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.
Cool technology though.