine as it is menacing to ban Naftogaz.
> This makes the USA the prime suspect by far, worryingly and alarmingly.
I don't find that worrying or alarming. It would mean the administration knows what they're about and are taking proactive measures to take options off the table for Germany and Russia.
(Assuming it would not be beneath the US or proxies to do such a thing.) It would not make sense right now. Germany was nowhere reopening Nordstream 2 and if it came to that the US would have other effective means of blocking its use before reaching to outright sabotage.
That makes right now a great time to do this. Germany is currently very much resolved to keep NS2 closed and no one expects Russia to budge on NS1, so it's not like a viable option is taken off the table, deserting Ukraine over gas is (still?) beyond the pale as far as the mainstream is considered. But the German electorate may change their minds in the coming weeks and months, and Russia might start dangling NS1 carrots too, so blowing them up now is a great way to kill the domestic German political issue while it's still small and not devolved into paralysing trench warfare. I wouldn't be too surprised if the German government had secretly given their go-ahead to whoever is behind this.
> But the German electorate may change their minds in the coming weeks and months
The important thing is that many leaders in NATO and Ukraine fear that the electorate may change their minds. I think they're pretty likely wrong and that Germans aren't that fickle, for good or ill, but I'm probably an insane populist by western leadership's standard.
> I think they're pretty likely wrong and that Germans aren't that fickle
I hear Germans say that as well, but usually those who are pretty comfortable economically. A large part of the population is anything but, is struggling to keep up, failing to keep up or already living hand to mouth. Previous governments have cultivated a huge low-wage sector and made it really hard for large swathes of the population to keep up let alone advance economically, so a lot of people don't have substantial savings or anything else to fall back on.
Hence the social contract for those parts of the population kind of goes like this: Your net worth is pretty low and your economic mobility is non-existing, but it's fine since you get stability and security and the government-provided safety net will bail you out if you get sick or whatever. But that safety net, thinned and stretched as it is, isn't helping most people cope with the current surge in energy prices, and there's as yet no clear indication how the government will try to compensate for that, let alone keep afloat an economy built to a large part on the availability of lots of cheap natural gas.
If they don't do all of this really well, I guess a large portion of the electorate may prove to be very fickle indeed, and I couldn't really blame them for it. I'm sure most would very much prefer a free Ukraine, and there is a deep desire to be on the "right" side of history, but none of this is enough to lose one's livelihood over. Break the social contract and all bets are off. Screw Ukraine, bring in the cheap autocracy gas, I want my stability back.
There is good hope that it won't come to this, but it's a possibility, and the far right is set to profit from any unleashed German angst, as they have during the refugee crisis and (to a lesser degree, due to their own incompetence) the pandemic. If I were Chancellor Scholz or President Biden, I'd be quite worried about that, and yesterday's strike on the pipelines makes perfect sense in that light. Now there is no "easy" cop-out anymore for Germany.
Why not? Ever heard of Baltops 2022? Its last remains just passed by there a few days ago. Some divers, some mines, some timer or remote detonator, done.
What other effective means? The USA already imposed direct sanctions on Germany to try and stop Nord Stream 2 from being built, a very hostile move that supposedly resulted in 'incomprehension' in the German Foreign Office. It didn't work.
Nowhere near (re-)opening: we don't really know this. The Greens are loud and extreme (saying they don't care how much pain Germans suffer) but we don't know what's going on behind the scenes. USA spies on all the European countries all the time and obviously Russia too, so they presumably have better insight into the true state of German decision making than we do here on HN. It's possible they got some intel that was interpreted as meaning that they were getting close to re-opening NS1 or open NS2 and decided to act before that was possible.
There's also some evidence that this may have been planned for a long time, in which case it would again make no sense to be Russia.
Way back in 2015 an underwater robot laden with explosives was found next to the NS pipelines by Swedish special forces:
Who was opposed to NS in 2015? Only the USA. But it gets worse :( In August the US Navy entered the area right next to where the explosions happened and then switched off their identification transponders:
(auto translation) "A total of 4,000 US soldiers, helicopter pilots, marines, doctors and strategists are on their way east. At around 6 a.m. on Wednesday morning, the association had already passed the Danish island of Bornholm, when the Americans switched off their automatic ship identification systems (AIS) and could no longer be located without further ado."
It seems to me like this is going to immediately turn into another COVID lab leak problem where the media and governments go into overdrive to bury the most obvious and straightforward explanation. Give it 24 hours and linking to the articles I just showed you will be banned on Twitter/Facebook and anyone saying "the USA is the most obvious suspect" will be banned from YouTube. Then maybe in three years suddenly it'll become acceptable to talk about.
USA being the obvious suspect would only be a problem if people believed this to be a bad thing. I’m from Poland, Europe, and I’m really happy about those pipelines exploding, because it clears a major strategic problem, and I suspect there are more people who feel this way.
It's reasonable to believe that if the USA has done this, the political destabilization that could occur from people realizing that America had engaged in an unprovoked act of war directly against supposed "allies", knowing full well the consequences might conceivably be people freezing to death and/or rolling blackouts that destroy their economy, would be far more important. If you want to see the rise of explicitly anti-American politicians in Europe then that would be an excellent way to do it.
Look at it this way - how do you think Biden would react if Germany mined a US LNG port?
Also, you're aware that the current situation threatens supply in the UK too, right?
Nobody is going to freeze - even before war Russia was at most about 30% of gas imports; now it’s much less (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-27/europe-is...), and those two pipelines were unused anyway. The only risk is the raising gas prices will make the industry less competitive over the winter - but it’s small fries compared to COVID.
What it does is fixing a major strategic problem of Germany being blackmailed by Russia - a problem which endangered entire Europe. It also makes it impossible for Russia to route gas around Ukraine - which differently to EU countries could then freeze.
Whatever US president a says to reporters doesn't change the fact that US government doesn't care much about pollution when it comes to national security.
I think it's good to try to think clearly about these things, lay out the reasonable possibilities. It's the healthiest coping strategy in a frankly worrying situation. Better to risk saying something stupid, and potentially get corrected, than to just go with the default flow of however media decides to spin this.
Yes, please. There are already flagged remarks here. I'm sure twitter is a cesspool blaming everyone from the Jews to the Dutch. That behavior has already created large problems in society. Let's not aggrevate them.
No evidence? What do you think Biden meant when he replied "I promise you, we will be able to do it" [1] when asked about stopping NS2 just before the war this year?
Also note the recent pro-NS2 protests in Germany, whose energy costs have skyrocketed before winter.
There's yet another option that you haven't noted - Poland is only safe in its gas reserves because of the Norway->Poland gas pipeline. Destroying the Nordstream pipeline seems to send a clear message "stay out of this, or the Norway to Poland pipeline ends in the same way"(and then Poland is completely screwed and has no gas this winter).
Russia wants NATO to stop giving Ukraine weapons, but they also really want to sell their gas to Europe. And they already controlled the spigot of the Nord Stream pipeline, so they wouldn't have to blow up anything to stop deliveries. Yes, the great powers have done some really stupid things, especially Russia, so it's dangerous to assume rationality, but they all like keeping their options open to a fault. "We're committing to belligerence, we won't even keep the option of letting you give up and bribe us" - does that sound like Putin's Russia?
The NATO as a whole likewise wouldn't blow up these pipelines, for pretty much the same reason. They love options too. But there's a lot of internal dissent in NATO, and it's quite possible that one member (read: the US) wanted to take away an option from another member (read: Germany), namely that option to cave in during the winter and give concessions to Russia in exchange for critically needed gas.
If they did, I'm quite sure Sweden was in on it. Even as a non-NATO member, they have been more deferential to US covert interests than most actual member states, including on torture rendition flights and the persecution of Assange. And it's sadly a bipartisan thing there.
Ukraine themselves would be another option. They certainly have an incentive to want to close off Western Europe's option to give concessions to Putin in exchange for gas, far more than any NATO member. But I don't think they have the capability to take out pipelines in the Baltic, especially not without US consent. But no, you can't blow up pipelines with like that cyberwarfare, and it's not going to fail three places at once.
I want to wait see who Russia places blame on, who the US places blame on, and most of all the actual evidence they can present. Maybe Russia will present non-laughable evidence for once, since I believe - again, for once! that they're actually not responsible this time.
But I wouldn't count on it. Actually I would be shocked.
It is pretty interesting. In reality this makes no sense for anyone. It doesn't really make sense for Russia for the reasons you mentioned (tho they often make stupid decisions), but it also doesn't make sense for the West for reputation reasons. If this comes out to be the work of any western country it would have dire consequences for them and I just don't see the risk/reward. Could be some separatist group somewhere.
* China -- Ensures they continue to be the beneficiary of cheap RU gas, which considering their current economic woes, I imagine it is a pretty big deal for them. Broadly, they dislike the Ukraine war because it reduces stability in the region and resulted in deeper western resolve, but strategically a weakened Russia and cheap energy are both beneficial to their interests.
It's also somewhat outside of their capabilities, I think. While they're quite good at supergluing themselves to roads, blocking ambulances etc - locating a pipeline ~70-90 meters below the surface and then successfully detonating explosives down there, twice in a day, is quite a few levels up from that.
They have no incentive to do actions that damage the environment:
Ecology activist organizations are funded by donations, which would dry up completely at the instant they are proven to be involved in such a disastrous leak.
What makes you think that ecoterrorist organizations would be the sort of organizations that are registered 501(c)(3) charities and run TV commercials of cute pandas?
My point is that "organizations that conduct ecoterrorism" and "organizations that get funding through public donations" don't overlap. Al-Qaeda isn't running financed through charitable donations from the public, they're financed by shady benefactors. The same is true for ecoterrorist groups.
No. Because there (currently) is no such thing as an "eco-terrorist organisation" that is not just an eco-activist organisation (funded by donations and governmental subsidies) being disparaged by an opponent.
Or do you have examples of what you call "eco-terrorist" organisations?
> No. Because there (currently) is no such thing as an "eco-terrorist organisation" that is not just an eco-activist organisation (funded by donations and governmental subsidies) being disparaged by an opponent.
A quick skim of the wikipedia article on eco-terrorism shows this is false.
"Arson is a tactic most associated with recent activity in the Earth Liberation Front (ELF). The ELF has been attributed with arsons of sites such as housing developments, SUV dealerships, and chain stores."
Looking at the the wikipedia page for ELF, it doesn't look like they're the type of organization that's a registered charity and runs donation drives
Further down the article also mentions
"Organizations accused of eco-terrorism are generally grassroots organizations, do not have a hierarchal structure, and typically favor direct action approaches to their goals"
which seems consistent with the characterization that they're not the types of organizations that are registered charities and rely on their national reputation to get funding.
> Yeah car dealer arson, allrighty. Did you notice that two deep sea major pipelines have been blown up recently? Do you think that compares?
>Yeah right, you see the difference between chain store arson and blowing a deep-sea pipeline now that I'm pointing it to you?
The reasonable conclusion to draw from that would be "this pipeline explosion wasn't caused by eco-terrorists because eco-terrorists aren't radical enough to bomb gas pipelines", not "it wasn't caused by eco-terrorists can only be funded by public donations and they don't want to piss off their donor base".
>Do you intend to mean that such grassroots orgs would not need PR nor donations?
1. Al-Qaeda has PR (think grainy videos, not slick NY PR firm) and received donations[1], but I wouldn't characterize them as the same type of organization as greenpeace or whatever.
2. during ELF's existence, do you think they operated like a regular charity?
>Then no because grassroots organisations that would not raise donations do not have enough funds to blow a deepsea pipeline.
The wikipedia article also mentions someone being able to procure a RPG-7 from some sort of terrorist organization to launch at a nuclear power plant. Given that it doesn't seem too implausible that a group can acquire a boat and some depth charges without having to run a nationwide fundraising campaign.
The pipeline operation would require rich individuals, presumably educated, a fortiori if they are so invested in ecology. Do you think they would release millions of tons of CO2-equivalent of methane in the air?
Moreover they would need a large team to prepare and execute the op.
No-one on the team would say like "hu? isn't it a bit destroying that what we are fighting for?". Don't you think at least a dozen of potential whistleblowers would pop up into existence and the whole project aborted?
So, no, my verdict is that all of that is so unlikely. I'm trying very hard to not say ridiculous but... oops.
We're not saying that this was ecoterrorism. We're just pointing out that "it's bad for the environment" isn't an argument wherever this was done by eco terrorists.
It remains unlikely, mainly for the original point given. Regardless wherever it's bad for the environment or not, they would've claimed responsibility by now.
edit: That wasn't meant to be derogatory. AFAIK large parts of that land will be swamp and mud if the permafrost thaws up. Even now there are large parts with no streets or railways, reachable only by treks over frozen rivers during winter, by sea if coastal, or air. And the infrastructures built on permafrost will suffer too, if it thaws up.
The same way as large parts of Alaska and Canada are.
After degradation, the methane is transformed in the exact same CO2 it would have become if someone had burnt it, thus it still the same long term pita in addition to the short term headache it creates.
There's also "the Sicilian option". Putin, knowing that the pipelines are no longer practically useful, blew them up deliberately to seed mistrust and discontent among NATO allies.
It's a mindbender, but he's also a former KGB officer and may have bombed his own people to justify the 2nd Chechen war[1]. He can only succeed in Ukraine if he divides Ukraine's western allies. What other tools does he have?
I’ve got no proof he did it, but based on his other actions, he’s one of the only people I can believe might do it, for reasons exactly like this. The other candidate in my mind is the USA based on the weirdly vehement comments earlier this year about never letting the Nord Stream 2 happen.
It just doesn’t make any sense at all for someone else, it’s either weird, overly convoluted, risky or impossible based on lack of necessary equipment… this isn’t something you can just do a lone wolf terrorist attack against, it’s armoured agains ship anchors, sunk into the seabed, and deep underwater, you can’t just bomb it with some home made depth charges from a fishing boat… which is why this whole thing is so damn weird.
> Without gas they have no reason to tolerate Putin.
Nope.
If you think about this on a geopolitical scale, China has every interest in wanting their Northern border with Russia secure, and to advance the Chinese Belt & Road initiative, and collaborate on non-USD currency trading, and other things that make them both sanctions resistant. China also wants Russian Technology where they still hold leadership positions.
Most importantly, China wants Taiwan back.
The global balance of power may shift in China's favor if the best fabs in the world are suddenly Chinese, and they can sanction the US, limiting their access to chips.
These supply chain issues would be a great tool during wartime.
Even if China manages to conquer Taiwan (they don't yet have enough amphibious lift capacity to make it stick), the important fabs are likely to be wrecked. And even if China manages to capture some equipment intact, they won't be able to operate it without support from ASML and other foreign vendors.
US politicians have finally woken up to the risk of being dependent on China for strategically important semiconductors, hence the support for measures like the CHIPS Act. The window for China to be able to credibly threaten us with sanctions is rapidly closing.
All the Belt and Road projects have already left Russia, moving south.
For China to secure its northern border they need Russia as a buffer zone; they don’t need it strong.
As for technology - Russia has two, nuclear and military. China already got everything nuclear they wanted, and Russian military tech is, as we could all see, rather worthless.
> It's a mindbender, but he's also a former KGB officer
Your speculations are interesting. But the above adds nothing.
There’s nothing magical about having been in the KGB and one can’t determine one’s aptitude for ‘sneakiness’ from same. It’s just silly.
Putin has been in power for 20+ years. There’s no need to draw conclusions about his character from his KGB days when you have such a rich history since then.
As an analogy, I remember when folks said Reagan was a great communicator because he had been an actor. Hogwash. He had been a politician far longer than an actor, served as the governor of California, leadership roles in the party and unions, etc. That is, his skill in communication while President was fostered from these experiences and not some ancient movie acting he did.
It's silly. Even if you include training in KGB, he was a politician for longer than the was at KGB. He was president longer than his active KGB career. Plus, his KGB career wasn't all that glorious: counterintelligence here, collecting newspapers there, maybe donated a few guns there.
You've listed some stakeholders, but there may be more possibilities (assuming sabotage).
For example, it may benefit China to have their enemies fight, then offer assistance from the sidelines at a charge.
Another option is that an energy supplier competitor did it, knowing that it would send the price of their energy through the roof. Even a few million dollars to have a private submarine sabotage the competitor would result in massive returns, and it would be difficult to trace.
The point is, it's far too early to tell.
Regarding your specific rational:
> Ecoterrorists -- I discount this mostly on the basis that they would have claimed responsibility by now.
I discount this on the basis of their capability and funding.
> NATO sabotage -- this reduces strategic options for several EU countries
It could be that a NATO Country (read: not EU) could want to see the collapse the EU. This would greatly benefit the US for example, as they would then be able to renegotiate all previous trade deals on favorable terms.
> Russia sabotage -- this isn't terribly rational for Russia, but Russia has been unwilling to pursue rational options for a while.
It wouldn't be, unless they have the ability to fix it easily.
> Ukrainian sabotage -- pretty much the only actor for whom sabotage makes rational sense. Especially if it is a demonstration of Ukrainian cyberwarfare capabilities.
Cyberwarefare didn't rip a hole in a pipe. Cyberwarefare also didn't create an explosion. I would be also interested to know if Ukraine has any operations submarines right now - because where would they refuel for example?
> * Poor maintenance -- this strikes me as unlikely because NS1 is quite new infrastructure (2011), so it would have to be extremely substandard to have failed this quickly, and I believe most of the construction was done by European and not Russian firms, so I don't think that's at all plausible. But there may be some failure modes I'm not thinking of here.
Over 10 years even the best infrastructure could deteriorate with abuse. Bridges can collapse if not well maintained within this timescale, and the ocean is a much worse environment.
Could also be shoddy workmanship. Country of origin for the workman is at best a vague hint of quality, and a poor construction can take years if not decades to fail. Keystone's XL decommissioning planned penned out that they expected a minimum of 50 years of service from that pipeline, but over half the pipelines in the US carrying oil and gas are in excess of 60 years old and still operating.
Until the investigation is perform though, we simply don't have enough to go on.
* Ukrainian sabotage -- pretty much the only actor for whom sabotage makes rational sense. Especially if it is a demonstration of Ukrainian cyberwarfare capabilities.
I mostly agree but... You could make the same argument for bits of the middle east, Norway and the USA (the US refuses to export gas to the EU to make US industrial products more competitive).
If you subscribe to the point of view that Russia's war on Ukraine isn't actually about Ukraine, but about causing lasting pain in Europe, then this action is perfectly rational for Russia.
It drives the market prices up (anything that spooks market participants will), and creates an ongoing situation that adds pressure on governments to act.
> * Ukrainian sabotage -- pretty much the only actor for whom sabotage makes rational sense. Especially if it is a demonstration of Ukrainian cyberwarfare capabilities.
How can cyberwarfare blast something some km close to an underwater gas pipe? remote controlled submarine?
Sabotage the control system so that it blows up instead. There are a couple of previous claimed cyberwarfare attacks on pipelines that resulted in pipelines blowing up (e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_the_Abyss, although that's one that I do not believe to be true).
> "The pipeline software that was to run the pumps, turbines and valves was programmed to go haywire, to reset pump speeds and valve settings to produce pressures far beyond those acceptable to the pipeline joints and welds. The result was the most monumental non-nuclear explosion and fire ever seen from space."
* Ukrainian or Baltic non-government group. On one hand, it achieves the desired outcome - reduce Russia's income, on the other hand, Germans can't blame Ukrainian government for that.
Baltic, maybe, but very unlikely I think. It's too hard for a small group to pull off without getting discovered.
Ukraine is a long way from the Baltic and very busy getting invaded, so I think the chance of them pulling off something like this without US knowledge is practically zero.
What about US sabotage? What if peace was about to break out, and this is the United States way of eliminating the option of restoring energy to Europe this winter?
I'm skeptical of that claim. It is sourced entirely from an autobiography, and there's no corroborating evidence of the explosion from any other source.
> Russia has been pressuring Germany to re-open NordStrom 2 for weeks now.
Maybe, but Germany hasn't been close to yielding to that pressure.
> Maybe, but Germany hasn't been close to yielding to that pressure.
It doesn't have to be close to yielding, or even particularly likely to be close in the future. Planning and accounting for unlikely contingencies is prudent.
Suppose analysts calculated a mere 5% chance Germany considers yielding to pressure this winter. Why take that risk? Blow up the pipe and bring that risk down to 0%.
Iran had the most infections and the virus is designed to attack centrifuges. Israel took over the code base during the Obama administration and made the virus more viral, but the targeting remained the same.
Essentially what you've written here is not only inaccurate but I'd say a conspiracy theory in that you're implying the US took custodianship of the code back and began using it again, which is entirely unfounded.
At the time, it was the largest non-nuclear, man-made explosion in history.
(The grammar of the first few paragraphs of that story is odd, but the source it cites is solid, and it gets better after a paragraph or two -- couldn't find a better link.)
Let's hope no NATO ally would be fool hardy enough to take this action.
I'm uncomfortable with light hearted talk about the US and NATO being involved in this. Clearly people speaking so cavalierly about that possibility do not understand the implications of such an act in the alliance system. The purpose of an alliance is not to surprise your partners. It's to ensure your partners are not surprised.
On a completely unrelated note: /s
Brazil, South Africa, Kenya and Ghana. Property markets had been a little crazy as they are everywhere. I didn't think there was much upside in these markets, but I'm starting to see that perhaps these might be good places for long term residential investment afterall?
Probably offer some moderate but steady returns as the insurance policies of the rats, and enormous returns as the most likely places the rats would run if things nosedive. Now I understand the USD4 million condos in Nairobi.
The US tapped the German prime Minister Angela Merkel's phone. Not not much of an alliance there. If it serves US interest all bets are off and it's time for everyone to realize that.
Doesn't pass the smell test (also we're talking about the entire EU having issues not just Germany).
Gigantic risk for the US and would eventually be found out which would destroy any semblance of relations with the EU and significantly strengthen Russia's hand.
US companies (and others) are going to sell LNG to Europe for huge profits anyway.
These pipelines weren't deliving gas anyway
The US would prefer energy markets to be stable and not have sky-high prices
Russia's invasion of Ukraine was one of the greatest foreign policy gifts in United States history and it significantly strengthened US alliances across the globe and put the entire west in lockstep with each other with regards to Russia and China. Placing that gift at risk is beyond foolish.
It doesn't pass the smell test for the simple reason that Germany and the EU were already ending dependency on Russian gas, because Russia has made it abundantly clear that any such dependency on Russia is a national security threat.
This wasn't done to coerce European countries. This was done to stir chaos and make it look like someone other than Russia committed sabotage.
Europe knows the US mistreats us, it is no secret. Honestly I wouldn't be surprised to learn it was a UK submarine under US instructions for example. We know how the US spy on us, spy on private companies to favor their own, mess with our currencies, isolate us and exploit us. Uses us as cannon fodder. We remember all the times the US was caught spying on our leaders, deciding our elections, threatening invasion and abducting people. We have seen the news and read the cables. We remember when Obama told us they would not kill US citizens without a trial, only foreigners like ourselves. We know how foreign policy works. One day maybe we'll have the abnormality of leaders that work on the best interest of their people, maybe then the US will learn the world remembers. Nothing lasts forever.
Everything the US does to Europeans Europeans do back to them. Why do you think the spying allegations went away so quickly? Because German and French intelligence spy on the US as well, and so it's better for both parties if they just shut up about it. Everybody spies on everybody, that's the entire reason of existence for intelligence agencies that every country has.
Europe live's on the US's teat. Ukraine and Nato do not exist with the US. Without US LNG Europe would be begging Putin for gas, leaving Ukraine to rot. Without US defense spending Russia would have rolled through Ukraine and be on its way to Berlin again. Without the US in WW2 Europe would be speaking German or Russian. On and on.
Honestly, the timing doesn't make sense. I'd maybe the US blowing the pipelines a year ago when it looked as though NS2 might conceivably go online, but given how frosty relationships are right now between the EU and Russia, and given the scramble to wean Europe off Russian gas-dependency already is in progress, there just doesn't appear to be much of a point, not in the short term and not in the long term.
Why would Russia invade and annex Ukraine? The answer can be stupid people making stupid decisions, don't assume everything done by a nation-state is logical.
> Russia has good geopolitical reasons for invading Ukraine.
They had good reasons to maybe want to dominate their neighbor. What good reasons were there to risk everything over an all out land war, and what reasons remain for continuing a fight they are losing ?
"Gigantic risk for the US and would eventually be found out"
This is predicated on the assumption that the US intelligence community would leak it anytime soon (within the current presidency). That seems like a very poor assumption. If it's never proven they did it, there's no real risk because people who don't want to believe will invent other explanations. You see it happening in this thread already - it's not the country that literally said they had ways to ensure NS2 would never activate, no, it must be the country that built it. 4D chess!
"These pipelines weren't deliving gas anyway"
No, but that could have been changed very quickly if wanted. All three pipelines were pressurized. NS2 was all new equipment, ready and waiting to go.
"The US would prefer energy markets to be stable and not have sky-high prices"
The US has consistently and strongly opposed European dependence on Russian natgas under (at least) two different presidents. Neither of them seemed to care much about the question of what to replace it with. At any rate such an operation would be signed off by Biden and highly classified, so it's not like "the US" would have an opinion on what matters more anyway, just a senile old man.
1. I'm not saying the US did it.
2. I just want to remind you, that you're talking about a country literally renaming their national dish to "freedom fries" over France not wanting to join in a war, started under provably false pretenses.
French fries are not the National Dish of the USA, and it was done in the cafeterias in Congress (as well as a few other zealous restaurants). But to portray it as a country renaming their national dish is an over-exaggeration.
As a US Citizen. I laughed at "Freedom Fries" as did many I know.
The US is not homogeneous or even close.
As an example:
I remember warning people when visiting over seas: Trump is many things. Stupid is not one.
I stand by that statement. I don't agree with the man. But I will never mistake him for a total fool. Did he mis-calcuate. Thankfully, so far yes. But 2024+ will tell the truth on that, alas.
If the pipeline started operating, which it probably would in a few months with energy catastrophe in Europe - it would be total victory for Russia: natural gas revenues through the roof, end of war, etc etc. USA for some reason believes that Russian victory is against its interests.
On the other hand, this now means freezing europe and a lot of money for USA, against european peoples interests... especially for people who don't really care about ukraine, as they didn't care about afghanistan, syria, libya etc., and just want a nice life for themselves (so, most people).
Yeah sure... they're saying we have enough reserves, then in the same sentance, that we must limit the time we shower, that we must wear sweaters indoors, that we must not heat our houses above X degrees, and many of the companies are aalready shutting down due to gas prices.... and it's not even winter yet.
What do you expect the politicians to do? Say that we're fucked because they didn't want to negotiate? ...so we can protest and replace them before we're actually fucked? Or lie about being ready, until it's obvious we're not ready and we're fucked, and with a destroyed pipeline, we cannot even negotiate anymore.
We're talking about people who couldn't even get masks during covid.
The vast majority of weapons and support to Ukraine is coming from the US, Britain and Eastern European countries, not Western ones. Even if Germany and France started taking in gas from Russia it would only marginally affect the amount of support coming in for Ukraine and certainly wouldn't come even close to ending the war. The energy catastrophe is unlikely to happen too beyond what is already happening (ie companies having to shutdown due to high energy prices). See: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-27/europe-is...
Europe already announced they weren't buying Russian oil, and Russia already announced they weren't going to sell it. The pipeline being functional, or no, seems inconsequential. The attack can serve propaganda purposes, however.
So what was the solution in the end? Cuz currently I only see everyone being afraid to even acknowledge that gas reserves are merely a buffer. I suspect this "figured out" might as well be yet another soothing post-truth.
Well for one they've filled storage reserves past the annual target: https://graphics.reuters.com/UKRAINE-CRISIS/EUROPE-GAS/zdvxo..., and will fill it up to the max. The reserve can be used for about 3 months. Anything else they need will be purchased expensively on demand. Demand will be cut where it can. Something like 10-15% less demand would make all the difference. Yes it'll be painful in the short term but they should have never hitched themselves to Russian energy in the first place. This is the cost they will pay.
Anyways, by next winter France's nukes should be back online and they'll have had 2 years to make structural changes to ween off Russian gas. Likely means more US LNG in the short term, and more green energy/tech in the long term. Only chance I see of them getting back to Russian energy is if Russia gets toppled by a democratic regime that wants to be westernized. I see this as very unlikely in the next 2 years.
German policy has always been that this pipeline is a stranded assert once russia shuts it down.
Keeping this as a lever and credible threat is vastly important for maintaining a somewhat secure supply of gasoline for east germany. When speaking about a energy catastrophe you really, really want this pipeline shut.
In fact germany has taken measures to make sure that the pipelines will not become operational again. Confiscating and removing compressors and reuse them for the planned LNG terminals.
If anybody profits from these explosions, it's germany.
And russian natural gas revenues hit ground and are now searching for oil themselfs, now.
If I were a betting man, I'd put my money on Poland.
The Polish prime minister immediately called "sabotage" and fingered Russia, while everyone else is still saying "it could be sabotage but we need to investigate first".
Russia wants the taps capable of being turned ON at their discretion, not permanently broken. This hurts their bargaining position in a big way because they've just lost their biggest source of leverage against Germany.
Poland opened a new pipeline to Norway on the same day as the leaks appeared, so there was lots of Polish activity in the waters.
Poland doesn't receive gas via Nordstream, so damaging it doesn't hurt them in any way.
Poland is Ukraine's most ardent supporter in Europe, often leading the vanguard of actions to support Ukraine. They'd have a strong motive to ensure that the rest of Europe doesn't waver in its commitment to keep the Russian taps off.
It could be argued that since Europe has already decided to never turn on Nordstream again, the fallout from such an act of sabotage is minimal.
As a Pole, you're giving our elected representatives and secret services/special forces too much credit.
Especially the latter were gutted by this government in its current and previous(2005-2007) incarnation under the guise of "decommunization" and replaced with people without the, to put it lightly, necessary qualifications.
I mean, quite a few government motorcades got into accidents because the poor fool behind the wheel wasn't a professional.
Why does everyone assume the need for submersibles? Why not a small patrol boat dropping some depth charges on a time delay in the middle of the night?
I'm not sure deniability is so important when it's multiple coordinated explosions.
How else could it have been done.. What about explosives being built in from day 0? Sort of like how some bridges in Europe were pre-mined during the cold war?
by deniability I mean that you cannot be sure if this is Russia, USA or someone else. If you use depth charges, they explode in certain way and leave some debris which say "this was XXX bomb so must be Russia/USA".
If you knew the exact position of the pipes, why would there be a problem with precision? Maybe there are lighthouses in sight which you could use to line up exactly, maybe you'd use gps/glonass, maybe you'd have some plane go by near at a specified time, doing it for you, saying via radio, all good, drop it?
There's no way Poland pulls this off. If ANY of the government members EVER leak this their position in the EU is done for. It's a direct act of aggression.
Those who have something to lose would not have done it (aka the countries that need the gas, or the country that provides it). Poland is a very interesting idea, since even if they are caught, they are the ones providing the gas to Europe now, and refusing to deal with them is not an option.
That said, looking forward to paying 20 SEK per kWh, that'll be fun. Also, there's no wooden pellets or firewood for purchase no more - as it's all going to the continent.
Sweden privatized its electricity sector. Then several nuclear power plants shut down, in some cases because prices were low at the time and it wasn't profitable and in some cases because they let it fall into disrepair. So Sweden has an energy crisis of its own now. Sweden does have hydropower and wind power, so prices are low when it has been windy and rainy, but prices are sky high the rest of the time.
Russia turned the taps off in order to raise pressure for European concessions in order to turn them back on again. Germany has been tepid in its Ukrainian support because they want to have their cake and eat it, too. Now they can't no matter what.
With the pipes permanently broken (at least for this winter), Russia has lost that leverage.
> Russia turned the taps off in order to raise pressure for European concessions in order to turn them back on again.
I don't want to sound dismissive, but that's a characteristically western take on things.
Nord Stream 2 was largely redundant and Russia missed the window to use those pipelines against Germany by allowing it to fill it's storage.
Russia is no stranger to causing damage to itself just to ensure that their enemies also suffer.
Case in point: back in 2015, as retaliation to sanctions they banned some imports of food from the EU deeming it "unsafe for consumption"(a particularly funny reason for someone familiar with the respective food standards). Contraband was publicly destroyed, upsetting a considerable chunk of the Russian public.
Little reminder that our (German) gas storage was only filled at 25% when the war started.
On an unrelated note, we had sold big parts of that infrastructure to Russian companies.
Not sure that is correct, the companies contractually responsible for the nordstream 1 turbine maintenance/repair were European and Canadian, that were refusing to repair them because of the sanctions on Russia
Strangely, gas turbines supplying Hungary which showed a more friendly posture towards Russia didn't break all of a sudden... I obviously can't prove that the Russia controlled companies that operated this equipment deliberately broke anything but in the past outages like this were relatively rare.
> The Polish prime minister immediately called "sabotage" and fingered Russia, while everyone else is still saying "it could be sabotage but we need to investigate first".
Pipes of both Nordstream 1 and 2 blew up simultaneously. It seems pretty immediately obvious that it was done intentionally by someone.
I'm sure the perpetrator will eventually become known; I don't pretend to know who it is now. But that it was sabotage seems clear, so I wouldn't hold it against someone to claim such.
> Pipes of both Nordstream 1 and 2 blew up simultaneously. It seems pretty immediately obvious that it was done intentionally by someone.
Playing devil's advocate: it could be that one of them blew up first, and the other blew up in a sympathetic explosion (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sympathetic_detonation). Or it could be that the pressure wave from the first one blowing up weakened the second one, leading to a catastrophic failure of the later. That would allow for both blowing up without requiring an intentional act.
(Of course, you can mix and match the theories: for instance, "the intention was to sabotage only one of the pipes, but a miscalculation led to the other one also being affected and failing catastrophically" would be yet another theory.)
I'm sure you have heard about these technical problems Russia is having with the terminal on their side, the technical problems they claim are behind the reason the gas is turned off? Well it's not really technical problems, it's "technical problems" because otherwise the shut off would have been contact violations. This is no different, now they can keep the gas off without violating international trade law.
Russia can close the valves and noone can do anything. But russia would want the valves to be the only obstacle between their gas and germany, so germany would always have an option to sit down with russia, make some kind of a deal, and the same day, gas could be reopened.
Now, with the pipes destroyed, it will probably take months to fix them, and even if people in germany protest against their governments, the talks with russa are pointless.
On the other hand, USA will sell a lot of very overpriced gas now to quite a few EU states.
Not Poland. Not any country with a pipeline that can be similarly retaliated against.
There is disagreement, conflict even, between Putin and his energy sector. Effectively destroying these pipelines is a pure-Putin way of reminding disgruntled Russian elite whose still in-charge.
If not Putin, the UK, who desperately wants Germany to confront Russia, free of hopes not doing so will magically open NS1 or NS2.
Damaging the pipeline destroys a major source of Russian leverage against Germany. And now that they're desperate enough to play the nuclear card with a "this is not a bluff" chaser, it's pretty obvious that they need all the leverage they can get.
Russia already supplied Germany via Ukrainian and Belarus pipelines. NS1 & NS2 were supplying nothing prior to this incident. Russia has lost nothing in leverage, but Putin has now gained leverage internally over energy interests who view this war (and Putin) as bad for business. Strategic narcissism is focusing on Putin's threats to the West, over his internal challenge of remaining in power.
I’d say Poland wouldn’t be capable of this. I mean, you’ve got to be really really really confident that it won’t be public knowledge you’ve done this. And I’d be worried to what extent my intelligence services had been infiltrated if I hadn’t done this type of intervention a dozen times before and gotten away with it.
The same logic leads me to conclude it’s one of the major powers, a country that regularly does major ops and gets away with it. One that wouldn’t be worried about being caught because they hadn’t been caught before.
So: Russia, US, China, Israel, U.K. would be contenders
The fallout is that there’s now a sudden realization that these pipelines are subject to sabotage, including the pipeline to Poland, which creates unrest in the gas market. This, in turn, hinders the expected recovery of the gas price in the winter, and somewhat increases pressure on Europe.
I wouldn’t say that the act of sabotage is minimal.
"Russia wants the taps capable of being turned ON at their discretion, not permanently broken."
There's two assumptions embedded in this sentence.
Firstly, who is saying it is permanently broken? If the repairs are cheap, Russia may decide the cost of that is worth the amount of distrust it has introduced.
Secondly, how do you know that Russia hasn't decided that NS2 will become a sunk cost, due to the way that EU has committed to diversifying away from Russia? If Russia has decided that NS2 is a sunk cost, it's actually optimal to destroy it if destroying it gives some value.
> Firstly, who is saying it is permanently broken? If the repairs are cheap, Russia may decide the cost of that is worth the amount of distrust it has introduced.
Experts, apparently. These pipelines weren’t made to carry salty seawater, and are now filling up with that. This means a lengthy repair is required.
I know, but at what cost? If Russia can sow distrust for $X million, maybe it's worth it? And who will pick up that repair bill? Is it strictly Russia? I see a lot of handwaving saying the project is forever destroyed with no sources. If we're going to be speculating on incentives from our armchairs, these details are pretty important.
> It could be argued that since Europe has already decided to never turn on Nordstream again...
If true, I don't understand why Poland would even need to do this. I'm going to go with Russia for reasons yet unknown because it's something only a shitty country like Russia would do.
Maybe Gazprom has penalties in their contract when they don't deliver the gas. This way they could blame it on external factors. I read it somewhere but can't remember where.
> Russia wants the taps ON, not off. This hurts their bargaining position in a big way because they've just lost their biggest source of leverage against Germany.
No, it's the other way around. It signals that Russia is burning bridges, and makes it nuclear threat seem much more real.
Russia likes bridges, since germany knows that they only need to sit down with the russians and make a deal (eg. no more weapons to ukraine), and the gas starts flowing.
Now, even with internal pressures of protesting people in germany, there is no incentive for germans to sit down with the russians, and the only ones profiteering from this are the americans
> Now, even with internal pressures of protesting people in germany, there is no incentive for germans to sit down with the russians
Yes, and that's exactly what Russia wants to signal now: "we're ready to go all in and use strategic nukes against NATO countries, we don't have anything to go back to".
Why would russia want that? Russia wants to remove nato from ukraine, take the prorussian regions, and then continue business as usual... ie. selling gas to EU.
Russia would be happiest to remove NATO from the equation entirely. Steamrolling Ukraine, sowing dissent within the alliance, and then grabbing one or more of the Baltic states would have done that.
Because it resolves a major strategic problem for European security - that of Germany being blackmailed by Russia. At the same time it doesn’t really have any drawbacks aside from (probably minor) pollution. In particular it’s not a problem for Germany, because both pipelines were unused.
> Russia wants the taps capable of being turned ON at their discretion, not permanently broken. This hurts their bargaining position in a big way because they've just lost their biggest source of leverage against Germany.
As I understand it this leak is in the new NordStream 2 pipeline and NordStrem 1 is unaffected, so they can still supply gas in to the EU through NS1.
Or, Russia realizes that Nord Stream leverage isn’t working and is now moving to attacks which implicitly threaten other pipelines (e.g., Baltic Pipe) for a stick to replace the apparently useless carrot.
Yes, the next logical move for Russia is: if we can't sell our gas to the EU & Co., nobody gets to (to the extent they can help it).
That is, the next obvious offensive move is for Russia to start sabotaging more of allied Europe's energy infrastructure, increase the pain proactively. Pipelines coming out of Norway are clear targets.
Putin is an adult child throwing a tantrum because he's losing badly, being humiliated, and being shown to be weak and not brilliant. His position entirely rested on a wrong perception (that he was a highly competent authoritarian), which is now being displayed very publicly globally.
> If I were a betting man, I'd put my money on Poland.
That's exactly the narrative that Russia is trying to sell now since 2 decades now. It's not the first time pipelines are damaged. Please read up on the recent history, if this year hasn't been lesson enough what then...
I don't see a mention that today is the day Poland officially opens up its pipeline to Denmark and Norway. The pipeline Russia (and to a much lesser extent Germany) put a lot of resources trying to jeopardize.
Some of the things those two countries did include: Financing of various "grassroots ecology groups" that managed to find an extremely important field mouse (no joke!) habitat on the planned route which caused many months of delays in Denmark. Constant media pressure and a smear campaign of lies against PL in Europe and elsewhere. And many more including those we don't know about. No one is surprised at all that they would blow up their own pipeline to gain various PR points in sympathetic media.
I prefer the idea Putin wants to eliminate this future point of negotiation from underlings trying to oust him. Who will support someone to get rid of Putin now that they can't promise to reopen the valves and thus the profits to the oligarchs?
That’s absurd, like cutting your nose to spite your enemy’s face. Putin would have sabotaged the Polish pipeline instead of his own, after all it’s not as if Russian-Polish relations can sink any lower.
Yes, as absurd as let's say attacking the only country in the world that has a large percentage of population that actually supports you(many people in Eastern Ukraine speak Russian at home)?
He was expecting to waltz into Kyiv in a few days, decapitate the Ukrainian government (literally), not to have to wage an intense war of attrition. Of course he miscalculated because of piss-poor intelligence (the one thing the former USSR was usually good at), that doesn't make the original calculation irrational.
Now if he had sabotaged the Norway-Denmark-Poland Baltic Pipe, he would have achived the same objectives, preserved his own capital investment, and killed off a potential competitor to Russian gas. Sure, it would have been a direct attack against a NATO country, but so was the 2014 bombing of the Czech munition depot in Vrbětice.
Nordstream is at least 500 miles long and billions of dollars of Russian investment built to provide income long past the wars end. There's no abstract 'warning' worth destroying that investment. Just no.
If anyone on HN has sources to back up a claim as to who did this, I would like to suggest that HN might not be the most appropriate forum for delivering this information.
Russia is known for using environmentalist groups as fronts for geopolitical strategy. One of Russia's greatest wins was hamstringing Keystone XL pipeline. Sure would be nice leverage for US.
My theory is that Putin ordered it. He recently made two major escalations, mobilization and annexation, that greatly decrease the odds of a peaceful settlement and increase the odds of him being overthrown internally. This move undercuts the leverage a new leader would have after a coup, since it will be harder to get gas flowing again following a truce.
Putin seems to be staking his entire regime on this war and likely feels that upping the stakes is to his benefit. His odds of winning a conventional military victory are looking more and more slim, but ratcheting up the risk might get the West to back down, at least in his mind.
Because then it would be clear who did it. A sabotage in the baltic sea makes it more difficult to find the culprit and probably causes [intentional] blame of countries that might benefit from shut pipelines.
Although neither was in operation, both pipelines [Nordstream 1 and 2] still contained gas under pressure.
Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said the leaks were caused by sabotage, while his Danish counterpart Mette Frederiksen said it was “hard to imagine” they were a “coincidence”.
Surely Russia has no interest in sabotaging the pipelines that give them leverage over Europe. Without the pipelines, the whole "you lift the sanctions, we deliver natural gas" game is gone. Even if unlikely to happen, it would have been an important psychological and political factor over the winter.
Meanwhile European powers don't seem to have an incentive. They would benefit from having Russia as part of their gas supply once the war is over. Sure, having the option not to buy from them is nice, but why force that? Competition lowers prices after all.
Ukraine has a motive to hurt Russia and prevent Russian gas exports, but that would also bite the hand that feeds them weapons. Not to mention they don't have a presence in the Baltic and are occupied on other fronts.
That would leave Europe's non-Russian suppliers of natural gas: Norway and the US.
Europe didn't need the gas [1] [2]. Russia has nothing to lose by sabotaging it. Don't forget that Russia had already slowed/slopped NS1 by this point.
Since the Russian invasion in February, Europe has been working out how to get by without Russian gas. For this winter, stocks are high enough that Europe can probably get by without gas rationing or a major hit to GDP (although this also depends on what the weather's like). There's also a variety of short-term (increasing gas flows from North Africa) and longer-term (increased renewables energy production, more LNG terminals) efforts to eliminate the need for any Russian gas. That goal is, the last I've seen, ready to be hit in 2024.
So the real question isn't what happens over the next 6 months, which I suspect will be rather anticlimactic for most observers, but what happens in the 12 following months, especially if Russian seems determined to deliver 0 gas to Europe in 2023.
This sounds like politicians promising something, that they'll fail to deliver in a few weeks... as a european, i've heard this many, many times before. As someone from the balkans, i look at first signs of politicials lieing (they're moving their lips).
Also, if Russia can easily repair this damage, it isn't really jeopardizing NS2. People here are assuming that this is the end of NS2. What a propaganda coup if the repairs are fairly cheap and they can sow this much distrust for that small financial cost.
The central long-term economic goal of the US in Europe has been to shift European energy consumption from Russia to the the US and allied producers. On the short term, sabotaging the pipelines prevents lifting the sanctions imposed on Europe (i.e. opening the pipelines) which would also tend to decrease profits on each LNG tanker.
> "The United States, the world's top natural gas producer, wants to send more liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Europe to help its allies break their dependence on Russian gas after Moscow invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24." (Jul 2022)
In addition, disabling Nordstream 2 is a stated US agenda, right from Biden:
> " US officials have made clear that they would move to suspend Nord Stream 2 if Russian President Vladimir Putin orders an invasion of Ukraine. They’ve been much less specific on how that would be accomplished. “I promise you, we’ll be able to do it,” Biden said Monday when pressed for more details. "
> Meanwhile European powers don't seem to have an incentive.
I don't think that's what happened, but I do see an incentive. If you can turn "we're going to increase the conflict by refusing trade" into "we'd buy, but you can't deliver", that's a potentially politically useful change. Also internally "we're taking a stance and sacrificing your comfort during the winter" is worse optics than "we need to deal with the situation where even if we wanted to buy from Russia, we can't; sorry for the inconvenience".
This removes a rallying call for increasingly extreme Russia-friendly parties in Europe.
These parties (Italy and Hungary to name just two) are angling for friendlier relations with Russia, and name gas as one of the reasons.
And over winter Russia will say "We want to help Europe. And we want to help their people. And we even have a pipelines full of gas waiting. But their political parties don't want us to help."
And then Europe is full of far-left and far-right Russia-friendly political parties, Ukraine is part of Russia, Russia counts its oil money and continues its military expansion.
EU/Germany is already at that point because Russia openly stopped honoring the existing contracts and ceased deliveries months ago. So even this constructed incentive does not exist.
I think it actually was Russia because Russia has really reliably misjudged its position and resources. I see no reason to think they wouldn’t do this self-destructive thing when they’ve done so many other self-destructive things.
The videos coming out of the conscription paint a fairly incredible picture.
Exactly. Russian policy frequently follows this philosophy of "a sinking tide lowers all boats, so long as ours is lowered a little bit less, we win." They're happy to burn the world down as long as they end up a little less burnt than everybody else. Does it make sense? Probably not. But that's how they've been acting.
It could be an independent ideological rogue actor —although honestly I don’t know if small private organizations have the necessary tools to sabotage this thing.
If this were the ‘70s it would be plausible. But this seems unnecessary and hamfisted. We have Germany in our pocket policywise, so it’s really unnecessary.
But there could be an ideological angle or an insurance angle.
> That would leave Europe's non-Russian suppliers of natural gas: Norway and the US.
The Baltic Sea is relatively shallow[1], so commercial ROVs can easily get down to the pipe[2].
If you hedged a massive bet that say Norway will continue to deliver gas to the EU and Russia will still be cut off, then I guess it's possible a non-state actor could pull it off.
Sounds more like something out of a movie than anything realistic, but yeah...
President Biden on Nord Stream 2 Pipeline if Russia Invades Ukraine: "We will bring an end to it."
Initially I thought it's a mistake. Russian company took over the German one after the sanctions on NS2, so they could screw something up, but there are too many leaks. It's 100% sabotage.
> Meanwhile European powers don't seem to have an incentive
Poland, Belarus have. Yamal is becoming critical as well as Brotherhood (Ukraine).
> That would leave Europe's non-Russian suppliers of natural gas: Norway and the US.
>> Without the pipelines, the whole "you lift the sanctions, we deliver natural gas" game is gone.
I think that game has been completely gone for a while. Russia just doesn't care(well, Putin doesn't), so blowing up those pipelines is like the final fuck you to Europe, now you can't have our gas even if you change your minds.
> Meanwhile European powers don't seem to have an incentive
Depends who. I could very well imagine a few countries (my own, France, for example) forcing a situation where energy-driven complacency isn't on the table. But it does make more sense for this being something that comes from the US.
The US doesn't need to do this, nor does France. Interested parties would include the Baltics, Poland, the UK and even Russian factions. Although the UK might put unecessary pressure on its own gas acquisitions by doing this. Ukraine is excluded because Germany would refrain from giving them any more weapons then.
Russia don't want Uniper to sue Gazprom on international arbitrage for the missing gas volume and using the frozen russian asset to pay the penalties, so is creating those force majeure using plausible deniability like leaking turbine and now NS1/2
> Surely Russia has no interest in sabotaging the pipelines that give them leverage over Europe. Without the pipelines, the whole "you lift the sanctions, we deliver natural gas" game is gone. Even if unlikely to happen, it would have been an important psychological and political factor over the winter.
Could be a simple matter of burning bridges. Or something we haven't thought of yet, but will probably figure out in the next week or so.
> Surely Russia has no interest in sabotaging the pipelines that give them leverage over Europe.
Does this not give them even more leverage over Europe? There's no longer simply a switch that Russia can flip to resume the flow of gas into Europe and previously only Nordstream 1 was shut down (please correct me if I'm wrong).
It's not so hard to imagine tactics to compel Russia to flip a switch, but repairing these pipelines now will be a massive effort. You could not coerce another country into repairing these, you would have to really work with them.
Additionally this is essentially a real attack on Europe. Winter was looking bad enough as it was, now, depending on the damage, Europe may be forced to go through their hardest winter ever with no option of negotiation.
At the same time by not declaring that this is being done Russia avoids direct retaliation.
I think the message here is that window for "you lift the sanctions, we deliver natural gas" is over. Russia is becoming more desperate, Western powers are used to it being the case that when an adversary become desperate you slowly start getting what you want. I believe the message here is that as Russia gets more desperate, it also gets more dangerous, so be careful your next move.
It's getting cold now, there are internal pressures in many EU countries to fuck this war and sit down with putin and make an agreement so russia can reopen the gas lines. Putin knows that, and probably has a list of conditions ready to reopen them.
If the pipes are destroyed, even if people protest, there's no way to get russian gas again (atleast not fast and cheaply), and no incentive for EU to talk with putin... and the only ones profiteering from this are americans, selling overpriced gas to europe, even worsening the EU-Russia relations and destroying the european economy.
Russia has a motivation to kill the pipelines now, to increase gas prices now, as NS1 & NS2 are NOT the only paths to get gas to the EU. Since they are already down for "maintenance" (and we actually know some maintenance is needed), it would be a good tactical move to kill the possibility of NS1 & NS2 delivering gas, increase focus on the crisis now, and hope that this scares the EU into stopping supporting Ukraine.
Norway also reported drone sightings on their oil & gas fields. It would be very tactical for Putin to start taking out all EU supplies as much as practical, since he obviously cannot win on the battlefield.
My feeling is that this will backfire in the current information environment, in the short term only enraging the victims by making clear who is the enemy creating the misery, and in the long term giving politicians justification to say that Russia is an unreliable supplier. It can only work as long as there is a mystery about who is taking out supplies, and if any other facility than Russia's own are taken out, everyone knows that the culprit is Russia.
Also, Russia is so good at this that they have a word for it: "provokatsiya" or "provocation", 'A political event staged by an intelligence service on behalf of its government in order to accomplish some political goal. '.[1]
Russia also has extensive submarine capabilities and ports on the Baltic Sea. [2]
Means, motive, opportunity. That's my bet right now, given limited open source information.
> and hope that this scares the EU into stopping supporting Ukraine
This absolutely doesn’t make sense. If the pipeline is gone, EU does not have any incentive to settle with Russia. Like, “whatever”, no pipe, we send tanks to Ukraine because you have nothing to offer to us anymore.
1) there are multiple OTHER pipelines from Russia to the EU, and NatGas can be shipped by sea (as is now being done from the US); NS1 was not the only route, and NS2 was barely online, and already Germany was heavily dependent on Russian supplies. So it would still be easy to make a settlement with Russia to get more NatGas and oil if the EU wanted.
2) Russia has a LONG history of creating non-military disruption in target countries to gain advantage. Simple disruption of the political situation in the EU is very advantageous to Russia, they would hope it causes at the very least a diversion of funds and attention from supporting Ukraine to dealing with domestic unrest.
3) A new pipeline from Norway was opened literally the same day. This sends a message: "Nice pipeline you have there, it'd be a shame if anything happened to it.". This further creates uncertainty and stress in the EU.
All of these benefit Russia and it's Ukraine genocide efforts directly and significantly.
That said, there is definitely the possibility that it could also backfire, and strengthen the will of the EU to avoid Russia as a completely unreliable and exploitative supplier, and as you say, reply with "FU, we're sending more tanks to Ukraine". I sincerely hope so.
The gas is apparently still flowing out of the pipes at pressure - this can happen only if Russia is still pumping, for which the only purpose would be to spend money to create an environmental disaster - another distraction/disruption.
When I was in Germany their Prime Minister (Gerhard Schröder) was deeply invested with crony capitalist Russian businesses. He was a big fan of Vladimir Putin and used some (valid) criticisms of George Bush and the Iraq war to push germany more towards dependency on Russian energy. You should start with that before railing against American's.
I don't think we would do this, we have enough problems of our own that both, take precedence over Ukraine, and are frustrated by the Ukrainian situation. Looked at in a certain light, we're incentivized to stay out of this. That said, our policymakers have shown themselves in the recent past to be, well, not the brightest bulbs. So anything is possible.
But this just smells like different nations in Europe going rogue. Probably good intentions, but it strikes at the national interests of other European nations. It's an escalation as, previously, dual interest assets were not targeted explicitly for the purposes of keeping all western nations aligned.
They are playing with fire at this point. I hope we don't get dragged down with these people.
This to me seems the most likely. If they are afraid EU countries, like Italy, which many of the leaders of the party are against the war in Ukraine, might not support the war, freezing them out this winter might push them to change their mind.
The pipelines were down already. Spite actions would be like (I believe Stephen Kotkin mentioned this possibility) cutting all undersea Internet cables to ruin the U.S. economy. But nothing like that has happened.
> Surely Russia has no interest in sabotaging the pipelines that give them leverage over Europe.
Apart from a false-flag operation by Putin to have a casus belli to start a war with NATO?
Normally, that would be suicide. But Putin has already proven that he, to put it diplomatically, does not see the world the way most sane people see it.
A couple of years of ukranians shelling the prorussian regions were a good enough reason.... considering that nato used the same one to bomb serbia in 1999.
2021 only had 18 civilian deaths in that region, of which 11 were caused by mines. 79% of casualties were in separatist areas and 21% in Ukrainian controlled territory. That is a good enough reason to kill thousands and thousand, make millions of Ukrainian children flee their homes? Level entire cities?
The reason Nord Stream 1 was not in operation is because of, according to Russia, maintenance and because gas demands have still not reached winter levels.
A plausible theory for why Russia has done this could be to avoid fines. It is likely that Russia has agreements with steep penalties for if they voluntarily don't provide gas like they agreed too (like what they are doing with Nord Stream 1).
Blowing large holes in the pipelines could allow Russia to claim that they cannot provide gas because the pipelines are broken, effectively avoiding the fines.
I never said it was a rational action just that it’s a reason.
There’s more evidence to support that this wasn’t someone like the US or Ukraine as well.
One of the pipes of Nord Stream 2 remains intact and there’s only one country that benefits from forcing the certification and opening of Nord Stream 2 and that’s Russia.
Who said invading was not a big deal? Nobody said that.
If they plan to ever sell gas to Europe again, they'd have to pay the fines most likely. This does avoid the fine issue by sabotaging their own pipelines in a way that can be fixed later, at a relatively trivial cost, and it adds confusion into the situation for the allies.
Russia can now say: we can't turn the gas on even if we wanted to, we're not to blame, and we don't have to pay any breach of contract fines for it being off.
Russia hasn’t had all of its assets seized. Additionally it may not even be about asset seizure, but about not wanting to look like a unreliable business partner. But even as I say that the actions of Russia lately make them seem unreliable already.
It's so easy to spin a just so story around incentives to think anyone is responsible.
US did it because their gas industry want to sell to Europe, and also Biden was clipped saying he can stop NS2.
Russia did it because the repair costs are low and hence the distrust propaganda value is worth that cost, and because EU is going to stop buying their gas anyway so may as well capitalize on the sunk cost.
Forgetting incentives for a minute and instead looking at recent patterns of behavior and reckless disregard for both others as well as self-preservation, my default assumption is that Russia did it. This is the best lens to use when the incentive picture is murky, because it clearly is murky here.
To me, the most fascinating thing about this is the complete and utter uncertainty. Who is responsible, USA? Russia? Ukraine? Poland? Terrorists? No one?
You'd think that in the 21st century, a piece of infrastructure getting blown up during a war, between two clearly defined sides, there wouldn't be nearly as much mystery surrounding the events.
I agree that is the most important angle, to consider the consequences for other infrastructure. However, it should be said, pipelines are intrinsically difficult infrastructure to monitor due to their great length, and a pipeline at the bottom of the sea even more so.
One should note: "between two clearly defined sides" but also with a few dozen other factions supporting one side or the other as a proxy war and negotiating with one side or the other to attempt to manipulate food and energy supply chains on a global scale.
>Who is responsible, USA? Russia? Ukraine? Poland? Terrorists? No one?
All of these are possibilities to some degree or another, except I think "no one". It doesn't seem plausible that multiple simultaneous explosions would sever this extremely durable pipeline.
I suspect many countries know who did it, but think it is not in their best interests to either admit that they know, or let others know that they know. International intrigue indeed!
Might be shocking to some, but not all of Russia is one people. There are multiple interests there among country's leaders. And one such interest: to get rid off Putin's regime quickly. One way of doing this is to prevent any notion of "restorable" economic relationships with Europe under Putin. Without Gas, who needs Putin's Russia...
A prediction: we will see more of such actions in the coming months, leading to the winter
Without gas, Russia is in a worse position at the negotiating table, since it cannot promise to resume shipments in return for removal of sanctions. This is actually something that the pro-war faction (and Putin personally) would love. Conversely, the elites who want to revert back to status quo before the war would never do this.
Gas supplies are controlled by state-owned corporation. Putin and this corporation are one. There is no multi-factions within this organization. It is 100% under Putin's governance. If there was interest to cut supplies, they would have done this publicly. And they have the PR/Media to spin the story however they want.
On the other hand, elites don't benefit from this gas supply. For example, it keeps Ruble unreasonably high for their own exports. And it keeps the government under Putin's control (Gas finances the war as well as his pockets). And undermining gas supplies, creates a consensus among elites that Putin will not be able to sustain the economy for very long. Once there is a consensus, it is much easier to move against Putin.
In simple terms, like any Middle Eastern Dictator economy, Russian dictatorship is managed through government-controlled oil supplies, which elites don't have direct control over. If oil supplies are taken out of the equation, the economy collapses unless elites take over to manage it with alternative methods.
Bottom line, if gas stops flowing from Russia, elites (technology ceos, aluminium exporters, bankers, etc) gain back control.
Gas already stopped flowing from Russia to Europe. The question now is if and when it'll be restarted.
And yes, of course, for the peace faction to make use of it, they'd need to carry out a coup to remove Putin first, so that they are in control. That's precisely why it all adds up.
Nord Stream 1 was stopped. Gas is still flowing from Russia.
Anyways, the argument is actually more likely the opposite. Opposition was planning a sabotage. In anticipation, to downplay the impact, Putin claimed to punish Europe by stopping Nord Stream1.
I read talks of sabotage but I struggle to understand the point, surely russia wouldn’t sabotage their own pipelines (they can just shut them) and I understand they are not in use right now. In fact doesn’t that mean that the pipeline will be flooded? Is that recoverable?
> I read talks of sabotage but I struggle to understand the point
Pure speculation: A very hard winter is predicted with sky-high energy prices. If people, the economy and industry is suffering one can easily imagine that Germany wavers and opens up the taps. If the pipes are damaged and it will cost a lot to repair and restart the flow that supports those who want to keep the gas flow off and hinders those who wanted to restart it.
> surely russia wouldn’t sabotage their own pipelines
I would agree with that. Hard to imagine what would be their point in doing that.
> Hard to imagine what would be their point in doing that.
Precisely because it is hard to imagine? It looks like a clandestine operation by one NATO country to limit the options of another or perhaps even the German government doing it to limit the options of its own people.
Like you I have no idea, but this is one of those areas where Occam's razor doesn't do as well as it usually does.
If you are implying that weather forecast is accurate months ahead - nobody knows what the temperatures will be this winter. Everything further ahead than 7 days is pretty much rolling the dice.
You don't need a weather forecast to know that winters are cold in northern part of europe, but that doesn't matter, because with cheap energy we can heat or houses, workplaces, the industry continiues running, and then comes the spring.
With energy prices rising, people won't have money to heat their houses, industry won't be able to produce stuff, people will be left jobless, etc... meaning, a hard winter for europe.
> If you are implying that weather forecast is accurate months ahead
Nop. Hard as in a winter full of hardship, stress and problems.
> Everything further ahead than 7 days is pretty much rolling the dice.
And yet every winter it is cold here and every summer it is hot. Nobody can say which day will be sunny and which day will be stormy that far ahead, but clearly there are trends.
Cold combined with high energy prices will mean that a lot of people will go either cold, or poor or most likely both. Not so cold and so poor that everyone dies instantly, this is not a prequel to snowpiercer, but you know having a bad time.
Winter in Europe has huge variations in severity. The difference between a cold and a mild winter can make an annual 15% difference in gas consumption in Germany, for example [1]. The difference between running out of gas and not running out of gas falls right between those two weather scenarios.
Winter being generally colder than summer - that's climate, which is different from weather.
That's a very Putin-esque thing to do. They know that Germany is off Russian gas and they want to give them as much pain as possible so they come begging back.
The question is whether they trigger article 5 here -- I suspect not, however.
> They know that Germany is off Russian gas and they want to give them as much pain as possible so they come begging back.
Okay, but how would this particular act accomplish that? Those pipes are the means Russia would be serving the german market after "they come begging back". If Russia wants to starve Germany of gas they can just simply not pump it in the pipe. That simple. No need to blow up their own infra for that.
Pipes can be repaired. Russia has been slowing down supplies through the NS1 pipe -- down to 1/10th of Germany's normal supply before halting. [1] [2]
Blowing up a pipe that can be repaired to cause friction between allies? That's priceless. The fact that it's cause for speculation on Facebook, Reddit, HN, Twitter, etc shows exactly how disruptive of a move it was.
The begging back theory doesn't make sense. Sowing discontent and suspicion between allies right when some of them are electing Russia-frendly government has more merit.
It would be interesting to watch this evolving, if it wasn't fucking scary.
> when some of them are electing Russia-frendly government
What's wrong with that? I mean... we're either a democracy, and people choose their own government, or we're being governed by some other external force not obeying the wishes of the people.... if italy choses to be friendly with the russians, their people wanted that, so why not?
You can't really state that without bringing up the proven fact that the Russians have been running pro-Russian, as well as divisive campaigns all across the world.
You have a same bunch of politicians in and out of parliament, while people are going through locdowns, massive rinting of money, with scraps going to the people, lockdowns, record inflation and energy crisis, while those same politicians get paid more and more plus they steal even more, so people want some kind of change, any change, just to get rid of the current ones...
but no, it's the russians and their facebook posts, sure.
Russia doesn't really stand to gain here. Ukraine and the United States stand to gain the most by removing the option for Europe to capitulate to Russia this winter.
Ukraine isn't on the Baltic Sea, but do they need to be? Honestly, I don't know the resources that would be required to accomplish this. Would some special forces with diving equipment and a fishing boat be enough?
> Would some special forces with diving equipment and a fishing boat be enough?
Might not even need divers. Just a fishing boat, a GPS, a limpet mine, and a few hundred feet of rope. Dangle the mine in the water at the right depth as you cross the path of the pipeline and let go when it attaches. Set the timer for weeks or months so you're long gone by the time anyone starts investigating.
(If the pipelines are made of a non-magnetic material like stainless steel maybe you'd need to do something more sophisticated.)
Maybe we'll know more once investigators inspect the damage, but I think practically anyone could have done this based on what we know so far.
> Would some special forces with diving equipment and a fishing boat be enough?
Sections are shallow. (No clue about the blast sites.) With zero information on the extent of the damage beyond measured pressure drops, folks dropping weighted dry bags of dynamite from kayaks is in scope.
The biggest gain is for Russia, remember the long "repair" of NS1? Blocking the filling of gas reserves in Western Europe? Repair here, sabotage there and bam Germany has less gas for winter.
What warning? They literally said they'll close the valve.
With the closed valve, they have an upper hand at negotiations about gas, especially if the german people get cold and start sharpening the pitchforks for their own (german) politicians... now, even if the germans want to negotiate, there will be no gas until the pipelines are fixed, and it doesn't seem that will happen soon
One reason I could imagine Russia herself would do this is because they might assume Nordstream is now an essentially obsolete asset, so has more value in their ability to demonstrate the fragility of OTHER gas pipelines, including the one inaugurated this very day between Norway and Poland.
Everyone knows they have the capability to do it. What prevents them from doing this is that if they do it, NATO will start sinking russian submarine in the north and baltic seas and we are in a shooting war. So I really don't see the point.
We know they are lying. They know they are lying. They know that we know they are lying. We know that they know that we know they are lying. And still they continue to lie.
Goal of the sabotage is to keep Europe in the war. If opening up the gas pipeline were an option, Germany would be tempted to do it, once the heating season starts.
The conspiracy theory is that either the United States or some member of NATO sabotaged the pipeline so that Germany will not have the option of easing up on sanctions in order to purchase Russian Gas this winter.
It’s not a conspiracy theory. Some group conspired to sabotage the pipelines. It’s a conspiracy fact. The only theoretical aspect is who did it and that’s more of a hypothesis at this point. It’s a conspiracy hypothesis.
but it's a theory as of now and hence a "conspiracy theory". I'd like to mention that for me "conspiracy theory" is not a term I frown upon. It's been labelled as something equivalent to "dangerous tin foil hat bullshit" by some politicians and news outlets who'd like us to believe that history unfolds linearly and obviously.
Could we please have at least a shred of evidence of sabotage before we move on to the phase where we conclude there was sabotage? Sorry to be a stickler about major geopolitical crises.
Not every theory about conspiracy is a conspiracy theory.
Fixed version:
> The theory is that either the United States or some member of NATO conspired and sabotaged the pipeline so that Germany will not have the option of easing up on sanctions in order to purchase Russian Gas this winter.
> Even the German government might have done it in a "burn the boats" strategy.
I would prefer to assume governments are somewhat rational actors, who at least try to act in the interest of the own country.
In this case, the biggest loser from destroying NS1 and NS2 is Germany, second-biggest Russia and the rest of the Europe, sorted descending by the dependency on Russian gas.
As for the winners, we have the USA and Ukraine as biggest immediate winners, and indirectly and in the long-term India, China, Arab countries, ...
Ok, what if NATO collectively (or at least the affected members) decided to destroy the pipeline in a show of resolution?
Let's say secret negotiations are ongoing (it would be surprising if they weren't) with Russia regarding a winter ceasefire. Russia annexes the occupied regions to force the hand and be in a better position, then offers gas in exchange of no NATO military help during the ceasefire.
NATO rejects the offer and blows the pipeline to show it is off the table.
This is a valid conspiracy.... when it gets cold, people will protest, and demand that their government sits down with putin and make a deal... with the pipes blown, the government can say that they can't do anything, and that it's not their fault.
Perhaps I should have said 'conjecture' instead. I felt like using the term conspiracy because the explanation seems plausible while simultaneously devious and covert.
Isn't that exactly from their playbook? I mean the neofascist book by Dugin about pseudo-geopolitics that they made required reading at the military universities. "Foundation of Geopolitics" is the name.
Have you read it? I have. I doubt many countries are studying how to create a Eurasian super-state to take on the western European and American alliance. What you're thinking is a general-purpose Clausewitz or Sun Tzu is actually a very specific book about building a very specific world view.
No, it's not. My state never tried to do anything even remotely like what's described as standard practice in the book (and what's provably being done by them here).
This state doesn't even have the agencies that would do it, much less a budget for them. The agencies we have - they have reporting requirements, and these are checked to be accurate by elected auditors.
Where do you live Andorra or Lichtenstein or some place like that which has like 10 people? I can't imagine any country that has some decent amount of people not having agencies who would be capable of doing stuff like this.
I think you have no idea what you're talking about. Read the book. Very few states would be able to do the things described there, and even less of them (1-3, maybe) could hide it.
I think you are grossly underestimating the ability of agencies. If you think only 1-3 countries could actually pull off something like this, then you are wrong.
I said only 1-3 could keep it secret. More could pull it off, but not in secrecy. Anyways, the main point is that we know for a fact thanks to our constitutional audit office that nothing even remotely like this is being done by our three/four-letter agencies. :-)
If you're going to claim that every single random person elected into this office (so several hundreds of people) was coerced into lying to keep it private, not a single leak has ever happened even though this state is not exactly known for its (cyber)security, that they somehow magically generated the funds for it even though we're really not rich at all and every US$ million missing is immediately visible, and that they managed to make everything else check out perfectly as if nothing was happening - then sorry but I think you're being way more than overly paranoid. I don't want to be rude but you should visit a psychologist if you're seriously considering this claim.
The thing is, there's no reason anybody here would do it. We don't have anything like the national pride of other nations like the US or even the Russians. We don't care, nationalism and patriotism is considered laughing matter here. The agents would burst out laughing if you suggested a plan like this - even if it was plausible, you'd be seen as insane. The only thing we have is strong anti-communism, so anything that resembles these times is pretty much not possible here - and the newspapers are fishing to expose you for it.
Simply put, no, not every state does stuff like this. Don't normalize it.
>I said only 1-3 could keep it secret. More could pull it off, but not in secrecy.
Seems unlikely. USA, UK, Russia, and China could all keep it secret. I'm sure other Western countries likely could as well like Germany.
>Anyways, the main point is that we know for a fact thanks to our constitutional audit office that nothing even remotely like this is being done by our three/four-letter agencies. :-)
You are so certain it couldn't happen in your country and yet you haven't stated the name despite me asking you twice. Perhaps you are afraid you claims won't stand up to scrutiny?
Do you really think that there is zero corruption in your country? That no agency claims to pay more for an item then they do to skim money?
>If you're going to claim that every single random person elected into this office (so several hundreds of people) was coerced into lying to keep it private, not a single leak has ever happened even though this state is not exactly known for its (cyber)security,
I don't know how your agencies work and since you refuse to give the name then I have no reason to trust your claims. You think 100s of people are all auditing every single agency and purchase all while having 100% perfect accuracy?
Unless you are talking about a microstate that doesn't seem likely.
>that they somehow magically generated the funds for it even though we're really not rich at all and every US$ million missing is immediately visible, and that they managed to make everything else check out perfectly as if nothing was happening
No one is talking about millions of dollars. You need a couple people, scuba gear and explosives. You might be able to find people with scuba gear who could volunteer for such an assignment. Explosives don't have to cost millions. Crap, people in your government could have paid for it out of pocket.
>then sorry but I think you're being way more than overly paranoid. I don't want to be rude but you should visit a psychologist if you're seriously considering this claim.
Spending potentially less than a thousand dollars isn't really some sort of conspiracy theory.
>The thing is, there's no reason anybody here would do it.
Do you know every single person in your country well enough to know their politics? If you do then you live in a microstate which was already something I was asking you about.
>We don't have anything like the national pride of other nations like the US or even the Russians. We don't care, nationalism and patriotism is considered laughing matter here.
Seeing how much you are posting to defend your country, this sure seems like a lie.
>The agents would burst out laughing if you suggested a plan like this - even if it was plausible, you'd be seen as insane.
You know every single agent right?
>The only thing we have is strong anti-communism, so anything that resembles these times is pretty much not possible here - and the newspapers are fishing to expose you for it.
Doesn't seem likely, but since you haven't stated the name of your country I can't show any evidence to the contrary.
>Simply put, no, not every state does stuff like this. Don't normalize it.
Prove it by giving me the name of your country so I can check.
Russia don't want Germany and others to sue Gazprom on international arbitrage for the missing gas volume contractualized on decades and using the frozen russian asset to pay the penalties, so is creating those force majeure using plausible deniability like leaking turbine and now NS1/2
The point would depend on who did it. If it was the US, then it was to keep their promise to shut down NS1/2 but after Germany had topped up[1][2]. If it was Russia, then the point is to increase prices by creating volatility through insecurity and to make a threat (they have other pipelines like Yamal that are still running.[3]) If it was some other gas-exporting country (seems unlikely), then likewise, to spike prices.
Or like an actor who likes to be misidentified. There's one player in the global propaganda game who has completely given up convincing anyone of their positions, they've gone all in on the fallback strategy of making noone trust anyone. They wouldn't care if a false flag operation fails to really convince antibody, just casting doubt would already be good enough.
My bet is on some sort of deniable operation from either Ukraine, or one of the other former soviet countries with a bone to pick against Russia. It's not like Russia isn't shy in waving around how much an asset the pipeline is to them.
Well it’s not hard to connect the dots so why be subtle? If Russia knows it wasn’t Russia, it sure as hell wasn’t Germany. Who else is there that would have the desire and the means?
They clearly meant via the use of either sanctions or other political / legal means, which is exactly what happened because Nord Stream 2 never opened.
I think that's far from clear, verging on very naive. They spent the existence of both pipelines trying doing exactly what you described but could not stop them. Clearly they meant bomb it. And, no, I'm not saying they did. As my other comment indicates Russiais just as if not more likelythe culprit.
They already showed they are capable of doing terrorist actions on Russian territory while keeping silent about it. Baltic pipeline would be a children play for them, since an army can't protect it.
Their enemy will not be able to sell gas to Europe without going through what is left of Ukraine. Since Poland stopped Jamal, they can basically dictate transit price and let Russia finance their army.
> They already showed they are capable of doing terrorist actions on Russian territory while keeping silent about it. Baltic pipeline would be a children play for them, since an army can't protect it.
So far Ukraine has only hit legitimate military targets within Russia, unlike Russia who repeatedly uses it acts of terror, rape, genocide and torture as a active part of its war machine. It's a large stretch to call what Ukraine has done 'terrorist actions'.
Some people are claiming somebody could have dived to it. I don't know if that is the case, but I would assume Ukraine would be capable of sending a couple people who know how to dive a few countries over. They also likely have plenty of explosives.
There is quite a bit of risk involved in a covert operation like this for Ukraine. Let's just imagine they sent a special ops team covertly into Denmark (onto the island of Bornholm which is mostly reached by airplane or ferry) and planted some explosives on the pipeline in a secret dive operation.
There are quite a bit of scenarios in which this could go terribly wrong or be successfully attributed after the facts.
The paramount Ukrainian reliance on western support to have any chance to win this war makes me think that the risk/reward ratio for this operation would make it super unlikely that Ukraine would consider doing this.
Odd that this is downvoted. I do wonder what possible methods could have been use to undertake this. Are there underwater drones that are capable? Could a small private boat have just gotten into position about the pipeline and dropped the explosive?
Who knows what inner factions are forming, or perhaps are just imagined to form by a paranoid inner inner circle. If the group that considers themselves too deeply invested in the war for reversal believes that there's another group forming around the idea of switching the gas billions back on, the former might very well want to remove that option.
Russia has probably been in a civil war for quite a while now, a backroom civil war of the elites with the TV-controlled masses completely uninvolved. Think of all those mysterious hospital windows falls... gas pipeline sabotage fits right in.
The most convincing "Russia did it motive" I've seen so far (and I don't believe it but it's more plausible than other reasons I've seen that Russia would do it) is Putin doesn't want any of the elites around him thinking they can remove him and then get their money flowing quickly again.
you think using western, market-centric logic. you can't use this mode of thinking to understand russia. this might as well be internal russian faction warfare.
There's a theory I've seen that Russia could have sabotaged Nord Stream to evade breach-of-contract penalties for shutting off gas. I don't know how credible that theory is though, and there are plenty of alternative parties and potential motives. Practically anyone with a boat and a limpet mine could have done this. (Maybe we'll get more clarity as the damage is inspected.)
> "...surely russia wouldn’t sabotage their own pipelines (they can just shut them) and I understand they are not in use right now."
The EU, through von der Leyen, has more or less made it clear that no more gas will ever be bought from Russia, not even if the war would suddenly end today with Russia retreating entirely from Ukraine's territory. The pipelines have been forfeited.
People with geopolitical expertise have offered the theory that it may be a "red flag" operation by Russia, granting them some sort of excuse to mobilize in international waters in the Baltic.
If people get cold, and ursula doesn't want to negotiate, people will want to replace ursula... This makes it better for her (and many other eu governemnts) since negotiations wont bring back the gas.
Yep, many internal pressures in EU for talks with russia (due to energy prices), and people wanting their poltiicians replaced, because they're the only ones standing between the people and cheap gas. On the other hand, US now can sell overpriced gas to EU while still hurting russia... if the pipes reopen, russia gets money, eu gets gas, US loses overpriced exports.
Yes, the US administration knowingly misrepresented the facts but in the end the only thing that happened was some US ships firing at shadows in the fog they believed to be enemies. Nothing that had not happened before in far more dramatic fashion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogger_Bank_incident
Putin seems to be taking the approach of sowing as much chaos as possible. A hot war with the west is useful to him to rally the country behind him. Escalation is just another tool.
I don't have any idea about who blew up the pipeline but it's clear that Putin sees his only way out of the mess he has put himself in is escalating to the point where western countries are worried enough about the consequences to let him have some kind of concessions in Ukraine. That's not crazy if you see it as your only option.
I've only thought about it for a minute- but I might speculate that it is a signal from Russia- "even if we decide we want to turn the gas back on, you might not be able to get it when you want it."
Incentives don’t align for Russia (lose revenue) and Russia could just turn off the gas if it wanted to. Putin is a wildcard, but still, if he wanted to “teach Europe a lesson” he would just come out and say I’m turning the gas off, freeze to death.
Also, Biden promised that they had the capability and desire to take out the pipelines if Russia invaded so there is that. Plus, the US would stand to profit from exporting LNG to Germany.
Russia would only be losing potential revenue if the pipelines would be getting used any time soon, which is highly unlikely. They already did turn off the gas, now this just confirms it for the long term, with the added bonus of lots of people immediately blaming the US for it. Middle Eastern nations would benefit far more than the US, which has basically sold all of its capacity for LNG already. The EU is looking to sign LNG deals with those nations, see for example Scholz touring the Gulf region recently.
Would you please stop posting flamebait comments to HN? You've been doing it a lot lately. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for, so we have to ban such accounts.
Freeze to death cold. I get the feeling a lot of people here live in California or on the west coast and don’t quite fathom how cold it gets in some parts of the world.
Might actually happen in Bulgaria. And yet, for the most part, people are overreacting. I for one have lived in a temporary unheated german apartment with horrible insulation (build around 1955, not upgraded). It sounds way worse than it is. The only actually unpleasant thing is washing your hair. Just keep an eye on the humidity.
I won't heat my (different) apartment this winter. It will be ok.
Since there is no direct effect (the pipelines has been out of use for a long time), the effect must be indirect. As such we can't know and will likely never know for sure why it happened or by whom.
It could be Russia. Russia is the prime suspect in 99% of the cases when there is a hostile military operation on Swedish/Danish water. It isn't like Russia were using the pipelines, and it possible that spinning this as an attack on Russia will result in popularity gains for Putin.
People in most of eu are getting angry at their governments and demand some sort of negotiations so the pipes get reopened before people start freezing to death in their homes.
With pipes destroyed, even if people get mad, most governments can now just say "there's nothing we can do".
So, why are the politicians telling people not to heat their houses above 19°C, to wear sweaters at home, to limit showers to a few minutes and why are eg. steel mills already shutting down in germany?
Does anybody know what this means in terms of bringing the pipeline back online? I'm assuming it's filling with seawater, which seems like it would cause all sorts of problems between the salt and debris.
Is it a matter of repairing the breaches, removing the water, cleaning the pipeline out, and pressurizing it or is this pipeline effectively destroyed?
Due to the special inside coating to reduce friction, seawater ingress would mean the abandonment of the pipeline. It’s just not possible to fix the line without just replacing the entire thing. I theorize it’s possible to run at severely reduced flow rates if they were able to get the water out, but that seems unlikely since the receiving facilities are not designed to handle the tremendous amount of water that would be in the system.
Is that bit about the coating true? Wikipedia’s article on submarine pipelines says that the inside of petroleum pipelines are not coated. Pipelines are damaged due to accident or natural disaster, so it seems very odd to me that a pipeline would be impossible to repair.
Unfortunately, that is such a huge economic burden to run hydraulic umbilicals the entire length of the line. It’s simply not feasible to control in the middle of such an enormous pipeline. Perhaps, ROV operated valves could be a solution, but generally, with such high pressure fluid on the inside, the valves and areas around the valves would be the relative weak points and would need leak monitoring whereas the current system doesn’t require that.
You are not wrong. It’s a feat of engineering to have a roughly 1200 km pipeline operate smoothly with no safety or reliability issues over 10 years just to get blown up. Billions of dollars just down the drain.
Somewhat related; recently, unidentified drones have been observed at several oil installations in the North Sea, including Johan Sverdrup and Gullfaks C.
The US is working hard to keep a coalition of NATO countries together (for instance, avoiding secondary sanctions that EU generally thinks are extra-judicial). I don’t believe Germany would agree with this course of action and if the US unilaterally did it it would severely risk the strategic goal of a Ukrainian victory.
Obviously there is no way to know for sure, but I have a very hard time believing Russia is behind it. Russia controls the flow of gas, they can simply turn it off whenever they wish - they have no need to blow up their own pipeline. Russia has spent many years and many billions of dollars constructing these pipelines. They want the power to use their control over the supply of natural gas as leverage and negotiation power over EU countries. Destroying this pipeline removes this leverage and lessens the capability of Russia to pressure the EU with gas restrictions. On the other hand, NATO/US officials have been openly stating their opposition to the Nordstream pipeline even before the recent invasion of Ukraine. It is entirely consistent with the desires of NATO/US officials who seek to drive a wedge between Europe and Russia to destroy the pipeline and eliminate any chance of some sort of negotiated settlement between Germany and Russia as the cold of winter sets in.
Unfortunately, barring the emergence of a whistleblower, we will likely never know the truth, as whoever is responsible for this bombing will never openly admit it. Even more unfortunately, mindless partisans will reflexively point their finger at whoever their chosen propaganda outlets claim (without any evidence whatsoever) is responsible for this bombing, and use those accusations to further escalate hostilities.
Just last week Putin was saying "we want to keep selling gas", like in quite a desperate tone, "just lift the sanctions on NS2, we want to keep seeling gas." Watch his press conference at the SCO summit it's 10-15 mis long.
Now is the time to use his bargaining chip when Germany will be desperate, why will someone make their own position weaker at the time when they can extract the most leverage, that too for no reason - destroy their own property and that too go all the way up to an area where NATO was doing naval exercises a few months ago and risk confrontation with NATO..
The resident hawk at National Review is already doing a touchdown dance. "Who Will Rid Me of This Meddlesome Pipeline?"
Three leaks in two days? Wow, that’s a shame! Sounds like the pipeline’s falling apart and just won’t be a reliable way to get natural gas from Russia to Germany. I guess hopes of Germany and Russia eventually putting aside their differences over the invasion of Ukraine, and reestablishing long-term German dependence on Russian energy, just won’t happen for the foreseeable future. Just terrible luck for Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin, who clearly thought a cold winter with limited energy supplies would make Germany and other European countries come crawling back to the negotiating table.
Just about anyone could have cut the pipeline, but whoever it was, they wanted to make sure the Nord Stream pipelines would not be an option for a long time.
I thought the Thomas Becket reference was brilliant and spot on. I wonder if it is an extra-governmental group like Gladio, taking matters into their own hands.
This is really interesting. Russia knows (if we didn't do it then must be USA), USA knows (if we didn't do it then must be Russia). Germany would never know, but now they are fully dependent on Poland, Ukraine or US Navy for their energy needs.
I recall of an old story, say from 3-5 years ago, of some non military (geomagnetism?) sensors in that area that seemed to be damaged on purpose by an unknown actor, and one of the speculations was that they could be used to detect alterations to the (edit: measured) Earth magnetic field by submarines passing by.
What a pity what happened to these pipelines for Russian gas.
I mean, the west will not be buying Russian gas anytime soon anyway, Putin knows that.
But what if such accident happened to some another pipeline? For example, the one that is being open just this week from Norway to Poland. The one that should help EU survive the winter.
It's in large part a warning -- there's no other explanation for the timing:
> The turmoil came on the same day of the inauguration of a long-awaited pipeline that will bring Norwegian gas to Poland, which used to rely heavily on Russia for supplies.
If you're reading the news, and wondering why russia might blow up the gas pipeline they own, Telegraph has a pretty decent discussion on the matter[0].
> but you cannot make an omelet without breaking some eggs.
That's such a benign metaphor that it barely even fits. Saying "you can't make an international peace treaty without murdering a bunch of random vulnerable innocents", and it sounds properly gruesome, although I admit it doesn't roll as trippingly off the tongue.
Are they really your allies? The US has blocked flights from Europe during the coronavirus for a long time. At some point, it was possible to go from North Africa, through Turkey to the USA. But people from Europe could not do that; and that's after the coronavirus pandemic was worse in the US.
I think people are delusional if they think the US is Europe best ally. It's not. And they (the US) clearly see Europe as a threat to their rule-based world order.
"false flag" is when one actor makes it look like another did it. But in this event there is no apparent saboteur. So it's more like a covert sabotage than "false flag" sabotage.
Putin no longer sees this as an economic conflict, all decisions they have taken are against their economic interests, as is the war itself. They are currently killing the rest of their economy with mobilization for some south Ukrainian fields and destroyed towns. They stopped supplying gas and are running deficits at the same time. So assuming an economic motive is just wrong this has become a classic political conflict, the only use the Russian leadership has for an “economy” is as a political tool.
So this attack makes perfect sense, distrust in the West, confusion, no way back.
Does anyone know the rate at which these leaks are spewing methane into the atmosphere, and how quickly this pipeline can be shut off (if it isn't already)?
I’ve heard somewhere between 300-400 kilograms gas per second. The pipeline has already been shut off for weeks, but it’ll take days for all the gas that’s already in the line at elevated pressures to leak out. It’s an enormous amount of gas.
That's an insane amount of a very potent greenhouse gas. Seems like it'd be better to strike a match and flare it off as CO2 instead of methane, which has 80 times the greenhouse warming effect of CO2.
For very long decades USSR maintained reputation of a reliable supplier of gas and oil. Russia "inherited" this status after the breakup. However, the first gas war against Ukraine in 2009 already showed that the russian political leadership was ready to trade that status over for the geopolitical gains by using gas supply as a tool of war against Ukraine, against Europe.
It worked then to some extent. Sure, why should russia stop? What works should be used again, right?
Here it is, now russia is playing the gas supply card again. However, at this time it is clear that by its hostile and deliberate actions russia further damaged its reliable supplier reputation on the European market.
Does russia want to give up its influence on that market? Of course, not. It again needs a way to maintain the political pressure yet shift the blame for the reputation damage.
Thus, blowing up already non-functioning pipelines serves these purposes. By painting this incident as a mystery, russia will suggest that the supply disruption was beyond its control and not a deliberate choice. Force majeure. Just as it has been making up "technical" reasons for reducing then shuttering the flow via NS-1. Dishonest and obvious, but can still be claimed in court. If anything, the recent arbitrage vs Ukraine's Naftogaz demonstrated such approach in action.
Additionally, now only the Ukrainian pipeline still remains however vulnerable. This allows russia to advance the blackmailing should there be more hardships during the winter.
Whichever the real reasons are, one thing is fully proven is that russia has consistently used the energy supply as weapons and thus cannot be considered as a reliable and trustworthy member of the market. Whichever country to agree to deal with it will have to bear the longterm consequences of any adverse outcomes on its own (Hungary?).
I think it’s the USA. They were furious about this pipeline and angry at Germany for their dependence on Russian gas.
This turns Europe away from Russia and sends a strong signal.
It removes a carrot Russia would wave to Europe.
It’s under the cover of a messy situation.
It sends a warning sign to Russia about nuclear weapons. The US could wipe out all energy exports and destroy the Russian economy without deploying a single nuke.
So many seem to have just swallowed anything and everything the US propaganda has put out this year and know absolutely nothing about the last 10 years of Ukrainian history.
There are Russians in Ukraine and Russia is fighting for them. How is that irrational? You can argue they're wrong to do it, or that they shouldn't. But irrational? Nonsense.
Your links are highly disingenuous. Russia supported armed separatists and started a low-grade war against Ukraine in 2014. Their aims have always been clear: control Crimea and seize control of a land bridge to it. They never hid these intentions, and you'd have to purposefully ignore this realpolitik in order to lay the blame at Ukraine's feet.
Are Ukrainians all saints, souls pure as the driven snow? Clearly not. Certainly not significantly better (or worse) than Russians. Similar people, similar politics, similar ethics. Their country is just as corrupt, if not more so. Their politics is just as dirty. They have their right-wing white nationalists the same as Russia. They killed people in the Donbass for a decade, yes.
But who invaded in 2014? Russia.
Who invaded in 2022? Russia.
Your argument is a lot like saying that the police in Iran are killing women "for a reason".
Well, if the gas can't be delivered, of what use is the lack of gas sanctions to Russia? In this case it even affected NS2, which Russia was actually fighting to get up and running.
1) They are running out of time on this war of aggression, and this will force gas price action NOW, not in December. They can sell gas through other pipelines to the EU if it accepts it.
2) Norway just TODAY inaugurated a new pipeline to the EU. Norway has warned about unaccounted-for drone activity around it's oil and gas fields. Russia is likely sending a message: "Nice pipeline you have there - it's be a shame if something happened to it".
3) Russia has favorable actors planted in just about every western democracy, and some of them are already tweeting accusations against the US. As long as the Russians can keep suspicion off of them with reasoning like "what motive do they have?" and "somebody else must have done it", it works very much to their advantage in undermining opposition to their war of aggression.
In contrast, this is the last thing the administrations in the US or Germany need. They need stability and moderation of gas prices. Their methods are not to create chaos and try to take advantage. That is Russia's standard modus operandi.
So, yes, Russia has the biggest motives of anyone. They also have the means with extensive submarine capabilities, and ports on the Baltic Sea.
> We actually did do this 40 years ago. Reagan covertly blew up a Soviet gas pipeline supplying Europe in 1982, which was publicized in 2004 when the former Secretary of the Air Force boasted about it.
- "At the time, the United States was attempting to block Western Europe from importing Soviet natural gas. There were also signs that the Soviets were trying to steal a wide variety of Western technology. Then, a KGB insider revealed the specific shopping list and the CIA slipped the flawed software to the Soviets in a way they would not detect it."
- "In order to disrupt the Soviet gas supply, its hard currency earnings from the West, and the internal Russian economy, the pipeline software that was to run the pumps, turbines, and valves was programmed to go haywire, after a decent interval, to reset pump speeds and valve settings to produce pressures far beyond those acceptable to pipeline joints and welds," Reed writes."
Possibly the first software supply-chain attack in history? Before the term even existed.
Yup, at the time it was one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history.
Also note that this was not a kinetic/physical attack, and this sabotage almost surely was kinetic/physical.
The key factors in thinking about is so are are that 1) it's much more important for the US to maintain stable/low prices, and 2) Norway is already investigating drone activity over it's oil/gas fields, and this happens the same day as Norway announces their new pipeline opening.
The Wikipedia article quotes V. D. Zakhmatov to say this kind of attack was never possible in the first place because the control systems were either manual or analog, not digital.
>>Who says the US is sensitive to gas prices in Europe?
The US was already somewhat sensitive to global NatGas prices even before they recently permitted exports. Since we started permitting exports of NatGas, and are now actively sending all we physically can to support EU, it definitely affects both heating and electrical costs in the US, and the economy and political climate is very sensitive to those inputs.
Yes, the US is working to show strong leadership for sanctions, since the current administration fully understands the global threats to democracy posed by Russia, China, and authoritarian movements inside democracies (e.g., Hungary).
The Great Experiment — the idea that exchange and trade would bring democracy to authoritarian states — has failed so far and only empowered authoritarian states (in the medium term, at least). Authoritarian states simply found ways to route around it, and see democracy as the key threat to their existence. for example, the very existence of a free and democratic Ukraine threatens Putin's administration because the Russian people can see that one of the former USSR states being free is doing much better - raises dissatsfaction.
On the gas situation, the US cannot begin to supply enough to Europe as there are not enough ships and terminals in the world. Dependence on US gas has only slightly increased, and EU NatGas imports aren't a significant contributor to US GDP, but ARE a significant contributor to inflation. This is the last thing the US administration needs right now, and it would also be seen as a massive escalation, which the US is obviously avoiding.
Increased uncertainty today benefits only one party in the world, and that is the Russian leader.
QUOTE: "the very existence of a free and democratic Ukraine threatens Putin's administration because the Russian people can see that one of the former USSR states being free is doing much better - raises dissatsfaction"
This is a myth. Go here[0] and choose any year you want in the URL. Russia was doing much much better than Ukraine at pretty much any point in the last 15 years in terms of GDP per capita.
They why do Russian troops paint on the walls of Ukranian houses they trash "Who allowed you to live so well?" and steal anything they can, from washing machines to toilets. ?
It's going to be an extra cold hard winter for Europe. This is an attempt to create enough doubt to start driving a wedge between the west and ukraine.
Prologue: Putina out-maneuvered the Oligarchs that helped re-elect Yeltsin, and once decreed Pres, started to take them off the board when convenient or when inconvenienced.
####
Clearly not coincidence, probably not an accident, and aligns rather boringly with earlier KGB inspired, and FSB implemented, Putina tactics to remind Russians of FEAR™ and that he can be Strong for Them (see almost any "Chechen" terrorist attack).
Putina (being the current Russian state) isn't going to personally profit from those pipelines short term, so use them as a weapon (all his other ones are evidently shite, or phantom spreadsheet entries). Now EU citizens can see Gas just pissing away in the sea AND at its transmission point (flaring) nightly on TV (TV has special power for him). While they stare directly into the face of a Ned Stark worthy Winter, cold, hungry and dumbfounded as tons of long reliable jobs are furloughed because its too expensive to make things on account of Energy decisions made decades ago.
So, now an easily forgotten, mediocre KGB operative, dulled by Dresden and steeled by the hard realities of life in Leningrad (changed back to Saint Petersburg by the time he skulked back from Dresden) put all his chips on the table, didn't know they were counterfeit, and now is doing whatever he can to change the outcome. Just like a former KGB flame-out with heavy gangster influence would.
I can't see a path of sane negotiation or de-escalation here while he's in play. Any weakening of EU/NATO stance is going to allow cash infusion that quiets Oligarchs (any left alive) and everyone else in the gov't line of embezzlement, while emboldening Putina.
The most tragic (and thusly, Russian) aspect is that he's trying to channel Stalin (in a positive way?) and be that Man of Steel - even using Nazi's as a prop - and just becoming the very boogie man he heard in every story as a wee lad from a nation of people traumatized by the deaths of TWENTY MILLON Soviet citizens. This of course follows not only after, but because of, the un-hinged purging they both initiated on their own, for completely and yet complimentary, paranoid delusions.
I don't think it was the US but the CIA managed to blew up a Russian (USSR) pipeline using just software in 1982. Maybe this was hackers? Maybe state actors (could be anyone from the US to North Korea). Maybe Ecoterrorists. Maybe Ransom gangs?
The methane released by this equals roughly 25% of Denmarks annual greenhouse gas emissions, and could be more or less completely avoided by burning. Is there any reason why it is not set on fire?
Honestly this one will probably always be conspiracy food. Nobody is going to tell the truth here for another 30-50 years. The truth would be too messy for the public to consume, this is state actors taking to each other in serous terms.
It's probably too early, but has anyone heard any estimates for how long it should take to repair these pipelines? A credible estimate might help cut through some of the murkiness.
Why Ukraine does not block the gas pipeline that runs through their territory? This is the profit that Putin receives and spends on the needs of the army?
It happened on the same date as opening of the new Poland - Norway pipeline.
It could be a warning as well as a demonstration of capabilities. Plausible deniability.
Could this be to vent gas to keep Russian pipelines from bursting during the winter due to a lack of flow from the sanctions?
I’ve only recently heard about this phenomenon from a talk with Peter Zeihan[1], but have been unable to find more information about oil pipelines freezing and bursting.
The most plain explanation is that this was simply a warning message from Russia.
These two pipelines have no longer any value to them, nor to EU. However, what does have value are the numerous pipelines from Norway and other countries to EU. And this is where the real treat is. Russia has now shown it is willing to blow up infrastructure outside Ukraine.
Russia is known to have carefully mapped out the gas pipelines from Norway to UK. Remember how Russian oligark luxury ships carefully navigated close to gas pipelines, while the cover was that the oligark was attending Molde jazzfestival? Similar activity observed by Russian fishing ships.
The economics of the warning don't make sense. Why destroy billions of dollars, 10 years of construction, and hundreds of miles of Russian investment for a warning? That's stupid, and Putin isn't stupid, at all. Dogshit take.
Putin isn't stupid, and yet he invaded Ukraine? Yes he is a fairly smart man but he's capable of recklessness and miscalculation.
Also, there's two assumptions here. First that they've destroyed the whole project. What's your source on the repair costs in order to justify that position?
Another assumption you've made is that NS2 isn't a sunk cost for Russia. That's an unjustified assumption given the recent consequences of Russia's energy war on Europe.
Correct, he isn't stupid and he invaded Ukraine and you should be more weary about it.
> Also, there's two assumptions here. First that they've destroyed the whole project. What's your source on the repair costs in order to justify that position?
If you search around this thread, the pipeline has an internal coating that cannot be exposed to water and no valve system to isolate and replace parts of the pipe for repairs. I'm just going off that information. But even if it can be repaired it's still very costly, and stupid to do potentially massive damage to your own infrastructure for an unspecified/unspoken 'warning' that people may not even pick up on. I'm certainly not picking up on it. That's a very inefficient messaging system.
> Another assumption you've made is that NS2 isn't a sunk cost for Russia. That's an unjustified assumption given the recent consequences of Russia's energy war on Europe.
It wasn't a sunk cost. It was a nearly operational pipeline that would have delivered extremely cheap natural gas to germany's many factories, way cheaper than other source. Europe is desperate for energy and will be desperate for energy after the war. This is why it's such a great bargaining chip, and why there's a great incentive for the US to destroy it, so they can take away that bargaining chip.
he could do it by shutting off the pipeline, which is what he was already doing. He didn't need an excuse. Furthermore, he wants to be able to turn it back on, as negotiating tool. But the explosion prevents that, with no benefit. People are saying they want to avoid fines, but the fines could never exceed the value of the intact pipeline. It's nonsense.
Except now they’ve told everyone they’re coming, which would be stupid. If they were considering blowing up pipelines they wouldn’t tell anyone and ruin the element of surprise.
The threat is more valuable than the the actual action. Russia's nuclear threats can only accomplish so much. They have so far kept NATO from getting directly involved but clearly have not worked to keep NATO weapons out of Ukraine or moderated sanctions.
And with the EU getting closer to removing its dependence on Russian gas, the energy angle is quickly vanishing. This could be Russias way of subtly signaling that it can still play that card. An explicit verbal threat might not be taken seriously. But a demonstration of how easy it is to sabotage a pipeline has certainly gotten folks attention.
The entire invasion of Ukraine looks childish from where I sit. That hasn't stopped them.
> Maybe you think the symbolism is important
It is important in that verbal threats do not carry much weight when so many other threats have already been wagered. For example Putin has already threatened to attack Finland if the join NATO. Sometimes you need a little more than words to get your message across.
> So you think they had to demonstrate they know how to blow up a pipe? Like Western intelligence officials didn't know that?
The intelligence knows for sure. But imagine the effect such action has if it happened that the pictures of gas bubbling up the Baltic sea were shown on TV in every news program for a week.
There is no element of surprise. A real threat is demonstrating your capability and willingness to take action, no use of words no surprise (if surprise then no threat).
Leak has not be flared, and the Russian side has been shut in for weeks already. However, there’s 1200km or so of pipe that had gas somewhere around 107 bar average inside, and that must now leak.
I dont know who did it but this is a good thing for europe. Enough with the schizophrenic approach. Either we accept that russia is invaluable and ask ukraine to negotiate peace, or we cut off russia completely.
A cut off was bound to happen anyway sooner or later
What would be the reaction of the US population if this would have been done by some the US?
As an European, I'd see that as an huge act of treachery from one of our ally, but I'm really wondering if the US public reaction would be positive or negative.
I bet we could figure it out based on bot activity we see across social media. Same explanations given with similar language. Given this is HN, I imagine it is straightforward to train an AI to figure this out.
Gotta say since the British Petroleum scandal last decade, Big Oil has done a bang-up job of not having oil spills. And you know that's ecological, it was one of Standard Oil's priorities, to reduce waste. First to use burn gasoline to power their trains stedda dumping it in rivers. That sounds like it's not ecological but think it through it's got words that don't sound ecological like the word gasoline and the word burn, but think it through, it's very ecological. Oil spills are bad for the environment right? They now have cleanup costs. The companies ought to be more careful. And now they are! They are careful! In addition to all that it's oil they can sell, meaning for somebody to burn, carbon dioxide is pretty innocuous compared to all other oil derivatives. It's profits too! And then they do it, and then! Nobody says anything. Nobody thanks them. Nobody says "hey you did a pretty gosh darn good fucking job at selling oil."
If it is fixable, I am not sure how you can make sure it does not happen again. I am not sure how you are supposed to survey hundreds of kilometers of underwater pipeline.
I mean it’s probably quite tricky to keep a constant eye on every KM of both pipelines - but given the number of surveys involved just to get NS2 to a state where it could originally be pressurised - before they went bankrupt. I would say you could at least do semi regular inspections using ROVs.
>With regard to the authorship of the alleged attacks, two main options are being discussed. First, according to initial speculation, Ukrainian or Ukraine-affiliated forces could be responsible.
"are being discussed". By whom exactly? It's not attributed to a quote or anybody. But a random unsourced sentence in one article somehow reflects everything "the Germans" are saying, over, you know, the entirety of public discourse available?
Was talking to a trumper who was blaming the invasion on the US having a weak president.
Seems like the opposite if anything. Biden quarterbacked the maidan coup. Seeing him become president probably wasn’t a happy moment for Putin.
Edit: these things are censored in google, Wikipedia etc by US state actors. We largely have to go on the words of people like Max Blumenthal and others who have been largely censored and scrubbed from easy access by these same state apparatuses or wait until foia requests reveal what they always reveal about our benevolent state.
> Edit: these things are censored in google, Wikipedia etc by US state actors. We largely have to go on the words of people like Max Blumenthal and others who have been largely censored and scrubbed from easy access by these same state apparatuses or wait until foia requests reveal what they always reveal about our benevolent state.
Max Blumenthal is a Russian propagandist who is a regular guest on Russian state backed networks such RT and Sputnik. I wouldn't trust anything he has to say about anything.
I’m sure he takes the appearances he can get after having all his sources of funding cut.
I hope you’re being paid well to call people propagandists who have devoted their lives and sacrificed everything to speak truth to power.
I don’t take it at face value and it does seem he has an understandable bias at this point.
The gray zone is super strange to read, but these are investigative journalists on the ground. Please point me to a source that has hard proof of ANY of this information being incorrect.
Labeling people propagandists and conspiracy theorists is a new form of censorship and it is terrifying.
> Labeling people propagandists and conspiracy theorists is a new form of censorship and it is terrifying.
I’m merely speaking truth to power against a person who seems to love to parrot kremlin talking points.
If you don’t want to admit the person who hires ex RT and Sputnik reporters for his website might have something to do with propaganda then that’s okay but I suggest you look up the kind of information that RT and Sputnik put out.
This is the article. Wikipedias naive crowd sourced model has been co-opted by the state. I can’t read the paywalled new statesman article but I see from their recent covers that they have an agenda on this issue
This seems like a pretty well researched account that refutes the false flag idea strongly. The grayzone article still presents some interesting primary sources even when they seem to be wrong here (which is often the case when headlines end in a question mark)
Can’t reply below but your skirting of paywalls isn’t as cool as you think. Pay or read something else. You’re stealing. Also, insulting my intelligence doesn’t reduce my suffering in case you were wondering.
If you can't even get past a paywall, I highly question your ability to apply critical thinking to geopolitics.
edit: Unfortunately, on net, showing the weak arguments of proponents of your regurgitated propaganda to hundreds of viewers does in fact move the needle forward so that we have less of this in the future.
> Max Blumenthal is a Russian propagandist who is a regular guest on Russian state backed networks such RT and Sputnik.
He is an American, and he had also worked with Al Jazeera, The New York Times and a few other wide-known and reputable organizations.
Your logic that someone is somehow inferior due to being "tainted" by interacting with those you don't like isn't really solid, especially when discussing a journalist.
> He is an American, and he had also worked with Al Jazeera, The New York Times and a few other wide-known and reputable organizations.
He's an American who really seems to like to try and push Kremlin backed talking points a lot, as well as hiring lots of people from RT and Sputnik both are which are Russian government propaganda outlets.
He also has a habit of excusing the genocide committed by Assad's regime.
A counter point to what you are saying is, just because someone has been credible in the past does not make them credible now, especially when they repeatedly push propaganda talking points.
Could it be because the line was underused because of russia lately and the pressure went down? It could be sabotage, but russia can always just turn the tap off. In fact, why would they want to sabotage their instrument of blackmail ?
yes. there is no blackmail possible and there is no flow of molecules. everyone is worse off except influencial people in russia who do not control gazprom and perhaps the US, but their LNG infrastructure was at max capacity anyway.
The time of the first explosion: Yesterday, Monday morning at 02:03 am, second one Monday evening at 7:04pm (local time, CEST).
The reports of the gas leaks came at 1:52pm and 8:41pm, respectively - by means of ships reporting bubbling at the surface level.
One of the two events registered at magnitude 2.3. They were picked up by stations all over the country.
It's clear from the registered seismic waves that the events are not earthquakes.
- You can clearly see how the waves bounce from the bottom to the surface. There is no doubt that it was a blast or explosion. We even had a station in Kalix [quite far up north, some 1300 km away] that picked this up, says Björn Lund, who is a lecturer in seismology and director of the Swedish national seismic network, which measures Swedish earthquakes and explosions.
Translated and summarized from: https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/svt-avslojar-tva-explosio... (Sweden's national public service broadcaster, within the last hour)