Everyone seems to know it was Russia and is just casting out ideas to find a plausible motivation. I find that completely baffling.
For opportunity, consider that while setting up the pipeline needs a weird high-pressure residence and special training, blowing it up takes a fishing boat, scuba gear and underwater explosives. The equipment and training is cheap and available. So, those with opportunity is almost anyone. Practically, anyone with access to the Baltic Sea, boats, scuba equipment, underwater explosives; it doesn't have even to be anyone with military training, just skills in underwater demolition.
For motivation, consider who benefits from permanently reducing European dependence on Russian energy?
Resist going for "Clearly, Russia!". Just spitballing here, but why not a German opposition group? Norway? Poland? Any activist group opposed to EU dependence on Russia? Shit, why not Danish anarchists, for that matter?
It could be Russia who suddenly decided for some reason that sanctions will never end and blowing up the means of selling hundreds of billions of euros of energy to Europe is a better use of the pipeline. But before getting there, you have to explain why it wasn't any of the myriad other groups who did not have hundreds of billions of Euros riding on it.
I had your exact same reaction, except with the US at the top of the suspects list (or non-governmental agents whose interests align with the US, of which there are plenty).
The #1 reason I'm still leaning Russia nevertheless is because of an outside factor: Russia isn't screaming bloody murder about it.
If 3/4th of their pipelines had gone up and nobody in the Russian government was involved, Lavrov would already be on a plane to NYC and calling for an emergency UNSC meeting about a terrorist UK/USA attack against Russia's assets.
So far, the most they have produced seems to be a mealy-mouthed question on Zakharova's Telegram channel [0]. Given the Russian Foreign Ministry's modus operandi of blaming the West for anything and everything at the slightest excuse, this sudden quiet is extremely significant.
This ignores the reasoning you are responding to in that they have patterns.
Governments, in modern parlance even though it's not new practice, troll each other - Russia in particular specializes in a particularly spiteful kind, so where is it now?
I noticed that the Western press is quiet, too. Normally they'd scream "terrorist attack" on every front page. Now they only cite Ukraine claiming a Russian terror attack or say nothing.
If a Canadian pipe was blown up, the headlines would be different.
I think reactions would be way different if it had been virtually any other pipeline or similar infrastructure. The Nord Streams are quite special in that everyone in the West but Germany would very strongly like them gone and even Germany isn't too thrilled about the liability they've become. If this had been an attack on important transmission lines, there would be much much larger outcry.
Which examples of extremely high-stakes geopolitical meddling are you using to form that idea of normality from?
Normally we only find out long after said meddling, and what is referred to directly as terrorism is usually done so because it was committed someone easily classified as a terrorist.
The thinking for them doing it themselves is this is more a subtle threat like their polonium and novichok poisonings, but with less immediately political backlash (i.e. No article 5 triggered)
A "we have the capability to do this... lots of other pipes out there.... Have a pleasant day" sort of message.
There's other reasons Russia could have done it too. Drive a wedge between Germany and a country that would have a more obvious reason of hating the pipeline like US or Poland, make sure rapid return of relations and trade is harder to dissuade inner circle from toppling Putin or pressuring him to back down, etc.
We still have no idea, no top officials have made any accusations or presented any evidence, and just guessing from motives seems like a crapshoot. What we do know is one country is on an unhinged escalatory path, they're my very tentative guess without knowing exactly why they'd do it.
The troll farms have been very quick to start accusing the 'evil USA acting against the EU interests'...
Given that their strategy have been for decades to try to sow discord in the west, EU and NATO, I would not be surprised if it was another idea towards this goal.
I had the exact opposite reaction, i.e. that the sudden concerted effort to suggest Biden had said he was going to do this seemed so forced and fake to me, that it immediately made me think Russia would be the culprit.
But I guess that kind of propaganda generation is semi-uncontrollable and just happens, with whatever seems to work bubbling up as successful (literal) memes replicating.
And there's probably similar people throwing stuff against the wall about why it was Russia until they find something with enough versimilitude that it sticks in the mind.
It also made me revisit the recent book "how to blow up a pipeline" as I had the same question when I heard that title. How can you justify the short term ecological damage against the long term. I assume it's possible, I just hadn't read an in depth argument on it. Interesting to read it and see if the author has been asked to comment yet.
edit, seems they have a film out, so now publicity stunt is a plausible theory:
Diving down 60-80 meters in the baltic ocean is quite advanced technical diving if you are just going to go down there and up again. Doing any kind of work (which increase breathing) at those depths is a massive step in complexity.
We are talking about cold water diving, at hypoxic gas depths, with usually low visibility. The dive would require several hours of decompression in the middle of a shipping lane. The density of the gas mean you can't even do mild exertion without severe risks of not returning to the surface alive. The explosions also occurred within a very short time frame (an hour if I recall) with a fairly large distance between, so you need multiple coordinated teams. And last, the weather conditions would need to be fairly specific in term of wind at those locations.
I would say its a bit like looking towards the amateur rocket community in order to explain a construct on the moon.
As someone with diving experience I laughed at parent comment's "anyone with scuba gear" assertion too - a classic example of "I'm an expert at everything because I'm a smart programmer who makes $200k a year" arrogance that is endemic here - but you're right next to them.
- The timing of the explosions doesn't require "multiple coordinated teams." It requires timers. Or, as is common with naval mines, an acoustic arming/triggering signal.
- Commercial diving happens several times deeper than 80m. Hundreds of meters, in fact.
- Saturation diving techniques mean a crew could be brought to the working depth inside the ship's chamber, transferred to a diving bell, dropped down to the pipeline, do their work, go back into the bell, be brought up into the ship, transferred into the ship's decompression chamber, and decompress.
- You're assuming such an operation would be based from the surface. If a nation-state was involved, who says they arrived or departed by surface ship? The Jimmy Carter is for exactly this sort of stuff. It was practically a sport for the USSR and US to tap undersea communications cables. We had the capability to do that without being undetected (including from systems that are designed to detect faults and tampering, but also deal with the cable armoring, as well as avoid very high voltages used to power in-line amplifiers) more than fifty years ago...but you think slapping some explosives on the side of a pipe is technically challenging to a nation-state, or even a commercial diving company that does oilfield work?
- You assume that explosives were planted by divers, and not, say, a submersible (see: Jimmy Carter) or ROV. In fact, you're assuming explosives were planted, and someone didn't use a smart torpedo of some sort.
One thing, though: I agree with others that it seems unlikely Russia would do this to themselves when, you know, they can just not supply gas into the pipeline.
One possibility: after Russia threatened using nuclear devices, both pipelines were blown up was either done to send a message - or as direct punishment for the fairly unprecedented threat to use nuclear weapons.
It also has the side effect of taking any 'heat' off EU politicians to cave if energy prices soar and/or if people freeze in their homes. Russian gas is for the moment very much off the table. If those pipelines can be repaired, it won't happen overnight, or cheaply.
And didn't these explosions happen the same day it was announced that the pipeline from Norway to Poland is now open?
USA likely did it to send a message to Putin and AfD (who talking about reviving it) that Nordstream is officially dead, now and forever. USA will be supplying the oil and gas to Europe, not Russia.
As the endemically arrogant programmer, I sincerely appreciate your candor!
I was hoping that a scuba expert would come by and help out, so thank you. After all, the fastest way to get a good answer on the internet is to post a wrong answer.
Just, as a minor point, I was responding to assertions that it could only be Russia because only a submarine crew could have done it.
> it seems unlikely Russia would do this to themselves when, you know, they can just not supply gas into the pipeline.
The idea is that this gets everyone to think about the security of other pipelines while being less risky for Russia. And gas prices rose right afterwards.
I fail to see how obliterating 1000 miles of pipes, writing off 10s of billions as a punishment for a nuclear threat gets us away from using nukes. To me it seems like it brings us much closer to using them.
If it WAS Russia or Germany, inserting the explosives in a pig INTO the pipeline from their end and letting it cruise down to the depths would be easier (maybe).
One doesn't need to dive. Knowledge of the pipeline's path and depth is enough. If you have a sonar it's even easier. Make a depth charge out of a barrel, set a timer and detonate it near the pipeline. Can be accomplished with a 27 ft fishing boat.
Sure it becomes much simpler if you remove the diving aspect to it, or simply remove the need to return to the surface alive.
I would suspect dragging an explosive with a rope would take a long time, enough that radar and other ships would likely notice the behavior, especially if you intend to hit the pipeline 3 times on 3 different locations. Really expensive sonar would reduce the required time, as would really precise GPS locations, but even so, from what I know, it a very time consuming activity. Still a better theory than sport diving.
Drag explosives on a rope, but don't blow it up when it hits the pipeline - instead have it drop when that happens, and then detonate a week or more later.
Vessel positions are tracked and recorded after all.
Excellent counter to the idea that it must have been a coordinated effort with a sophisticated, well-funded adversary using submarines, and therefore Russia.
If they detonated it with a rope, they would have gone up in flames themselves as the radius of the leak is over 1 km long. It had to be a delayed charge.
It depends on the explosives imo. They could have been attached that day, or months back. Personally, I think it was either:
Russia - doing it to try and place blame on US due to Biden comments in order to sow discord amongst NATO.
Poland - they have been really vocal against NS2, they have economic and political interests aligned with its destruction, they are right there .... and my buddy who works on Polish coast said that all the gas to make trimix in that area was bought up / consumed recently. He's a diver, thought it was weird as these are common gases but assumed it was because Ukraine war. Might not be related by the way.. If I was an invrstigative reporter I'd call all the gas supply / blending / diving companies in Poland and see what their oxygen, helium, and nitrogen stock looks like.
US - always possible that US and partners just said "this makes most sense to do this. It's a win worth it". Although honestly, I don't think the current admin has the cojones to do something like this. At least not without all of NATO involved. It's too brazen.
- colonel mustard with the candlestick. Somebody else
I just hope it wasn't the US. That would be a devastating breach of trust for Germany and would backfire badly if it came out.
I'm rooting for the Danish anarchists. You basically just need underwater explosives and a boat. You hang the explosives on a long rope, throw it over board like an anchor, and drag it into the pipeline. When you hit the pipeline, you detonate the explosives.
> You hang the explosives on a long rope, throw it over board like an anchor, and drag it into the pipeline. When you hit the pipeline, you detonate the explosives
That's genius. The detonator would not have to be very sophisticated to magnetically detect the steel in the pipeline.
"The gas pipes are made of 4.1 cm thick steel, which is protected by an 11 cm thick reinforced concrete shell"
Don't worry. It wasn't the US. Not really our style. Sure, the CIA pulls dirty tricks, but those are quiet, in-the-shadows skullduggery where no one's paying attention. CIA doesn't do big and loud where other Americans can see it.
Plus, motivations are wrong. The US catastrophically ends European energy dependence on Russia so that... it can compete with the Middle East and Russia and Canada on a more equal footing? Yeah, no. The US is not that desperate for cash.
Stuxnet isn't a great example precisely because they never dropped any bombs even though they could've arguably gotten away with it.
It's worth keeping in mind that the pipeline was also pretty much dormant anyway, the official nord stream data has it that flow collapsed around june, down to exactly 0 (by their books, there was still pressure in the pipe) kWh per day by September.
There is criticism regarding the quoted story, the main is that Soviets at the time mainly used analog/pneumatic and manual control systems, not digital software. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_the_Abyss
But those trades were already shut down and not coming back anytime soon. If Germany had refused to join sanctions and was still using NS1 + NS2 at full capacity right now then maybe there would have been some motivation to force the issue. But why now, when the pipelines weren't even active?
You are analyzing this too much in the short term. These pipelines were meant to last for decades.
The pain of seeing a quarter of your industry close for lack of energy might have easily bent the will of Germans and others after this winter. All political announcements about replacing Russian gas before 2027 at the earliest were a pipe dream (pun intended)for anybody with any actual knowledge of the industry.
Even now, a large portion of what was supposedly bought elsewhere was just repackaged and re-originated at the port of loading, but actually Russian gas - hence part of the price hike going to a chain of middlemen.
? who else would've done it? Stop pretending. 'Maybe not russia??' is an exciting idea, but this is not a Tom Clancy novel and no such groups in Europe exists. Especially that would have the resources to carry out an attack like this.
The destruction of the pipeline happens simultaneous as Russia is in a direct conflict with Ukraine/Europe and is constantly flying drones at Norwegian oil platforms.
An underwater pipeline blowing up? In a Tom Clancy novel it would definitely be a submarine doing it. Tom Clancy wouldn't pass up an opportunity for a submarine subplot.
> Just spitballing here, but why not a German opposition group?
More likely the opposite. With the pipeline intact, German opposition could tell voters they will turn that gas on, something the present German government isn't willing to do. Now they can't, so the German opposition has less to offer.
If this act of sabotage was not conducted by nation state actors with submarines, but someone using fishing boats and scuba divers instead like you suggest, the perpetrators will be caught in a manner of days.
The straits between the coasts of the southern Baltic sea are one of the most closely guarded waters in the world. There are at least 5 different nations (dk, se, de, pl, ru) coast guard assets with eyes on the region.
There is primary radar, secondary radar, seabed hydrophone arrays, surface vessels, submarines and airborne surveillance and satellites with eyes and ears on this region. And the surveillance has been increased a lot during this year.
Unless someone gets caught within a week, it's safe to assume that this sabotage was conducted by nation state level actors.
How would you trigger them? 100m down radio doesn't work at all. ELF antennas are nation-state level assets and need receiving antennas that are hundreds of metres long.
Acoustic messaging is possible, but again hard to do. Timed charges are plausible but that's a heck of a commitment (of course 3/4 breaches suggests a possible misfire - I imagine theres a hunt on for the last one).
> the perpetrators will be caught in a manner of days
Even assuming all of these nations record the real-time location of every fishing boat, dinghy, yacht and tug-boat; and can play it back and analyze all of the data; and thereby backtrack to port of entry; and then crew; and then investigate all of the false positives within days. Implausible, but ok, assuming.
But they can find no one, or all the trails run cold. Your next go-to idea for the failure would be Russia or the US?
> assuming all of these nations record the real-time location of every fishing boat, dinghy, yacht and tug-boat; and can play it back and analyze all of the data
This is a pretty safe assumption to make. The relevent authorities have this data and are certainly poring through it as we speak.
> Your next go-to idea for the failure would be Russia or the US?
Don't put words in my mouth. I did not allude to anyone in particular, just exclude the possibility of some independent group pulling this off in case the vessels behind sabotage this do not get identified very soon.
I agree that the various coast guards are extremely competent and coordinated, and are poring over the data that they have now. I disagree that capture is inevitable unless submarine.
Possibly. I agree that it's possible, but not inevitable. That's assuming even that stopping, diving, attaching explosives was the method.
Someone upstream suggested dragging explosives along behind the boat like an anchor, detonating when detecting the steel and concrete of the pipe. Wouldn't need scuba gear, nor even to stop.
It doesn’t take much more sophistication to place these weeks ago with a timer. And a bit more tooling and you can place them and remotely detonate when needed.
I think you somewhat underestimate the difficulty of blowing this up. You have to find it first. Diving to 80 metres is _not_ child's play! Then locating the pipe with possibly poor visibility. Finally it's a big chunk of metal and concrete, you'd need the kind of explosives you can't just buy at your local corner store. I'd imagine Baltic traffic is well monitored, especially now, so if you don't want to be caught, or identified post factum, parking your fishing vessel for hours on the spot won't cut it.
That said it is well within any Baltic state's or NATO country's "easy zone".
Practically, anyone with access to the Baltic Sea, boats, scuba equipment, underwater explosives could do it, but they couldn't do it undetected. This area is under surveillance from Sweden and Denmark.
If you want to do it undetected you need to do it completely underwater, including ingress and egress, and that absolutely limits the potential actors.
You think that Sweden and Denmark surveil every single dinghy and fishing boat and yacht and ferry? That if a tugboat stops for 3 or 4 or 8 hours along the 2400km stretches of the Nord Stream pipelines, the coast guards will swoop in with helicopters and snipers. Yeah, no. No, that would not have happened.
No, but they definitely have the possibility after the event to replay recordings from their very nice naval radar systems to see if there was a surface vessel doing something in those locations.
Also, I understand the depth of the pipeline is 80-100 meters so you need divers experienced with hypoxic trimix (or an ROV) and you need to be able to carry a 50-100 kg payload in addition to all the diving kit. Just to qualify for the training courses to learn this type of diving you need to have logged many hundred dives with gradually increasing equipment complexity, it takes years and years of training.
I don't buy for a second that this is anything else than a nation-state actor with advanced equipment. The community of people in the world whou could dive to these depths and perform any kind of useful work is tiny and close-knit.
I'm one training short of hypoxic trimix (after a regular trimix course). I think you seriously over-estimate the complexity: open-water course is 3 days, advanced open-water is 2 days, nitrox is ... half a day?, basic tech diving (advanced nitrox + decompression procedures) is 7 days (50-100 dives minimum iirc), trimix is another 7 to 10 days.
Loads of people I know did all that without any difficulty and without leaving their day job. They weren't in the navy either.
The most advanced thing that I see here is how do you trigger the explosion underwater, plus of course getting the explosives somewhere.
Yeah, maybe I am over-estimating, I only have advanced open-water. But I thought you had to have logged like 50 dives at X depth between each step up the training ladder for trimix, so you need a minimum of like 200 dives total to reach hypoxic trimix? In my book that is multiple years of practice and not everyone will cut it.
So an organization either needs to make preparations for this many years in advance, or try to recruit someone who both has some form of extremist beliefs and a hobby that requires very specialized training. Neither of those things are very simple, but the first one is doable, yes.
Why did these groups miss a pipe on Nord Stream 2 that remains undamaged, and can be used by Russia to try and force certification of NS2 if things get bad?.
Amateur hour? I'd bet money there is an undetonated bomb on the final one that failed to go off and if I were Germany or whoever, I'd be sending underwater drones along the last one to try and find one. It could give you a ton of insights on who actually did it if you found an intact undetonated one.
> Resist going for "Clearly, Russia!". Just spitballing here, but why not a German opposition group? Norway? Poland? Any activist group opposed to EU dependence on Russia? Shit, why not Danish anarchists, for that matter?
Realistically, it would have to have been a military operation. Causing explosions in the middle of the sea is rather difficult. And probably near impossible for your average terrorist group.
Personally, I suspect it's the US. It does have the earmarks of a Russia operation tho. It's just deniable in a weird way while they still get the credit for it.
However, what does Russia gain by reducing the dependency on Russian gas? Before they were trying to get Germany to open up Nordstream 2 since it's complete but now that's not possible. Gas prices go up but if you're ability to sell gas is limited that doesn't help much.
On the otherside are the US, who are well known for operating shady secret missions to affect geo politics in their favour. The fact it happened on the day another gas pipeline opens would make it seem like it's possible that someone wanted the other gas pipeline to become more popular and used instead.
It's more like telling Putin to go all in on Ukraine as that country is now 100% controlling transit of Russian gas to EU, so any Russian export is at the mercy of the US in the end. The alternative to bypass Ukraine is now gone, making the goal of controlling the Ukrainian territory a strategic necessity. We can expect the war to get much worse soon. Pretty much Iraq situation on Russian side. This might also lead to their submarines cutting cables and pipes elsewhere in the world, damaging the infrastructure to keep the other side busy.
The three explosion sites are at depths of 70 - 80 meters. That would require a trained diver with professional equipment, or an underwater drone. Not that professional divers don't go deeper. But a recreational scuba diver, with readily available gear would dive to max half that depth.
The US is the only actor that makes any sense to me, especially after Blinken's statement yesterday (~ "it was in nobody's interest, but would you look at the benefits!").
Combine that with the US naval activity in the exact area around the time, and also the "anti"-mine "drills" they did there earlier this year.
The US knows that none of their vassals will ever openly accuse them, and for the Western media it was Russia anyways. So far it seems only that Polish MEP said outright that he thinks it was them, and cheered it on.
Calling Germany a vassal of the US is more than questionable. I think you also underestimate the EU, as many still do. The US doesn‘t deal with individual states anymore.
Sabotaging their allies' key infrastructure would be an absolutely crazy amount of risk for the US. Even if they think there is a 99% chance they'd not get caught, that is a 1% chance of completely destroying relations their with Germany, Scandinavia, the EU, and probably the entire world. And all of that risk for the very marginal benefit of disabling some pipelines that weren't going to be used anytime soon any way?
I think the much more likely explanation is that this was Russia or at least a faction within Russia. They are the actor that has already started a war in this area, has shown completely disregard for treaties and international law, and has been known to act irrationally (eg. by starting the war in the first place).
> And all of that risk for the very marginal benefit of disabling some pipelines that weren't going to be used anytime soon any way?
To ensure they weren't going to be used anytime soon.
> Even if they think there is a 99% chance they'd not get caught, that is a 1% chance of completely destroying relations their with Germany, Scandinavia, the EU, and probably the entire world.
1. The US has a history of taking insane risks with clandestine submarine ops. Much worse risks than this; they did much that could have provoked the Soviet Union during the Cold War, when both sides were threatening each other with nukes.
2. If Germany/Scandinavia/EU/etc did find irrefutable proof that the US did it, they would probably bury that proof and pretend they never saw it. It isn't in their interest to break from NATO even if America did this and they know it.
In particular the sentence "There's no way to know, but any explanation here requires someone to make a stupid strategic choice" and the depressing sentence after it.
It is true that this is "Russian style". I'm not convinced that's enough to make it "Definitely Russia".
I, personally, me, Rendall, think it'd be pretty good for Europe to get off the Russian tit and I know I'm not the only one. If I had an extra half-million burning a hole in my pocket and a ruthless, reckless nature, I just might spend that money to blow the Nord Streams and happily let Russia take the fall. Sure, Europeans would suffer through a cold winter, but Putin and the FSB sure as hell would be unsettled, and the Russians have now lost their leverage over Germany and Europe.
Since we are all speculating, here's another one.
How about Ukraine doing it ?
It annoys the Russians.
And Europeans will have a harder time to easily buy some Russian gas if this winter is too cold.
Increasing our Russian anger cursor to not soften on sanctions.
I think the Poles potentially had something to do with it. They have been very vocal in opposition to the NS and now they control two pipelines one of which wholly removed from Russian control. Whoever did it would know that the bone would fall instantly on Russia or the US. To me it doesn't make any sense for either Russia or US to do this.
> As I have made clear, we will not hesitate to take further steps if Russia continues to escalate.
Interview quotes:
> "If Russia invades... again, then there will be longer Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it."
> When asked how he would do that, he responded, "I promise you we will be able to do it."
Dunno if they intended to "stop" Nord Stream 1 as well, but even with Russia messing with it and frequently stopping it, it was still a huge source of income for Russia thanks to exorbitant gas prices.
Now this is pure theory / speculation on my part, but, now that Europe has filled up their gas storage and has rapidly built new coastline LNG plants to accept shipments of LNG from the US, their dependence on Russian gas has dropped fast.
I can see some motivations why the US would have an interest in cutting it off. One, force stop the flow of money to Russia. I mean they could have used political means or financial incentives too, so it seems weird they would bomb infrastructure of their allies in their allies' national waters instead.
But two is to increase European dependence on American LNG shipments, which are currently highly profitable. I'm sure we'll see a big correction in gas prices this winter, depending on the weather, Nord Stream 1/2 or no though. Nothing as sustainable as the decades of Russian gas flowing into Europe.
Yeah, that makes no sense. People showing that as evidence have to consider that whoever did this wouldn't be so obvious about it. Whoever did it wants everyone to think that either the US or Russia did it. I think the Poles or the Ukrainians are potential. Or perhaps even someone from outside the EU.
One must build elaborate, implausible motivations for everyone in order to maintain the "It's definitely Russia" theory when there are more plausible, direct motivations to hand in the "Anyone but Russia" theory.
Who stands to benefit from permanently ending European dependence on Russian fuel?
Norway? To conclude Norway (it's not Norway, but for example), one can simply point at the loss of a competitor. No weird 4D chess, no weird contorted motives. Direct, simple.
To conclude a German opposition group, one can simply point at the effect of the loss of the pipelines. Scholz government cannot heat Germans this winter, opposition gets to criticize the sitting government for over-reliance on Russia and such fragile infrastructure. Opposition wins the election. No weird 4D chess, no weird contorted motives. Direct, simple.
To conclude any one of the Baltic States (or Poland), one can simply point at the effect of the end of European dependence on Russian energy. It removes the most persistent barrier to implementing harsher sanctions, and a weaker Russia is less likely to invade them for a generation or two. No weird 4D chess, no weird contorted motives. Direct, simple.
Poland, for its part, has the added lucrative benefit of being the sole endpoint of the sole working trans-Baltic pipeline. No weird 4D chess, no weird contorted motives. Direct, simple.
To conclude anyone at all who support Ukraine, one can simply point that it weakens Russia's war effort, hastening an end to the war and making Russia more vulnerable to sanctions. No weird 4D chess, no weird contorted motives. Direct, simple.
To conclude Russia or Putin, one must explain how losing potential access to hundreds of billions of Euros benefits Russia or Putin. (Hint: it doesn't). Requires weird 4D chess, weird contorted motives. Not direct. Not simple.
1) Priors. Russia loves their clandestine operations to kill somebody or blow stuff up in europe. Be it weapons depots in Czechia or bulgaria, poisoning opponents with radioactive materials or nerve agents your various russian intelligence agencies are there for you. This happened recently, not some cold war stuff.
2.) You are forgetting to include the possible downsides for getting caught in your analysis.
* Russia: Basically none. They blew up their own pipelines. Strange, but they have done stranger things. They will deny it anyway and nothing would come of it.
* USA: Massive. The whole alliance against Russia would crumble over winter and Russia would have a much easier time evading sanctions. Anti US sentiment in europe would go through the roof.
Yes, it could have been Poland or the Baltics but 2:1 my money would be on Russia to sow discord, fear and distrust. Just think how fast that Biden statement was presented as proof for US involvement. Russia right now needs to try and reduce financial and arms aid to Ukraine, any economic considerations are probably secondary. Not saying that would be a good strategy, but that hasnt prevented Russia in the past.
> Russia: Basically none. They blew up their own pipelines.
They did it in sovereign territory, one of which is a NATO member. So, no, there is not "Basically no consequence". There is a very real likelihood that a NATO member will invoke Article 5.
Not only that, the direct consequences are dire for Russia at a time when they desperately need leverage over Europe. Now they have none.
I agree with you, it generally makes absolutely no sense for Russia to be behind this (at least not the mainstream Russian state, I have my doubts about their internal unity). What's more, I find the timing of this incident odd, having happened just after the victory in the Italian elections of the far-right, who is somewhat ambivalent towards Putin.
The only conceivable motivation I can come up with for Russia would be a 4D-chess false-flag. If they were to already assume that there's no way the EU will give in to the gas blackmail this winter, blowing up the pipeline and sowing doubt on the US or Ukraine itself being behind it could be a way to divide support for Ukraine. However, it would be an extremely risky and expensive bet with no guarantee of it working.
>> it generally makes absolutely no sense for Russia to be behind this
Of course it does - Poland is entirely relying on the Norway to Poland gas pipeline, if that goes then a country of 50 million people has no gas this winter. Blowing up the Nordstream was(to me) a clear signal that EU needs to be careful or the Norwegian pipelines are going up next.
Do you really feel like "send a clear signal that EU needs to be careful or the Norwegian pipelines are going to be next" is a more plausible motivation above "permanently end European reliance on Russian energy"?
OK, let's assume that is the case. Now the EU is very careful about the Norwegian pipeline, and surveillance of this pipeline dramatically increases to defend it from potential Russian sabotage.
You can't effectively defend hundreds of kilometers of an underwater pipeline, you can only increase monitoring but that doesn't stop the pipe from being blown up. In fact the charges could have already been placed, before any extra monitoring was deployed, and are just waiting for a signal.
The point being - Russia has sent a very clear message that if we don't stop pushing back on Ukraine, that pipeline is next to blow up. There is almost nothing we can do to prevent it if they want to make it happen.
I mean, that's not how Russia operates. They poison government critics abroad using a compound only they could possibly have, and then say "it wasn't us". They want everyone to know it was them, without saying it was them explicitly - that's just not what they do. Even if a Russian submarine blows up the Norwegian pipeline tomorrow, with recorded footage of it happening, Russia will still say it wasn't them.
What has Russia gained from any of their actions thus far in the war in Ukraine? I wouldn’t discount something solely because it appears to be a short sighted action that backfires in their face.
Nord Stream is 51% Russian (Gazprom). Not sure if it is NATO territory or international waters. It still becomes a little bit more "muddy" on who could have made it and who benefits from it.
Attacking Norway-Poland line at this point would be a very obvious and very direct attack on NATO.
This is all motivated thinking with "It's Russia!" as the end goal.
Some of the NS attacks were on NATO territory. Denmark could invoke Article 5 were it found to be Russia. If "NATO" were in the equation, the saboteurs would have stayed in Swedish and Finnish waters, and even then it's iffy.
> I agree with you, it generally makes absolutely no sense for Russia to be behind this
Like it makes no sense for them to invade with the state of their army, shell a nuclear power plant, dig trenches in the Chernobyl exclusion zone, waste rockets on civilian targets? Why are you assuming Russia to be a rational actor?
Why are you assuming an explanation that depends on an irrational actor when permanently end European dependence on Russian fuel is a more direct, rational motive that benefits many other actors?
1) Russia has proven itself to be a highly disruptive and irrational actor
2) European dependence on Russian fuel is already ending. By the time anybody is ready to trust Russia with energy we would have moved past the current reliance on gas. Completely destroying NS1 and NS2 don't change much there.
2) is a nice theory. There are no alternatives for the foreseeable future. There simply isn't any spare capacity anywhere in the world. And Russia will be just burning gas that was originally targeted for EU as they need to keep the sources open.
It makes no sense. Russia would make itself 100% dependent on Ukrainian transit lines, prompting them to go all in to conquer the whole Ukraine, which is a nuisance. Now they have to do it or quit EU completely. This blow up doesn't help either party economically (Russia/EU).
What contractual obligations, specifically? What are the penalties for not meeting its "contractual obligations"? Are these penalties greater than the hundreds of billions of Euros that Europe would be prepared to pay were things back to normal?
> Resist going for "Clearly, Russia!". Just spitballing here, but why not a German opposition group? Norway? Poland? Any activist group opposed to EU dependence on Russia?
Why treat "Russia" as a unitary actor? By doing this, Putin takes away a major reason for deposing him - whoever takes over is not going to get those sweet, sweet Euro millions in return for stopping the invasion and withdrawing. It's a game-theoretic commitment device, on this view.
Likewise it's a mistake to treat Poland as unitary. It's likely that at least some people in Poland would like the West to commit to defending Ukraine, because if Ukraine falls, Poland suddenly borders the Russian empire. There is history between Poland and Russia.
And there are a bunch of Ukrainian refugees in Poland...they would also like the West to continue their support for Ukraine.
> Shit, why not Danish anarchists, for that matter?
Or Danish wind turbine manufacturers who want to force commitment to renewables?
> Putin takes away a major reason for deposing him - whoever takes over is not going to get those sweet, sweet Euro millions in return for stopping the invasion and withdrawing.
Do you think that someone intending to depose Putin will now not do it because the Nord Streams are gone?
Ya'll are really stretching. Sorry, but, consider who benefits directly from ending European dependence on Russian energy? If your first thought is "Russia" you... I just... don't know what to tell you.
I think these are good points but the main shortcoming of all the theories about Russia is that we still treat (or want to) Russia as a rational actor.
I remember just before the war I would bid everything that Russia would in no way start the war. It just didn't make any rational sense. Who in sound mind would think to do it knowing that all the West [might/would] unite against you.
However rationality is being lost in personal agendas and Mafioso thinking of some sorts.
Now we see that after any Russian loss, be it a warship or loss of territory Russia responds with some pity attack against civilians. For example wasting expensive missiles to blow out a few floors of some high rise residential building. It is just hard to understand by rational western thinking.
However growing up in post-soviet country this kind of thinking is prominent amongst post-soviet mafias and similar sorts of groups - "if I can't have it nobody will". It is some kind of childish, failure to launch thing. "If I lost football match I will destroy the ball and that will show everybody". People grow out of it, thugs become thugs exactly for this reason - failure to grow up, lack of empathy because of family problems and etc.
Moreover you can see this in all the Russian army from the very top to the very bottom. What self respecting army would terrorize civilians after any push back. "We are retreating but we will put grenades under every pillow in every house in this village. That will show them". If this kind of thinking is prominent among all the population, all the army and etc. it starts to make more sense.
A simple "If we can't profit out of it we will blow it up and then you will know" starts to make sense.
Then you have "we can frame this on USA/Ukraine" because everybody knows "it is not in our interest".
Then you have Putin's interest - pipeline can become very profitable thing for the oligarch who gets rid of Putin and makes peace with the West. So it becomes a personal danger to Putin.
So it really could be Russia being Russia and Russian elite trying to "stay relevant" by their own (what west would call) crazy thinking.
> we still treat (or want to) Russia as a rational actor.
People clearly do not treat Russia as a rational actor, given that everyone seems to assume Russia permanently ends European dependency on its fuel by blowing up their own equipment in NATO territory is the primary actual real go-to theory to be taken seriously.
I'm not trying to dismiss your speculations about mafioso-style thinking. I mean, assuming all of that is true, you still have only that to rely on versus Who benefits directly, materially and immediately by ending European dependence on Russian oil?
12 days has passed and Russia attacks civilian objects all over Ukraine during rush hour as a retaliation for attacking the bridge.
What else is this than a butthurt mafioso thinking "you will find out now what we are capable of". There is no military strategy, no tactics, no nothing in today's attacks. Where would you see any Russian rationality today? This is just something a school bully would do, not a military power.
You realize that that gas didn't evaporate but will be eventually sold to somebody else. Even if for lower prices. Russia doesn't have money issue right now, rather political/military one. The guy on top with his close circle has few hundreds billions stashed all around the world, he doesn't desperately need to get more immediately.
Your arguments are valid but what baffles me in this topic is why folks try so hard to find completely rational explanations for russian actions now. People with hurt egos do stupid things all the time. Look at the clusterf*k that is Ukraine, how they keep doing stupid things that hurt them on and on.
> You realize that that gas didn't evaporate but will be eventually sold to somebody else
They don't have the infrastructure for that, and if they stop extraction it will be complicated and expensive to restart it later. So they're just burning it:
If you're saying that "hurt ego" is the motivation, OK, but there are many non-Russian beneficiaries from the action that do not rely on irrationality or weird 4D chess false-flag explanations.
Because Putin is a rational actor, the invasion of Ukraine was a huge miscalculation on his side, he thought it would have been a Blitzkireg, and it became a trench war for which he was not prepared
I worked in oil and gas in a previous life. The absolute wildest people I've ever met are saturation divers - divers who live in pressurized chambers on ships for months at a time to avoid having to decompress after dives. Fantastic money but you need a few screws loose to handle the work.
A tiny population of workers who really make the most use of their 30k+ watches. But jokes aside, probably one of the deadliest jobs no one hears about. Having to live in cramped quarters with no way out for weeks on end. Reduced life expectancy. Incidents happen. People die, or end up severely incapacitated.
Anecdotally, my uncle did this back in the late 80s to 2000s. Towards the end he would make AUD$400-800k a year (depending on how many jobs he took on) which was great money for someone who got into it in his early 20s after dropping out of high school.
The catch was the pressure of the environment, needing to be physically in peak shape (my uncle was an anomaly in lasting in the job until his late 40s), and the danger as he had several colleagues die on the job (worst I heard was due to the operators giving the wrong gas mix to the chamber). My uncle also definitely is a crazy man with a few screws loose, so that part checks out
I have neighbor that did deep commercial diving after he left the military. He was special ops so he was in top physical shape. I never asked how much he made, but he implied it paid extremely well.
But it was extremely dangerous. He didn't develop any long term issues, but he told one story where they suddenly lost a man. There was a quick shadow and then a man was gone. They found a piece of dive suit in the area. They believe it was a giant squid that got their buddy.
> Saturation divers make up to $45,000 – $90,000 per month and over $500,000 annually. They receive “depth pay” which typically pays out an additional $1 – $4 per foot. Usually, it’s $1 per foot up to 100 feet, then it raises up to $2 per foot after that. Income is dependent upon the length and depth of their project plus tenure of the diver.
As it points out, it takes years of experience to get to this point.
> Many go into the commercial diving field with a money mindset, but no one earns a “quick buck.” You have to work your way up the career ladder and take orders from senior divers and maritime business owners.
It's not that good. you may get a huge pay check, but the work leaves lasting impacts months after coming out of it. All sorts of blood and muscle issues start piling up.
And people die all the time. It's more high risk than doing space walks.
Aside from a micro meteor smashing into your face shield. there's very little risk and a lot of oversight in space. Whereas saturation workers are under the ocean with wildlife, and undertaking heavy construction work. It's way more extreme.
I don't think these activities are comparable. Saturation divers are regularly kept under pressures of 9 atmospheres, while astronauts in a space ship or space suit only need protected against atmospheres between 0 and 1. You'd never need something as rugged as a diving bell in space, and bends isn't even a risk. SciFi films often make it seem dramatic and fatal, but explosive decompression of a single atmosphere is survivable, as Kubrick accurately portrays David Bowman surviving such in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
In dark(if they are doing saturation there is no sunlight) with possibly horrible visibility. Any underwater work is pretty bad, but saturation takes it to entirely new level.
No way. You'll make more like $700-$1500 per day, but it's not long term employment, it's a contract job for a few weeks to a month at a time. You'd have to have 12 months of work lined up with over time to clear $500k or more. I'm not sure how you could ever hit $1 million in one year. A lot of these divers will only have a couple jobs a year limiting annual income. There are even cases where sat divers compete with each other by giving gifts to project managers at O&G companies in order to line up more work.
These days, remotely controlled underwater vehicles have taken over most the work, especially at the deeper (and higher paying) depths.
The fact that someone actually built this, sent it to the bottom of the ocean, and then put people inside it to weld a 1200km pipeline underwater boggles my mind.
Meanwhile we inexplicably struggle to figure out clean/cheap energy at scale.
We did figure out how to split atoms and turn that into reliable, usable energy with nearly zero carbon emissions. That seems more impressive than welding under water, as impressive as that is.
Wind power is advancing at a rapid clip (cost competitive without subsidies). Solar PV too keeps getting cheaper (same re subsidies as far as the panels themselves).
I'm hopeful that battery research keeps advancing the game (moving from lithium to sodium could lead to significant price cuts IIRC).
It's not enough to wean us but it is headed in the right direction. I think the end of the Russian NG pipelines is going to help accelerate this so it could ultimately be a very good thing (but brutal to start with).
Always look on the bright side of life, ta da, ta da da da dee da!
Yeah fossil fuel extraction has a lot of engineering behind it (as well as transport, handling, processing, etc): there had been easily accessible deposits, but they've been depleted a long time ago, at least in europe. The issue with technological progress and scaling bringing down costs for renewables is that there is a similar effect for fossil fuels too. On the other hand, technologies originally developed for fossil fuel extraction can also be used for renewables deployments.
Natural gas makes clean energy possible in a lot of countries where reliable clean energy is not feasible. If you don’t have reliable clean energy then you need a source of energy that can be cheaply turned off and on to smooth supply and natural gas was perfect for this. This is also why some countries prices are determined by the price of natural gas because they are using marginal pricing and natural gas is the supplier at the margin.
I found this section from another page on the same site amusing:
> Nord Stream developed a high environmently-conscious logistic concept which guarantees that transport vessels have not to travel more than 100 nautical miles (185 kilometers). [...] This concept of short trips and environmentally friendly transport saves roughly 200,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide when compared against other options and the use of existing concrete coating plants.
For comparison, each of the two Nord Stream pipelines can (well, could) deliver enough natural gas to create more than 150,000 tons of CO2 emissions per day.
Ok, that is about the maintenance logistics. Now let's compare what emissions could be saved by using the pipelines instead of importing U.S. and Russian LNG (via China!) on polluting ships.
People tend to forget that while gas is being used for energy production, it is also being used as basis of chemical processes, e.g. for ammonia production, which then starts a whole chain of products (most prominently: carbonic acid, fertilizer, cooling, removing CO2 from industrial exhaust, ...)
We can't just replace natural gas with nuclear power, even if we did, we'd still be in deep trouble.
I know. In our state we're very pro-nuclear and the local Green party basically ended itself over this issue. I used to think that's surely going to happen in Germany too - such a scientific, rational and pragmatic nation/state, right? But oh well, seems like economical pragmatism wins over ecology and health.
Those 150k tons are for heating people's homes. Whereas the spend on the boat fuel is simply for construction of the pipeline so if you can optimize that, that's under your control, as the company laying pipe right now.
Though maybe you prefer everyone die of cold until we have a solution to transition out of natural gas without returning to coal or wait 10 years to build more nuclear.
This is a misrepresentation: natural gas is used for a variety of purposes, with industry and home use approximately tied, varying by EU country. Germany for example, uses more natural gas for industrial purposes than heating homes.
>Though maybe you prefer everyone die of cold until we have a solution to transition out of natural gas without returning to coal or wait 10 years to build more nuclear.
This kind of personal vitriol doesn't belong on Hacker News.
What personal vitriol? What do you think will happen during winter if we don't rollout natural gas pipelines due to environmental impact? Maybe I said it too bluntly but it is the effect.
In my country (portugal) since I was young every winter many people die of cold because it's too expensive to heat their homes. This is in a developed EU country and before any pressures post supply chain disruptions. I think middle class people have a romantic view of the world where nobody is dying like this nowadays, but a simple 10% increase in home heating prices will cause extra deaths during winter. I know there's other things that could be done but my argument is that these pipes need to be built today, and it's not dumb to try and build them in a way that is environmentally friendly instead of just throwing our hands up because it's gas so it has to be purely bad.
NS2 was started ten years ago and cost around nine billion euros. Nine billion buys a lot of insulation, heat pumps, and wind turbines over ten years. Wheras NS2 was only ever needed so that Russia can turn off gas for Ukraine without turning it off for Germany.
I think it was more about Germany being able to buy gas straight from Russia without having to pay fees to Poland/Ukraine/Belarus/whoever for transporting gas through their territory.
Poland takes ~200 million euro for 30 bcm (0.15 bcm/m euro) over ~700 km of pipeline [1]. NS2 would cost 9.5 billion while transporting 110 bcm (0.01 bcm/m euro) [2]. It would take over a decade to break even (ignoring maintenance costs or any sort of cost overrun) and the world has been moving away from fossil fuels so it'd break even at a time when nobody wants it.
What is uncanny is how the US started taking notice of NS2 around 2020, with Congress threatening sanctions against Germany [1], and Biden ominously talking about how there's going to be "no more Nord Stream 2" [2].
Habeck (Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Action) went on live TV a week or two ago and called German nuclear power plants a "high risk technology" that "needs to be shut down as planned". There has never been a nuclear accident in a German NPP and they've consistently achieved a 90 % capacity factor.
Now, NPPs are of course pretty expensive, and purely from a $/kWh perspective it's pretty difficult for the large-scale-engineering kind of power plant (this extends to any kind of thermal plant) to compete with the cheaper renewables. But $/kWh is not everything - NPPs are plannable and commandable capacity (unless you're the French), renewables aren't, so their kilowatt-hours are not actually directly comparable.
Naturally natural gas especially in Germany is not primarily used for electricity generation, but largely for process heat, residential heating and as a chemical. A lot of that could be replaced by using electricity, but that'd be quite expensive, too. However, even though natgas isn't used primarily for electricity, due to merit order / economic dispatch the gas price has a hugely outsized impact on electricity prices. This, among with very high taxes and dues on electricity, is what causes world-record prices in Germany.
With 17 reactors Germany still consumed a lot of gas. Even if electricity were 100% nuclear, Germany would still consume a lot of gas. Only a small percentage of the gas Germany uses is burned for electricity. Most goes towards heating homes and industrial processes.
We're talking about whether keeping the nuclear plants on would have made Germany independent of Russian gas. If we had heat pumps everywhere we might as well use renewable energy, that's cheaper than nuclear.
For power generation, lignite and coal stayed about the same, gas increased from 20 to 30, oil stayed about the same. The only thing that went significantly down was nuclear going from 22.4 to 8.1.
It all depends on where your priorities are, and obviously getting rid of nuclear was more important than burning Russian stuff into the atmosphere.
Your chart shows installed capacity, which is different from total power output. For gas plants in particular, since they are used as peaker plants with low capacity factors. In 2021 only 12% of the natural gas consumed in Germany was turned into electricity. In 2011 it was 14%.
If there had been no reliance on Russian gas, there would have been alternatives already. Turns out there are always alternatives, and they are simply a bit more expensive (and some times not even that). The parts of the South and Central European continent that relied on coal oil or gas for heat and electricity literally never had to rely on any of those. It was simply being cheap, wasting one generation and countless tons of CO2. Using fossil hydrocarbons for domestic heating is absurd, and it was as absurd 30 years ago.
After working in O&G previously, some of the technology surrounding it still amazes me. Take the submersible hot-welding habitat probably used here, or one like it. We have found a way to (somewhat safely) put humans on the bottom of the ocean, in a box, around a metal pipe full of explosive gasses at pressure, for the purpose of shooting molten metal at, or cutting into that metal pipe.
I wonder with what these pipelines are filled during construction?
An inert gas like Nitrogen or Argon is probably too expensive, natural gas might be too dangerous when welding is still necessary. Seawater is probably too dirty and aggressive.
And as a related question:
Should the pipeline fill up with sea water completely (for example because of large scale damage and loss of pressure) is it possible to make the pipeline usable again?
That's actually why I looked this up in the first place. I think it's just air from what I could gather. The three sections of the pipe are laid on the seafloor like this (with the open end staying out of the water): https://www.wermac.org/nordstream/html_img66.html.
And then those three sections are welded together using an "air-tight habitat" surrounding them.
From what I've heard salt water getting into the pipe could make it really difficult to repair, and it might have to be scrapped altogether.
My money's on nato or the usa. Western politicians are stupid enough to go along with the idea and America's got a long history of causing chaos internationally.
That doesn't make sense at all. Why attack allies and risk invoking defense treaties? Especially considering that there is no gas flowing through those pipelines. NS2 was never certified and therefore never in use. NS1 was essentially shut down illegally by Russia. So the USA did get what it wanted long before. By blowing up those pipelines, they would lose all trust from the EU and wouldn't have any leverage left.
Russia was pretending to have "technical problems" with those pipelines, and now it conveniently blows up? They are obligated by contract to supply us with gas until 2030. Breaking the contract may lead to financial penalties. Wouldn't it be convenient if those pipelines were to suddenly break for unknown reasons, so you don't have that problem?
You know what would release them from their obligations in the contract? An "act of god", that would make the pipelines unusable.
I like this thread. A bunch of possibly above average intelligent people going all in on discussing why and how such an attack was done. Very entertaining to read.
What struck me, was that a few of you seriously think about the US as a contender for this attack. Does anyone has an recent example of the US being that hostile to friend nations?
What came to mind in the meantime is the "spying on friends" that was published by Snowden. But there wasn't some physical damage done which I think marks a different boundary.
I wouldn't say i'm intelligent. :D But i think this "US did it" theory doesn't make any sense. The only party that has interest in a broken pipeline is Russia. Why? Because it would release them from their obligation to deliver. There is an "act of god" clause in the contract. They know we won't accept any further delivery from them anyway. The sanctions won't go away anytime soon, and i think they may be planning for a full scale war in Ukraine.
>What struck me, was that a few of you think about the US as a serious contender for this attack. Does anyone has an recent example of the US being that hostile to friend nations?
This narative was a little too quick, too widespread and too concise if you ask me. A lot of new-ish accounts quickly posted this version on all different English social media but I've yet to see it on Dutch, Belgian or French social media.
"Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, bots, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data."
Hey. Let me walk you through the Donnelly nut spacing and crack system rim-riding rip configuration. Using a field of half-C sprats, and brass-fitted nickel slits, our bracketed caps, and splay-flexed brace columns vent dampers to dampening hatch depths of one half meter from the damper crown to the spurve plinths. How? Well, we bolster twelve husk nuts to each girdle-jerry, while flex tandems press a task apparatus of ten vertically composited patch-hamplers. Then, pin-flam-fastened pan traps at both maiden-apexes of the jim-joist.
The original machine has a base-plate of prefabulated aluminite, surmounted by a malleable logarithmic casing in such a way that the two main spurving bearings were in a direct line with the pentametric fan. The latter consisted simply of six hydrocoptic marzlevanes, so fitted to the ambifacient lunar waneshaft that side fumbling was effectively prevented. The main winding was of the normal lotus-o-delta type placed in panendermic semi-bovoid slots in the stator, every seventh conductor being connected by a non-reversible tremie pipe to the differential girdlespring on the "up" end of the grammeters.
What a giant waste of taxpayer money, built when many - especially in east European countries - were already warning something exactly like this year would happen.
The Nord Stream pipelines are owned by Gazprom, in partnership with a consortium of privately owned Western European energy companies (Engie, Shell, E.ON, etc)
State owns a significant share of Engie, moreover because oil is a strategic resource, governments often have a right to intervene in corporate governance when it threatens national security.
Rational energy policy would have assumed that Russia would turn off its gas at some point. Eastern European countries, though, particularly the Baltics, tried to warn other countries that Russia would leverage any energy dependence to assert dominance. As it has.
Not all of the Baltics. Look at the position of Aivars Lembergs, the emperor of Ventspils. He is still the prime minister candidate for the ZZS party, the second largest party of Latvia.
So if they actually blew up the pipeline what would happen if Russia tries to return the favor and do the same to Norway-Polish pipeline that was just opened.
The only believable explanation for the attack on Nordstream I have heard so far is this threat.
That is, the supposed idea is to make Europe wonder if any other pipelines could be targets.
That what Russia could have done. But why do it since it is one thing to blow your own pipe and it is likely an act of war to blow ones that belong to other countries. The consequences for Russia are very bad in this case.
My question was to the post that implied that it was the US who blew up the pipelines. If that was the case they have just legitimized the potential Russian response.
The timing simultaneously with the new Polish-Norway pipeline makes me suspicious. Besides, the US needs Europe to stay on the Ukrainian side. Most likely thing to push Europe away from support is needing Russian gas. Threatening Europe's gas supply is not likely to help the US maintain European support.
Diplomacy, sanctions, sabotage, military interventions.. They're all just a spectrum. Of course it shouldn't be understood as proof the US did it but to ignore that they had a strong geopolitical interest in having NS gone is naive. Would the white house approve it, given that it's partly allied civilian infrastructure, if the risk of getting caught is deemed low? I don't think that's impossible. They spied on those same allies and their top government officals, for instance.
Spying is a whole other level compared to physically attacking infrastructure. I'm not aware of any "special operations" from the US on EU soil in the last decades. The only country that is known to do "special operations" and hunting down political opponents on EU soil, is currently rampaging in Ukraine. But for the moment, even the scenario with Russia doing some false flag shit is just a wild guess without any proof. So we'll have to wait for the investigation anyway.
That's the thing. It's a single clip. Where is the rest? What's the context? Is it even the real clip? Those are questions you should ask yourself whenever you see some random internet dude post something. And a channel that posts only the russian side of the story and calls itself "russiaz for victory" doesn't seem very neutral.
It doesn't make much sense to attack an ally and - at worst - risk invoking article 5 against half the EU. Especially if the goal was already achieved.
For opportunity, consider that while setting up the pipeline needs a weird high-pressure residence and special training, blowing it up takes a fishing boat, scuba gear and underwater explosives. The equipment and training is cheap and available. So, those with opportunity is almost anyone. Practically, anyone with access to the Baltic Sea, boats, scuba equipment, underwater explosives; it doesn't have even to be anyone with military training, just skills in underwater demolition.
For motivation, consider who benefits from permanently reducing European dependence on Russian energy?
Resist going for "Clearly, Russia!". Just spitballing here, but why not a German opposition group? Norway? Poland? Any activist group opposed to EU dependence on Russia? Shit, why not Danish anarchists, for that matter?
It could be Russia who suddenly decided for some reason that sanctions will never end and blowing up the means of selling hundreds of billions of euros of energy to Europe is a better use of the pipeline. But before getting there, you have to explain why it wasn't any of the myriad other groups who did not have hundreds of billions of Euros riding on it.