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Comment by 988747 | Hacker News Reader

Putin, because he gets an excuse to cut Germany off of Russian gas. It's game of chicken now: the West sends weapons to help Ukrainian army chase off all the Russian invaders, and Putin tries to make energy crisis in EU so severe that Europe is forced to negotiate with him, and accept Russian conquest of parts of the Ukraine. Whoever can stay on their course longer wins.

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I have seen this line of thinking multiple places. It doesn't make any sense. Russia makes the energy crisis by turning off the gas. Destruction of the nordstream line only makes it impossible to start the gas exporting in case Russia want to sell it again and/or the sanctions are lifted. The obvious result of this is making sure that trade relationships with Russia can't go back to normal anytime soon.

Nordstream 2 is fully functional and can be turned on at any time. ...and it carries far more capacity.

Nordstream 2 was fully functional.

No its not. It was damaged like Nordstream 1.

AFAIK, only one of the NS2 pipelines has been damaged. Both branches of NS1 are leaking but there has only been one reported leak on NS2

Russia makes the energy crisis by turning off the gas

Yes, but this way Putin can plausibly deny that it was a policy decision. Same with novichok poisonings: everyone knows Putin's pulling the strings, nobody can prove he did.

WHy would putin deny that? He said he'll do that more than once:

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/putin-blames-germany...

Putin wants the pipelines open, because europe knows that the minute they sit down and reach a deal with russia, the valves get open, europe gets the gas.

Now europe is fucked, and even if local people protest due to cold, sitting down with putin won't bring back enough gas, so there is less incentive to actually make a deal.

But I'm sure USA will profit by selling overpriced gas to europe.

Those things do not take long to fix. In fact that's exactly what Putin needs right now: an excuse to stop the gas flow for a few weeks, until the pipeline is repaired. Then of course there will be some time until they test it, and then some bureaucrat in Moscow needs to sign off the certification and allow resuming pumping - which allows Putin to drag this out for as long as he needs.

The flow was already stopped before this. So your analysis does not line up with reality.

Yes, but they stopped it based on their previous excuse. I think first it was some spare part that was stuck in Canada due to sanctions, then they had to do "routine maintenance" of some pump station, then the same for another pump station, and now we have a leak. As you can see they never stop the flow "just because".

That doesn't make any sense. If the sanctions are indeed lifted, how should the gas be transported into Europe that the Russian economy is dependent upon? This guessing game is silly in lieu of any hard evidence. It could be Ukraine or the US in order to enforce sanction even after a ceasefire. It could be Algeria or Venezuela or Qatar to guarantee gas supply by them. It could be Norway or an orca whale for all we know -- but we don't as of yet

Yamal and Brotherhood are fully operational over mainland, you just have to pay middlemen unlike NS

But if Germany decides it wants the gas and the pipeline is broken, how does that make sense? Also, the Russians can just turn it off if they want to pressure the Germans. They don't need an excuse, we know why they'd want to create such pressure. "We're shutting off the gas until you stop supporting our enemy" is perfectly understandable and legit.

Putin has been telling Germany to certify and turn on Nord Stream 2 for gas - several times. Some folks who don't want normalisation of energy relationships decided to take this option away.

Sure, but Germany turning on NS2 is about as likely to happen as the US is to give in to Russian demands to stop sending arms to Ukraine. I cannot see any scenario where that happens so anyone sabotaging the pipelines just makes things unnecessarily complicated for no reason.

Honestly.. a few really cold days in germany, people get pissed and go out to the streets, and a lot can happen. It's one thing to watch the tv and get angry at stuff, while you're still well fed and in a warm home... once you're not, the shit gets real

But our EUR9 tickets are gone, so no free access to the revolution trains anymore.

> Russian conquest of parts of the Ukraine.

I encourage you to drop the definite article "the" when referring to Ukraine.

https://theconversation.com/its-ukraine-not-the-ukraine-here...

What's more interesting about that article is the threat of social shaming at the end:

> Like it or not, and intentionally or not, the language a person uses reflects their political positions, including their position on Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty.

As a citizen of the United States, this whole issue seems ridiculous. It's remarkable though how a media and PR campaign, combined with social pressure, can change our lexicon practically overnight.

What's even more interesting still is that you had the opportunity to (attempt to) disprove any of it while replying, but did not do so.

The article mentions the hole in their argument and then glosses over it:

> There are exceptions, but these are the general principles that bind speakers of Russian and English.

These exceptions include collections of states (eg. the UAE, the US) and country names derived from regions (the Netherlands, the Congo, the Ukraine).

>These exceptions include collections of states (eg. the UAE, the US) and country names derived from regions

Let's take these one by one:

>the Netherlands This is plural: the Low Countries. You are referring to a group, same as the United Arab Emirates and the United States.

>the Congo Which one? ... Exactly.

>the Ukraine Already discussed, referring to it as a region denies its sovereignty.

The etymology of the Netherlands is the Dutch "nederland", or "lower lands". I'd consider "the lowlands" to fall into the region category, much in the same way that the Ukraine translates to "the frontier" or "the border".

> Which one? ... Exactly

What can I say, English is weird. The Gambia does the same, in both cases referring to the region around a particular river.

Putin already lost that game since he allowed most (all?) EU countries to fill their gas reserves beyond 90%.

For Germany, that's only a 2-1/2 month supply.

Maybe but that assumes zero LNG imports and zero gas from Norway, which will not be the case. According to Germany they have enough gas for the winter.

Do you have a recent source for that? The sources that I checked a few days ago all say that there's enough to get through the winter without any bigger changes (except maybe lowering consumption a bit): https://www.tagesschau.de/wirtschaft/unternehmen/gas-speiche...

The reserves are a buffer to allow smooth supplies during the increased winter usage. The reserve sizes were set assuming a continued flow of gas.

So allowing the reserves to fill to 90% does not lose Putin the game, it gives him increased time to keep the citizens in suspense, thus creating doubt and confusion.

And it gives him money. War is expensive.

No pipelines means no Russian gas period. Putin loses because even if he wanted to, he can't send gas anymore.

I've been hoping from the start that someone would sabotage the pipelines to remove the temptation. Guess I got my wish.

So, eu gets fucked, no incentive for peace talks, less weapons for ukraine, ukraine gets fucked,...

you must be an american, since they're the only ones who profit from all this.

Profit until the plan goes sideways and we all die in nuclear war. Those bellicose US politicians damn well better have some real good secret weapons/defense systems they are keeping under wraps.

Maybe. But I don't think they share it with us in Europe ...

The main source of Russian gas in Europe was (and presently is) the Soviet pipeline system running through Ukraine.

So basically Europe will still continue to receive a huge fraction of Russian gas, but it would all run essentially through a war zone.

What about Yamal running through Poland?

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