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.
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.
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...