Gas Leak in the Baltic Sea
forsvaret.dk
forsvaret.dk
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)
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.Then again, Russia might not have the monopoly on stupidity.
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.
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 ?
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.
Some kind of small underwater drone, however ... hmmm
Some people think the 'official story' isn't right. Like it's often the case, and sometimes for good reasons.
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.
I don't want to say US isn't making stupid things, but this would be a whole new level of stupid...
Nobody actually did this. 10% of extreme "patriotic" losers wanted to do this. It did not happen.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/congress-french-freedom-fr...
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.
Many in the US consider Trump a fool. I do not.
See Biden recently: https://twitter.com/ah114088/status/1574435558675316737
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.
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...
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.
https://twitter.com/abc/status/1490792461979078662?s=46&t=kJ...
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 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?
That's an intriguing mystery.
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.
If you add factions into the mix, I would say that this might be what makes the most sense.
https://www.euronews.com/2022/09/27/baltic-pipe-norway-polan...
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.
The Russians.
> 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's an intriguing mystery.
Nope. Clearly the Russians.
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.
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 EU has already set up permanent alternatives to Russian gas: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-27/europe-is...
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 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...
False flags are Putin’s MO. https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2012/11/22/finally-we-know-...
https://www.businessinsider.com/how-the-1999-russian-apartme...
Never say never.
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".
By the way, Der Spiegel is reporting that the CIA warned the German Government that an attack on the pipelines might be imminent. (Paywall and German -https://www.spiegel.de/politik/beschaedigte-gasleitungen-cia...)
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.
Or UK ?
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.
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.
"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.
[1] - https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/07/biden-says-nord-stream-2-won...
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.
People's thoughts are literally tunnelled.
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.
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.
https://mobile.twitter.com/ODELL/status/1574758411392131078?...
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.
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.
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.
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.
He's a compulsive liar.
2. We did not invade Ukraine.
3. We are not at war with Ukraine.
It takes a special kind of stupid to take Putin’s words seriously at this point.
You know what, I’m actually disappointed you only asked for three. There’s a mountain of knee-slappers even just from this year.
“We’ve lost nothing” after 50,000 of his soldiers died.
It’s like the guy is a fucking five year old.
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
ПРЕДВАРИТЕЛЬНО ЕСТЬ СБИТИЕ 2-х РАКЕТ
Do you have any examples that don't require clear technical misinterpretations?
Alright, you dismiss my first three examples. Care to explain the fourth example I provided?
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.
Good day sir.
Come on, propagandist. We can do this all day.
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?
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)
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.
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:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-27/europe-is...
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.
They did after the cold war.
> “there will no longer be a Nord Stream 2"[1]
> “We will bring an end to it.”[1]
> “I promise you: We will be able to do it."[1]
What makes it their gas?
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.
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.
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.
Source since i made some people angry:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-07/the-us-is...
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).
This sounds like a business sustainability decision rather than out of concern for the environment.
"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.
/s but not really...
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?
Hungary and possibly Austria. Hungary even signed a deal with Rosatom to extend their Pecs nuclear powerplant.
https://www.politico.eu/article/hungary-approves-constructio...
Sure, it will still be hard to separated Rosatom from those power plants but it not impossible.
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.
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.
https://www.kreiszeitung.de/lokales/schleswig-holstein/fehma...
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.
Ah yeah Wagenknecht is part of the AfD now?
They were probably right.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
Argument in favor: It's obvious sabotage. If Ukraine, the USA, et al did it, it would have been in their interests to make it look less deliberate.
1. To do the repair EU needs to lift sanctions
2. Gas prices spiked = short term monetary gain
3. Not so subtle message: hey Norway-Poland nice pipeline you opened here today, you should hope that nothing bad can happen to it.
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.
> 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).
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
Norway is in high alert right now. Can you guess why? https://mobile.twitter.com/JavierBlas/status/157479814778362...
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.
[1]: https://graphics.reuters.com/UKRAINE-CRISIS/EUROPE-GAS/zdvxo...
[2]: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/russias-gazprom-says...
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.
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 wasn't by chance that it happened the same day a new gas pipe was opened between Norway and Poland: https://www.euronews.com/2022/09/27/baltic-pipe-norway-polan...
Not to mention that if anyone wants to PUSH GAS PRICES UP, this is a great way to spread panic in the markets "oh no!!! that door wont open again!!!".
I only see positives to Russia in this event, not a single positive for anyone else.
But the EU cannot buy gas that doesn't have a pipeline.
Not only will this keep Germany from lapsing in support but it frees all the resources they'd have wasted in-fighting about the issue.
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.
One that really, really needed gas. So, not summer Germany, but winter Germany sure.
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.
After that win, it was set in stone that Germany was done with Russian gas.
So it is at least plausible.
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.
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.
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.
Western Ukrainians firebombed Trade Union with the ~300 Ethnic Russians (Eastern Ukrainians) in it, and they were burned alive, in Odessa. [2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_of_Dignity
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/02/ukraine-dead-o...
Warning - these are very grisly photos!
https://www.exposingtruth.com/media-wont-tell-odessa-massacr...
That's an interesting way to describe a country defending itself on its own soil.
(Just reading "green man" :D).
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.
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.
Paying for this with some temporary broken pipeline that wouldnt have been used anyway is most likely acceptable for the siloviki.
'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?
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.
No. US wants the EU dependent on energy flows that are subject to the famous "Anglo-Saxons". That would keep EU in line.
Russia now is at war with NATO. Something that they are clearly, desperately, trying to avoid.
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.
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Lusitania (not state property)
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9b/19150508...
> This is not an act of war with Germany.
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.
There is no such thing as NATO waters, only the territorial waters of NATO members, who must choose to invoke Article 5.
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.
Especially when the person who gave the orders (e.g. Putin) interests may not be the same as the countries interests.
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.
Pres. Biden: "If Russia invades...then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it."
Reporter: "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." abcn.ws/3B5SScx
An alternative POV is that somebody (USA?) does not trust Europe/Germany/... to not "relapse" to the "gas needle" when the things get dire.
Reminds of of a story about a person from US visiting South Africa and at some point referring to black people in the audience as African Americans.
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
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.
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.
I'm not saying I believe this is the cause, mind you. I'm firmly undecided on that one.
If there was a greater interest at play Russia would be a very different place, and Ukraine would willingly join their sphere of influence.
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.
And honestly, who else would do 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.
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.
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.
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.
What about the Baltic countries
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
https://www.amazon.com/Secret-War-Against-Sweden-Submarine/d...
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.
No, some Germans were asking for NS2. Here is one article after a very quick search from 8/19: https://www.politico.eu/article/vice-president-of-the-german...
Another:
https://www.republicworld.com/world-news/europe/germanys-kla...
"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.
But all this speculation depends on how damaged the pipeline is. I haven't seen any info on how long a repair would take.
As for timelines, the media is saying several months, if not years.
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
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.
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.
Fantasy scenario, get real.
As said before, it would be to prevent Germany from caving and turning the taps back on in winter when they are desperate for gas.
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.
Whoever did it picked pretty much the perfect time from the perspective of deniability.
This isn't really a counterpoint, since it's all the same risk for every potential suspect.
Its not what I want but an attempt at an unbiased assessment.
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
Specifically what?
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.
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".
Think about what you're saying here: Vladimir Putin, famously corrupt head of a mafia state, doesn't care about money!
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.
Clandestine adventurism is not the USA's, really???
> we
Oh, that explains it. Cuz "we" are always the good guys!
Not this ambitious, no.
Why is Putin direct interest destroy a source of income and leverage to the country!?!?
- 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.
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.
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 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.
I won't pretend to understand the motivations here but it definitely further drives the wedge between the EU and Russia.
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?
[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/russias-gazprom-keep...
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.
The sabotage ensures Europe can't back off from the US sanctions now.
Wrecks Germany's economy, thereby eliminating a rival. VW et al are already talking about moving production to the US.
And Biden promised to take care of NS 2 back in February itself.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Let's see who benefits from this sabotage.
1. Russia doesn't benefit as it disabled their property and removed an important negotiating tool from their portfolio.
2. Germany doesn't benefit for obvious reasons. Now even if they wanted to, they can't try to get gas from Russia.
3. The US on the other hand benefits both by wrecking Germany's industry and opening up a market for their LNG.
4. Ukraine gets to demand more freebies and weapons from NATO. Benefit.
5. NATO gets to dump their own inventory on Ukraine. Benefit.
6. The US weapons manufacturers get new orders. Lots of benefits.
Take a step back and apply some common sense.
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.
And you do? Ad hominem make for great debating skills.
And the other points are lost on you, since you appear to be completely taken in by your regime's propaganda.
That doesn’t mean Putin is an agent for America.
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'.
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.
> 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.
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).
If the war stops, deliveries will resume through the overland pipelines, so Nordstream is largely irrelevant so far as Putin's rivals are concerned.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/27/world/europe/cia-nord-str...
PS: All the reasons you mentioned also went through my head when I heard about it and it will be very interesting to see where this leads
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.
It's the same risk for every suspect, so it's not really a counterpoint.
Otherwise: Agreed.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The correct question is: Does Putin think that people who he things might stage a coup might be taking the Nordstream pipeline into account.
We are so many levels deep with this line of thinking, it gets really hard to reason about.
Oh, and it's less about what the the new ruler might offer to Europe, but how the new ruler is planning to get funding.
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.
Now, both pipelines have been blown up. It doesn't make any sense for it to have been Russia.
Also, they have one more pipeline left. Which they are also threatening to - guess what? - shut down.
https://www-moscowtimes-ru.translate.goog/2022/09/27/gazprom...
Doesn't make sense for it to be Russia? Or does it now?
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.
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).
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.
Because they had spend years and huge monetary investments to build it.
That would be one insanely expensive spectacle.
Qui bono?
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).
A Polish member of the European Parliament has thanked the US: https://twitter.com/radeksikorski/status/1574800653724966915
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.
No country will complain or do anything. And it'll just be forgotten about like the extraordinary renditions, the May 1947 crises, etc.
(Much as I dislike the guy, Sikorski's probably right about the US doing the pipeline bombing [2].)
[1] https://exiledonline.com/anne-applebaum-is-a-dingbat/
[2] https://seapowermagazine.org/baltops-22-a-perfect-opportunit...
Their assets would be property of their inheritors, just as everywhere else.
"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."
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/biden-meet-german-chancellor...
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.
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.
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.
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 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]
Or, alternatively, it's a strategic benefit to Russia to plant the idea of US treachery in the minds of the Germans.
I have no opinion and doubt we'll ever know what actually happened. Definitely sabotage, though.
My opinion was solely that quote is weak evidence.
(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!
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.
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?)
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.
---- [0] (in Danish) https://arbejderen.dk/indland/usas-krigsskibe-og-bombefly-in... [1] https://www.thelocal.dk/20220407/danish-pm-rebuts-russian-am... [2] https://www.dvidshub.net/news/422733/us-military-makes-histo... [3] https://seapowermagazine.org/baltops-22-a-perfect-opportunit... [4] https://www.pipeline-journal.net/news/explosive-laden-drone-...
That's because they absolutely are.
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).
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.
Years and billions were invested in that infrastructure.
IMO, the sheer cost would make that an overly-elaborate spectacle.
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.
* 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.
It means that they want to terrorize polluters, regardless of the consequences.
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.
And in all honesty, between renewables and nuclear (fission), renewables are clearly a better investment.
Or do you have examples of what you call "eco-terrorist" organisations?
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.
A car dealer can be set on fire by a single individual, and even one in a situation of extreme poverty.
> A quick skim of the wikipedia article on eco-terrorism shows this is false.
False yourself. Have you skipped the word CURRENTLY?
Moreover, about
> grassroots organisations
Do you intend to mean that such grassroots orgs would not need PR nor donations?
Then no because grassroots organisations that would not raise donations do not have enough funds to blow a deepsea pipeline.
> The ELF has been attributed with arsons of sites such as housing developments, SUV dealerships, and chain stores.
Yeah right, you see the difference between chain store arson and blowing a deep-sea pipeline now that I'm pointing it to you?
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.
In short, rich people and large team = impossible to sustain such a cognitive dissonance.
>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?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Qaeda#Financing
>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.
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.
No, because if the pipeline is not used, there is an incentive to slow down methane extraction and transport on the Russian side.
But if they can send it in the pipe and make it leak to piss the EU countries off, on the other hand...
> If anything, methane is a bit better than CO2 in the long run.
Hmm... I wonder where you read that because actually it's the contrary: https://www.epa.gov/gmi/importance-methane
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.
I'm sure the Russian population does not think like that, but it's not as if they had their say...
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.
In unrelated news a brand new pipeline going from Norway to Poland through the Baltic sea opened just yesterday
https://www.euronews.com/2022/09/27/baltic-pipe-norway-polan...
Talking about poor maintenance in a thread about registered underwater explosions sounds like FUD
> 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.
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."
It can be argued that this destruction is a loss for Russia, but Putin didn't loose anything.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/27/opinion/russia-mobilizati...
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.
Also note the recent pro-NS2 protests in Germany, whose energy costs have skyrocketed before winter.
[1] - https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/07/biden-says-nord-stream-2-won...
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.
https://twitter.com/ah114088/status/1574435558675316737
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.
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 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.
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:
https://www.pipeline-journal.net/news/explosive-laden-drone-...
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:
https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/schleswig-holstein/US-Navy-ze...
(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.
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.
- https://earth.org/us-military-pollution/
- https://www.ewg.org/research/decades-department-defense-knew...
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?
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.
https://www.kreiszeitung.de/lokales/schleswig-holstein/fehma...
Under the sea. It’s not really deep either, 80 to 110 meters.
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.
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.
The German government simply didn't grant approval to begin operation.
No underwater bombings necessary.
How can cyberwarfare blast something some km close to an underwater gas pipe? remote controlled submarine?
TL;DR
> "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."
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?
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 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.
Didn't he also sign up to build a new pipeline into China?
Looks like China stands to win from all this, if Russia can't send the gas anywhere China can dictate the price they will pay.
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.
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.
https://usafacts.org/articles/whats-in-the-recently-passed-c...
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.
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.
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.
Not sure. I know nothing about underwater pipelines :P
Does all the gas leaking to the surface cause boats to sink if they get too close from the change in density?
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.
These days, it wouldn't surprise me if it was script kiddies on Shodan.
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!)
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?
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.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nord_Stream#Baltic_Sea_offshor...
[2] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/swedish-police-investigating-...
That would be a tragic miscalculation. If it comes out that Ukraine is responsible, German public sentiment will turn hard.
No more military shipments, maybe even rapproachement with Russia.
If it's a state actor, I'd think about Poland first.
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.
Rumor is, there is enormous pressure on Putin to cede power to Patrushev son.
This may be part if a plan to force him into quitting
Same delivery method, no divers needed. Could be almost anyone.
(shrug)
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.
> No more military shipments…
What shipments[1]?
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/16/ukraine-slams-germany-for-fa...
But everything smaller than a tank, including lots of hardware that proved extremely valuable in this war, is being shipped.
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".
"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.
Until the investigation is perform though, we simply don't have enough to go on.
Last I checked only the NSA has done so via hacking in Brazil. But otherwise it's very, very much against US intel-agency policy.
The US is approaching having a $30 trillion economy.
Apple does $387b in sales. Who cares about $30 billion at the scale the US operates at?
Should the US blow up SAP for the benefit of Microsoft or Oracle? They're a lot more important economically than LNG exports.
Last week the WSJ reported on industries moving to the US. Easier than getting production back from China, eh?
https://www.wsj.com/articles/high-natural-gas-prices-push-eu...
Industries will move to the US, where energy is available and labour laws aren't as stringent.
Biden even had a bit of a Freudian slip when he said "Germany" in that clip and then changed it to "Russia."
Now that the gas lines are done for, Germany can't even negotiate with Russia (or the EU) to get the gas back.
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).
Sabotage? Maybe! Ukraine? Maybe or maybe others!
It drives the market prices up (anything that spooks market participants will), and creates an ongoing situation that adds pressure on governments to act.
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.
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?
If you include the risk of getting caught or revealed (and you should), it would absolutely make no sense.
However, I don't think Ukraine has the capability to pull this off.
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.
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.
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.
* 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.
https://www.smh.com.au/world/cold-war-hotted-up-when-sabotag...
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.)
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.
Russia unilaterally turned the taps OFF repeatedly in the last months to keep Germany from meaningfully supporting Ukraine.
With the pipes permanently broken (at least for this winter), Russia has lost that leverage.
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.
He also uses these money to arm police to keep population at bay.
There's also some weird pride he takes in having gas.
May be something else is in play here, but I don't think how this can be benefitial to his cause.
https://www.reuters.com/article/ukraine-crisis-nordstream-si...
https://financialpost.com/commodities/energy/oil-gas/germany...
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/ukrainian-group-sue-...
But you can theorize that Russians were being too picky with the repairs which normally possible wouldn't
But even if they did, EU and Canada withholding the turbine is playing to their game, don't see the purpose
Still, anything is possible... cloak and daggers
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.
Russia has lost the option to provide extra of that much needed gas to Europe, along with billions and years of investments into that infrastructure.
> but Putin has now gained leverage internally
What exactly is this "internal leverage" and how is it supposed to work? Sorry, but this is really vague and unclear.
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.
https://www.gospodarkamorska.pl/zdjecia/artykul/25081/135779...
1. Eat my hat.
2. Go out and protest.
It would have been quite the new low, even for the current establishment.
That's also an option, but you would have problems with precision and deniability*.
You could use some WW2 style device and blame it on German mines that are still present.
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?
This is sabotage for sure.
It might have been a drone:
https://nyheder.tv2.dk/udland/2022-09-27-norge-advarer-om-my...
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.
No, it's the other way around. It signals that Russia is burning bridges, and makes it nuclear threat seem much more real.
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
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".
> 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.
This would be an extremely dumb move by Poland.
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.
That's sweet but I don't think my government has any capacity or means to that.
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...
Not directly, but via Germany.
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.
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.
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.)
My previous description of "simultaneous" was incorrect.
"Russia wants the taps capable of being turned ON at their discretion, not permanently broken."
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.
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.
I wouldn’t say that the act of sabotage is minimal.
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.
> Russia wants the taps capable of being turned ON at their discretion, not permanently broken.
I'm not an expert, but I read somewhere that Gazprom could escape a penalty for not delivering the gas that their contract states.
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
Must be nice for Ukraine to be able to station troops and equipment near Russia's financial arteries.
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.
https://weber.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=...
https://fortune.com/2018/03/01/russia-social-media-energy-po...
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.
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.
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”.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/9/27/sweden-issues-warni...
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.
[1] https://twitter.com/KyivIndependent/status/15747542772681031... "Those shipments are enough to cover a complete halt in Russian pipeline flows from Oct. 1."
[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-27/europe-is... (paywalled version of the original quote)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-27/europe-is...
Saying Europe doesn't need Russian gas sounds almost like propoganda.
Taking into account their long-term planning skills there is no reason to assume they know what they're doing.
I assume they're saying it to avoid a panic or increasing prices.
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.
But there could be an ideological angle or an insurance angle.
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.
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".
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.
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.
I don’t understand why people talk about “casus beli” as if life today was Europa Universalis game. When power want to start a war, they do.
Putin made up a "casus beli" before going into the special-operation. He made a speech how this territory belongs to the Russia empire.
So life is not really that different from EU4.
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.
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.
[0] https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Norway-In...
[1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/provokatsiya
[2] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Russian-Ports-in-the-Bal...
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.
> "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)
https://www.marinelink.com/news/us-ship-lng-europe-498028
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. "
https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/08/business/nord-stream-2-german...
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.
Algeria, Azerbaijan, Canada, UEA, Qatar etc.
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.
The videos coming out of the conscription paint a fairly incredible picture.
(The earthquake theory might also, ahem, hold some water but I'd say it's less likely)
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...
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic_Sea#/media/File:Ostseet...
[2]: https://www.deeptrekker.com/products/underwater-rov (random example)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Also, why is everyone assuming a sabotage and not an accident? The article is short in details...
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.
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.
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.
A prediction: we will see more of such actions in the coming months, leading to the winter
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.
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.
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.
It is a reactionary action.
Dear Russia
Thanks for confirming so clearly that you are an untrustworthy and manipulative partner.
Best,
-The Rest of Europe.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.
1. https://twitter.com/ABC/status/1490792461979078662
2. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-27/europe-is...
3. https://www.planete-energies.com/en/medias/infographics/gas-...
It is a tweet posted in February 7th by ABC News:
Pres. Biden: "If Russia invades...then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it."
Reporter: "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."
There are three leaks.
> That looks like an actor who doesn’t care about being identified.
I don't see anyone being identified, do you?
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.
Because Ukraine has no submarines and they don't have access to the Baltic Sea even if they had any?
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.
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'.
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.
I don't think Russia had interests in doing it, unless it is for some internal power play.
edit: or plausible denial when they won't send gas to Europe this winter. But do they even need the deniability at this point?
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, ...
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.
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.
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.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/sep/27/nord-stream...
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.
The question is whether they trigger article 5 here -- I suspect not, however.
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.
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.
[1] https://www.spiegel.de/international/business/a-winter-of-pr...
[2] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/mystery-gas-leaks-hi... "Neither pipeline was pumping gas to Europe at the time the leaks were found..."
It would be interesting to watch this evolving, if it wasn't fucking scary.
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?
but no, it's the russians and their facebook posts, sure.
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.
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.
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 being generally colder than summer - that's climate, which is different from weather.
[1] https://www.focus.de/finanzen/boerse/konjunktur/studie-skizz...
ed: https://twitter.com/ASabadus/status/1574729027570769920
Also, Apparently Norway has recently warned about drone activity near hydrocarbon rigs: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/norway-oil-safety-re...
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?
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.
Germany has an option to talk with russia to make a deal, so russia reopens the valve... some other forces don't want that.
It is a 101 of economical warfare.
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
Nobody believes in their 'repairs' and temporary issues with the pipeline. I really hope it is destroyed.
If they wanted they could reuse the old pipeline that is on land on Polish territory.
BTW. It is not only my suspicion: https://www.politico.com/news/2022/09/28/nord-stream-pipelin...
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.
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.
Russia already has Kaliningrad.
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 yeah... us and eu would be my first suspects
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_incident#Second...
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
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.
Is it a matter of repairing the breaches, removing the water, cleaning the pipeline out, and pressurizing it or is this pipeline effectively destroyed?
https://www-nrk-no.translate.goog/rogaland/uidentifiserte-dr...
https://www-ptil-no.translate.goog/tilsyn/viktige-meldinger/...
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.
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..
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.
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/who-will-rid-me-of-thi...
https://www.rtl.de/cms/umfrage-mehrheit-will-verhandlungen-u...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_no_one_rid_me_of_this_tur...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1990/11/14/c...
And since you're going to speculate, it's worth knowing: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-27/europe-is...
Price signal and capitalism at work. Greedy bastards always find a way to move goods around efficiently while getting rich.
https://www.science.org/content/article/suspect-surfaces-mys...
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.
Interested timing of such unfortunate accident..
> 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.
https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-gas-baltic-pipelines-leaks/32...
A single torpedo could sever the Pole's new energy supply.
[0] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/09/27/putins-nor...
This leverage is now gone.
It will only make the whole region more unstable, more dependent on other international powers.
Friendly backstabbing from your allies is not something unheard of.
This winter people will die of cold, because somebody needed to make a point and get everyone on board.
Politics can be harsh sometime, 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.
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.
If there's still someone obliged to foot the bill in case of a catastrophic failure, it might create an incentive to just destroy everything.
Of course proof of sabotage would get in the way of that, but the leaks are not particularly accessible at the moment.
So this attack makes perfect sense, distrust in the West, confusion, no way back.
Thanks!
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.
Hard to believe, they have nothing to gain from this.
Story from 2018: https://www.kyivpost.com/ukraine-politics/about-40000-ukrain...
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.
From last year, Drone strikes and violation of the Minks Agreements by Ukraine: https://nationalinterest.org/feature/ukraine%E2%80%99s-recen...
Russia's invasion does seem absolutely batshit unless you do even 10 minutes of digging on the subject: https://search.brave.com/search?q=ukraine+donbass&source=web...
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.
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".
This is the same they did with the "repairs" for NS1 which stopped gas to Germany for few weeks (or months I don't remember exactly).
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/09/28/nord-stream-pipelin...
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.
However
1) Was there any gas flowing at all? Sure anything can cause speculation.
2) This also makes it a convenient timing for the western allies to do it, including Norway. Germany is way too complacent with Russian for US liking.
3) Such more so the US in terms of operatives in Europe and Russia. Who says the US is sensitive to gas prices in Europe?
Also Biden said they would do it. And at this point capabilities are not laking in either side.
But no we're not going to know for sure for a while.
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.
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.
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.
I mean, even Belarus was doing better.
> 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.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2004/02/27/r... ("Reagan Approved Plan to Sabotage Soviets" (2004))
- "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.
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.
[0] https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Norway-In...
> Portions of the operation have been disclosed earlier, including in a 1996 paper in Studies in Intelligence, a CIA journal.
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.
To be fair - I do understand how fun it can be to play at conspiracy theories especially given the circumstances here.
* new account by the way
Does anything happen to gas in a pipeline that makes pressure increase? Could it be a lack of or poor monitoring of pressure that caused it?
https://www.euronews.com/2022/09/27/baltic-pipe-norway-polan...
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.
Time stamped to where he brings it up:
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.
This is a warning to Norway and rest of Europe.
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.
Maybe you think the symbolism is important, but on the other hand, people might also just think it looks childish...
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.
> 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.
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.
> 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.
Or has the damaged pipe bee shut off and the leak stopped?
There's this: https://www.euronews.com/2022/09/27/baltic-pipe-norway-polan...
A cut off was bound to happen anyway sooner or later
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.
Nobody says that.
I'm nobody, so I can say that.
This thing is spiraling out into a mess. With winter coming, things could get nasty in Europe.
Yes, they will definitely hate doubling their profits while selling the same amount of LNG. Money isn't everything. /s