4th leak reported on Nord Stream pipelines in Baltic Sea | Hacker News Reader

4th leak reported on Nord Stream pipelines in Baltic Sea

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49 pointsgeox141 comments

The discourse regarding this incident is deranged. Despite all the resources put into teaching intellectuals and academians to exercise critical thinking, they still believe the most absurd claims without any evidence.

The claims I've seen circulating are all insane, such as that Russia did it to avoid being found guilty of contract violations or that they did it to attack the Norway-Baltic pipeline. Note that the Nord Stream pipelines' total capacity is 150+ BCM, whereas the Norway-Baltic pipeline is only 10BCM NG - less than 1/10th.

Russia has gained zero, whereas EU countries have removed an internal pressure point, and the USA has gained a larger energy share. I don't know who sabotaged the pipelines, but the superficial blaming of Russia without any evidence should be criticized.

Lastly, I detest all attacks and invasions of sovereign entities.

Cui bono? The argument about "who benefits" is going to go on for quite a while, but I'll agree with you that this doesn't seem to benefit Russia at all. If all actors involved were perfectly rational, Russia would be near the bottom of my list for suspect.

Of course, all actors are not perfectly rational, and Russia is notably irrational at the moment, so I guess they can't be eliminated from the list entirely. Still, I don't consider them the most likely.

Vlad is very far from rational these days. Gazprom was sending out pictures of their 'oil leaks' earlier this month [0] in a very obviously mocking way. That Vlad would intentionally sabotage the pipes to thumb his nose at the Germans is more than likely to me. Nothing about this war has made any sense for Vlad.

The only thing that does make sense to me is if Vlad is trying to use the destruction of the pipe as a way to get sanctions lifted. The pipe and compressor stations that may have been destroyed are quite difficult to replace without the help of Russia. So Vlad may be trying to use his second-to-last card [1] to get the Germans on his side again.

To you and I, that's obviously not going to make the Germans be on his side. But Vlad isn't really playing with a full deck anymore (sorry for all the card related metaphors). Blowing up the pipes is a 'cunningly dumb' idea that kinda fits with end-stage regimes like his.

[0] https://t.me/gazprom/886

[1] the last card being his nukes

Edit: my bad, he has the chemical weapons and biological weapons cards left to play too

Small remark:

The diminutive form of the Russian name "Vladimir" is actually "Volodya".

While "Vlad" is the diminutive form of "Vladislav".

Thanks! Kinda like William > Bill in English.

“The Russian president sees the world through the lens of maskirovka and provokatsiia.” [1]

Putin is a master of distraction and confusion, skills that he learned earlier in his career.

I’m not saying that he definitely orchestrated the explosions, but his methods are often opaque, and not immediately rational.

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/02/putin-ukra...

> the USA has gained a larger energy share.

The US is already exporting everything it possibly can as fast as Europe can accept it. The US ain't no saint, but the energy angle isn't a plausible motive.

...think about this for a second. There's supply, and then there's demand.

I live in Appletown, where there are two orchards and three cider-making operations. I run one of the orchards and make X apples per year, it's a fixe amount. My competitor makes ~X apples per year.

Now a giant bomb is dropped on my competitor's orchard. I can still only sell X apples per year, as that's all I can currently make. However, do you think the price of my apples will go up or down?

In this scenario, shipments from your competitor's orchard have already been halted for a month. The market has already priced in the loss, and burning down the orchard itself doesn't change anything. Nord Stream hasn't transmitted any gas since August, since Putin has been gamely claiming that it needs new pumps which, coincidentally, can only be achieved via the lifting of sanctions.

It certainly highlights the vulnerability of undersea pipelines to sabotage. If Russia had written off a restart of NS(1/2) this move further destabilizes the large EU economies, introduces fear and uncertainty into the political theater and sows discord between allies.

Any of the highly sophisticated players could have rendered the pipeline useless without this explicit show of force. A simple reversing of the cathodic protection undersea would permanently degrade kilometers of pipeline. There are dozens of proposed scenarios that would permanently damage both pipelines while maintaining at least the semblance of reasonable doubt.

So the "critical thinking exercise" is not just who gains from the NS destruction, but who gains from this flashy, public show of force.

At this point the "China Theory" that this forces Russia over the barrel on pricing is as good as any.

(Disclaimer - I think Russia totally did it, but no one here knows).

Another side effect of these shenanigans is that it's pushing the BRICS countries closer together.

Their SWIFT alternative has been in the works for at least 7 years. Their share of world population is over 40% and their share of GDP is over 20%.

And three of the five have nukes. Unlike Iraq, Libya, Syria, they won't be as easy to "liberate."

Russia was searching any possible excuse to not deliver gas well before this incident, and had stopped delivering already (from a failed turbine and missing spares from Siemens to complicated payment methods). There were public threads to not deliver gas during the winter also: cfr. "it will be a long winter" video.

Negating those informations, and the fact that rationality is no the first thing that comes to my mind, when I think of Putin's actions, cannot be seriously called "exercise critical thinking".

Of course it should be carefully analysed, but asserting "it was USA" is a long shot.

Russia lost a bargaining chip though with this. Before they could hold it ransom. With the pipe being destroyed - they can’t use it as a bargaining chip. It’s just gone.

It doesn’t make sense for Russia to destroy its own pipelines when it controls the valves…

This is like me having a farm where I have all my food - I decide to not sell as to create an incentive for people to do what I want. Am I going to burn down my farm and lose that as a bargaining chip? Why would I do that? That doesn’t benefit me at all…

The part I don’t get is who benefits from a sabotage like this? It seems to me that it would be in Russia’s interest to keep the optionality of deciding to supply gas or not in their own hands, so why damage the pipelines and give away that option? Could this have been done by a radical/political group within Europe that wants to ensure they never go back to Russian gas?

Indeed. I'm no Russia apologist, I want this war to end as badly as anyone else. But it also doesn't make sense for them to perform these attacks. For better or worse, the invasion of Ukraine makes sense, because it used to be a part of the Soviet Union, so there is some sort of explanation for the behavior, although it's a shitty one.

But making holes in these pipes doesn't come with any reasonable explanation, as far as I can tell. The most probably explanation I can come up with, is NATO and/or allies doing the attacks themselves in order to justify an invasion of Russia to "stop the attacks on foreign soil", but that's borderline conspiracy theory, so not even sure I want to go there.

I guess I'm hoping it's Russia, but I find it far-fetched to believe, because what possible reason could they have for doing so? Demonstrating capabilities? Also feels weak... But then again, Russia is not exactly acting with reason at the moment, so I guess anything is possible.

> The most probably explanation I can come up with, is NATO and/or allies doing the attacks themselves in order to justify an invasion of Russia to "stop the attacks on foreign soil", but that's borderline conspiracy theory, so not even sure I want to go there.

I know you're not trying to go there, but even this hypothetical doesn't make any sense. The attacks are on Russian-owned pipelines in international waters, there's nothing for NATO to defend. Furthermore, if NATO wanted to do a false flag, it would make more sense to blow up Chernobyl, since Russia has previously threatened it and NATO has historically emphasized that attacks that spread nuclear fallout over NATO countries are grounds for article 5.

To be clear, I don't see a clear benefit for any of the major players here; even the suggestions that it's Putin strike me as wishful thinking. Something strange is going on.

I don’t think there are single entity that obviously benefits. Russia, Ukraine, the EU and multiple outside actors have reasons to attack the N1 pipeline. The slightly less obvious secondary effect is a push to open the N2 pipeline but that’s just a start.

Beyond state level actors you need to consider everything from Russia’s Gasprom having pending lawsuits this helps with to 3rd party gas suppliers benefiting from increasing sales at extreme gas prices. Stock speculators could be located anywhere and benefit from knowing about such attacks ahead of time. Even something as odd as a fringe environmental group could be behind it.

At best depending on how difficult such an attack is you can somewhat narrow things down.

I'm convince the least thing the NATO wants is to get in direct confrontation with Russia. That would give Russia the perfect excuse to use nukes.

It scares the German population, because every day here the news was about "are we going to make it through the winter". 50% of all houses are heated with Gas. The fact that no gas was flowing through doesn't really matter and likely wasn't going to for a while anyway still worries everyone.

It will make the pro-Russian arguments sound better, if people are scared.

No it won't, because now they have no alternative.

Before, the protesters wanted to force the government to open NS2 and end the gas crisis. Now there is no alternative.

The pipelines were useless to the russian goverment beforehand since they weren't sending any gas through it. It doesn't matter what the protesters wanted, Russia wasn't sending any gas. So there was never an "alternative".

But blowing them up means that people get worried again. The worries about having enough gas to last the winter increases. Russia wants a fearful Europe, not a determined one. This plays right into their hands, and it doesn't really matter whether people know it was them. They are waging a proxy war with NATO through the Ukraine. And the fact that they are also threatening nuclear weapons just confirms their strategy in regards to Europe. They want a Europe that is afraid of Russia.

> The pipelines were useless to the russian goverment beforehand since they weren't sending any gas through it.

But they could have. That's what having an alternative means!

Putin was recently, explicitly, fishing for concessions in return for gas through those pipelines.

And people in Germany - a minority, for sure, but still - were demonstrating in the streets, demanding that Germany should make those concessions for gas.

Yes, Putin wants a fearful Europe, and he already had it. Now he has a Europe that's got nothing to lose, gas-wise, for the winter.

This is getting to me. How can people be so blind? IMO, believing that Putin blew up his own pipeline rather than Norway's which just opened (it's very close, if you can reach one you can reach the other), is the same as believing the rebels in Douma used chemical weapons on themselves. If they had them, wouldn't they use it on the enemy instead?

In Douma, people claiming a false flag self-attack had to contend with the fact that the area was surrounded, in fact it fell by the next day. I kept arguing with them, wouldn't it be very easy to catch the false flaggers in the act?

And with the accusation you're making now that Russia did it (which is also a false flag accusation), it happened in Danish and Swedish waters. Near Bornholm. Those Baltic islands are of great strategic importance (much to the inhabitants' annoyance), so you can bet the shallow sea is full of listening equipment, and that spy satellites track every fricking seabird. Yet they missed a Russian sabotage operation?

Also, if Russia wanted an excuse for mobilization etc, why didn't he blow up the pipeline in his own waters, or at least closer to it? Then he could at least claim to be attacked! It would be a disastrously expensive manufactured casus belli, but at least it would have been that. This is instead, if you assume Russia did it, playing right into the US's hands! They've hated that pipeline for years!

  And people in Germany - a minority, for sure, but still - were demonstrating in the streets, demanding that Germany should make those concessions for gas.

Now you've got those same Russians screaming about how evil and awful it is that Germany is allied with the United States. Gee, who does that benefit?

  Yet they missed a Russian sabotage operation?

Wouldn't they have caught an American sabotage operation? America as this mythical beast that's so powerful they can destroy a major gas pipeline without being noticed (or with everyone too scared to react) is precisely what makes your argument so farcical (well that and your insistence that the attacks happened in Danish territory).

  And with the accusation you're making now that Russia did it (which is also a false flag accusation), it happened in Danish and Swedish waters.

No. The explosions happened in international waters.

> Wouldn't they have caught an American sabotage operation?

I'm explicitly saying they would have been in on it.

The attacks happened in the exclusive economic zone, which are not typically called international waters. Countries keep close track of their exclusive economic zones, even if they DON'T happen to be strategically important straits, which the sea between Bornholm and Poland absolutely is.

lol, no

The centrist mindset is just "Russia is bad. This was a bad thing. Therefore Russia must have done it." That's as deep as it goes.

My money is on a faction of the Russian military either attempting to sabotage Putin or alternately attempting to block off potential routes to negotiation to force a confrontation. Both are plausible.

US intelligence works closely with the UK and Germany. If it was the US it was with Germany's knowledge and approval.

Have you forgotten Snowden's revelations? They spied like crazy on EU politicians. Germany is not even a 5 eyes country.

That's an example that they're both able and willing to manipulate German politics and keep Germany in the dark about it. They would probably have needed Sweden's and Denmark's cooperation, but again there is recent history they are very willing to give the US whatever covert assistance they ask for.

What does "spied like crazy" mean?

As far as I can tell, the publicly released Snowden docs show no such thing.

Also, I'm not sure how you go from mere spying to "able and willing to manipulate German politics".

Famously they tapped Merkel's phone, which is a bold move.

Maybe we should split the players: Putin and Russia might be different arguments. Like, if Putin goes away, the "new Russia" could be seen as "clean" thus NS1/2 imports would be acceptable again. This scenario fails if the pipes fail though.

Considering all the Russian energy execs dying mysteriously and Putin being a KGB guy, Putin pulling something like this to make the him the only option and making “the only way out is through” for this invasion… doesn’t seem impossible.

Maybe he thinks things will be okay if his new annexations come to a relative peace and have grudging acceptance from Europe like they did with Crimea. I doubt it, but…

I don't understand one thing. Why bow to Russia and support mass killing if you can just not shut down your nuclear plants?

The vast majority of gas use is not for electricity, so you are arguing a false dichotomy.

Migrating major current uses of gas (like heating) to electricity will take a decade or so. It’s not a practical short-term solution.

If Gazprom can claim this as force majeure they might wiggle out of paying up contract breaches:

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/exclusive-uniper-mul...

This would be like amputating both of your legs to avoid a military draft, it makes no sense. They're already fucked 10 times over, paying a fine is the least of their problem.

They're illegally invading a country and committing warcrimes, why would a fine be the red line, if they went ahead with the invasion I'm pretty sure they can say "no" to a western fine

Gazprom has much, much bigger problems than breaching that contract. I don't see how this helps them at all. If an EU court rules against them so what? No way to enforce the ruling.

It seems obvious to me that the goal was to take away the bargaining chip of the Gas and commit Ukraine to retaking every inch of lost territory.

My big worry is that a NATO country is responsible. I actually don’t know what happens if some NATO nations view these strikes as aggression and refuse to defend the responsible party.

They can't. It was outside Danish territorial waters (if only just) and so our PM has said it was not an attack on us, thus no art 5

I don't know if you live in Europe, but for almost everyone who does it's obvious that Russia is the only actor who does things like this. I'm not aware of any public discussion contemplating "who" in the countries surrounding the Baltic Sea. Everyone assumes it's Russia, and the only question is "why".

It's true that we don't have yet a smoking gun or direct admission. But it walks like Russia, it quacks like Russia, so any speculation to the contrary seems pointless.

I do admit there's a certain cold war-esque mystery in debating it here in HN, but just wanted to point out what's obvious for people living close to the events.

You don't know your history if you think Russia is the only country who would do this. The US security agencies wouldn't think twice about blowing up a hated pipeline to force a hesitating ally to commit. (And the Swedes would covertly help them, neutrality be damned)

Your geographical proximity means nothing. I happen to live in the country that makes IMMENSE profits from not competing with Russian gas from those pipelines, and I still am not buying the false flag theory.

Are you really saying Germany is a hesitant ally, despite them being the third-largest arms supplier to Ukraine? US or any other allied country would only risk losing support, there's barely any upside with Germany already committed to non-Russian gas imports.

I also don't see why Russian sabotage would be a false flag attack. I don't think they are seriously trying to pin it on anyone else.

Anyway I probably shouldn't have replied as I don't see any point in debating the obvious. I'll then just eat my hat later if I need to change my understanding of the modus operandi of some country in the European arena.

  Are you really saying Germany is a hesitant ally

Germany is a hesitant ally in the Russian war. They want the Russian gas and they don't want to insert themselves into the conflict (hence being so reluctant to sell arms to Ukraine).

  US or any other allied country would only risk losing support, there's barely any upside with Germany already committed to non-Russian gas imports.

Exactly. Why provoke a hesitant ally in a war that's winding down?

Don't you remember the US pressuring to stop NS2 earlier in the year? How can Germany NOT be a "hesitant" ally in energy matters if its enconomy depends mostly on cheap energy, being the biggest EU exporter?

No, we would not help in this.

This can actually destroy the Germany's economy-- destroy, and if that goes down, so does ours (i.e. Sweden's). The EU would be done as a project achieving any kind of regional independence, a second rate power for ever. Industrial competitiveness, once lost, stays lost.

I'd go as far as to say, that if Germany's energy situation actually destroys its industry in the way that can possibly happen, then the Ukraine war is small potatoes, strategically.

It's extra confusing because, even before the sabotage, people had opposite opinions on the strategic significance of the pipelines. So the pipeline being damaged can be interpreted in opposite ways.

Did Russia have Germany begging for gas and ready to do anything to have them 'fix' the thing they were pretending was broken to make them suffer without their gas?

Was the West foolishly refusing to buy cheap energy that Russia was happy to supply?

Was the west taking the recent war and Russia mucking around with the gas supply as a signal to accelerate their renewable transition and end all relience on Russian gas?

Were the western voters angry, who were they angry at, what would they do as a result?

If you can't agree on the above you'll not agree about who benefits from this either.

The only entity that clearly benefits from this is the US. It ensures Europe can't give in no matter how cold it gets this winter and it hurts Russia financially. Ukraine of course is hurt no matter what.

Doesn't mean the US did it, but if you look at a map and try to figure out how the Russians would have gotten there undetected and did the damage and slipped out undetected again, well it's just not credible. And Europe certainly wouldn't put themselves in an even more precarious position that they already are. So Occam's Razor applies.

Does this benefit Russia? No.. but does it throw a wrench in any plans that a potential successor could rapproche the west? Yes.

I would consider the motivations of all actors and not just in the interest of the nation states.

They would need access to powerful explosives, a submersible, and detailed knowledge of the location of the pipeline. Hard to imagine any non-government actor being behind this.

A dumb way of finding pipeline location is by looking at history AIS data. The pipe laying vessel must broadcasting its position via AIS while in operation. Since the water is only 70 meters deep, it is reasonable to assume the underwater pipeline is directly below pipe laying vessel.

And 9/11 required a person to fly a commercial airliner. Crazier things have happened.

Conspiracy theory: since this impacts Russia negatively, it may have been them so these attacks can be blamed on someone they plan to attack.

A false flag attack, in other words.

Yes, Putin has done those before. So have others. But it has never before happened that 10 billion euro infrastructure, which was used explicitly as leverage (Putin said he would turn on the gas as soon as Germany asked for it, and some Germans were protesting in the street, demanding exactly that), was sacrificed as part of a false flag attack. You're not only talking 4d chess here, you're talking a queen sacrifice in 4d chess.

This doesn't affect them negatively. They didn't want to send any gas, and now they don't need to make up excuses.

Putin won't be able to rebuild their army by printing RUB.

Putin can't rebuild the army with everyone of fighting age fleeing the country.

I really see no benefit for anybody.

I do not know the contracts between Russia and the EU countries. Once there is no pipe, you cannot tell Russia stopped delivering gas, but they just could not, even they wanted. Little time ago there was a big discussion about a turbine, that made supply difficult. I do not know to which extent that could help Russia. Maybe somebody has more idea/information about it.

But I don't think some political party would have the means for such operation.

There are other gas pipelines too, just less conveniently placed for Germany.

The most logical explanation is Russia. As they are loosing the war, the annexation of territory with fake referendums, and the hint other pipelines could be next, would allow for a strong hand to negotiate a settlement and save face.

It’s pretty convenient for Gazprom at least that they are broken. It’s hard to sue them for breach of contract now and they probably want to have some sanctions rolled back to repair it.

Anyone pro-war, they just eliminated a major incentive for peace. That includes the more right wing end of both Russian and EU and US governments.

Anyone else selling Europe Gas (or Power). That includes chunks of the middle east and north Africa as well as Norway and Belgium

Anyone Buying Russian gas (China)

Anyone competing with European Industrial Goods (the USA)

Also, it's entirely possible this was just an accident.

Or there may not be a direct benefit: hackers (interference with control systems seems much more likely to cause multiple leaks like this) may have done this by either by accident, maliciously, or as part of some ransom plot.

This list is actually sort of everyone...

One theory I've seen is that it removes the incentives for the oligarchs to throw Putin out of office and attempt to quickly get sanctions lifted.

So Putin would benefit in that situation.

Indeed this angle I think is the right direction. It's a bit like Cortez burning the boats. Removing me from power won't mean that you get to go back to business as usual and sell gas to Europe.

Also the aspect that it reminds the whole of NATO how fragile their infrastruture is for the upcoming winter. It doesn't matter how big your navy is I can get 4x deep dive special forces in a recreational boat and freeze everyone to death. I think the first explosions were actually when they opened the Poland-Norway gas line.

Same goes for intercontinental undersea communication cables. You would probably take out most of the world's finance/trading systems for weeks/months by destroying a handful of transcontinental cables.

It's a power display for fear abroad and for getting all the potential dissidents back in line.

I am very curious if this keeps escalating at what point is a NATO member gonna claim that article 5 has been breached.

> Indeed this angle I think is the right direction. It's a bit like Cortez burning the boats. Removing me from power won't mean that you get to go back to business as usual and sell gas to Europe.

I thought about it, too. But even this hypothesis has a weak point: the Yamal pipeline is still working well. So this is a moot point: if the generals or whoever decide to kill Putin and takeover, they will be able to resume sending the gas through Yamal immediately.

I thought about your scenario, and there's a couple of things to consider. One, is the shipping capacity has still been reduced. The total amount of NG Russia can ship has been reduced. The other is it would be much more difficult to camouflage the sabotage of the Yamal pipeline, unlike the NS1 and NS2 pipelines which has the cover of the sea.

There are still two more pipelines through Ukraine and Belarus with enough capacity.

Hmm, yes, that sounds plausible at least.

The mistake might be to think on what is in Russia interest but the reality is that you need to think what is in Putin interest.

Any uncertainty will raise market prices. Russia still benefits economically from higher gas prices. Also, the reasoning from the Russian leadership has never been very logical. From the decision to attack Ukraine in the first place in 2014 down to the most recent installment.

People in the West have misunderstood Russia for centuries. The misunderstanding comes from the fact that for the majority of Russians nationalist feelings of being powerful and feared are more important that economic prosperity. Add to this the widespread idea and a very strong feeling of national superiority (in everything, from culture, to science, to drinking etc - they believe they are simply better than everyone else and they have been engaging in such successful propaganda even people in many other countries actually believe this). Then, everyone is told, "having a strong leader" is in Russian nature. This is bull**, but there is some truth in Russians an masse thinking real democracy is a western ploy to make them weaker so they not just accept dictatorship. They cheer it (unless it happens to draft them into its wars).

In addition while they are so superior, it is horribly unfair OTHERS are having it better than them. When those others are far away, they are able to grudgingly accept it, but when countries that were under their occupation(therefore people in those countries were lesser, inferior to them) like Poland achieve economic success(with democracy too!) they think it is not just unfair, but against all the laws of nature. However from the average Russian point of view, Poland is Poland, it is another nation, but Ukraine... they thought about Ukraine as basically the same as them. Ukraine being democratic and successful is precisely so offensive and unacceptable to them because it shows their idea of how to govern themselves and what to believe has been broken for a very long time. It is extremely dangerous for their leaders for the exact same reason. Ukraine shows what Russia could've been.

In addition to the above, just like 150 years ago with Poland. The Russian state can't accept the existence of Ukrainians as a separate nation They say it openly. They advocate a genocide of another nation openly and the majority of the population supports it.

Why are they so blood-thirsty, one may ask? It is very hard for any normal human with no knowledge of Russian history to understand this, but it is important to understand the mere idea of today's Russia is broken. Russia as it has been for hundreds of years and as it is today is a collection of various national groups. Not just in the Caucasus, but almost everywhere else too. Those other groups outside Moscow are all being exploited. Sure they are being sold an idea of being Russian, but when the time comes, is Putin sending people from Moscow to die? No.Not really. So having one of those national groups (Ukrainians) achieve success outside "mother" Russia (with democracy no less!) is even that much worse.

It is not just propaganda that "made Russians bad", it is their entire lifetimes in a broken system. The truth is, as I mentioned before, this is not new. Russia has to experience change similar to what Germany went through after WW2 (well except abolition for all but top level Nazis, but that discussion is for another time). But for that change to happen Germany had to loose a war completely. I fear the same has to happen for Russia before they can change. The first step in getting there is for people in the West to understand how Russians in their mass think. Of course there are many Russians that disagree, but they are in minority, and they have to watch very carefully what they say out loud.

Russia benefits by sowing doubt and mistrust between the western countries. The 'bots' were really quick to push that old Biden clip after the sabotage. It's the same old playbook again - divide and conquer.

Good thing they US never did anything shady like """discovering""" weapons of mass destruction, spying on allies, backing coups, &c. that surely would also sow doubt and mistrust....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism#Soviet_Union_and_...

Oh no someone contradicts me, quick, this must be .... oh yeah a soviet russian propaganda method I just learned about 5 min ago on wikipedia

Social media and instant news turned people into complete fanatics, if you can't take any criticism and accept that your propaganda is as bad as their we're fucked

They aren't justifying russian behavior by saying "you are worst" though. Your comment was pure speculation, so there is nothing to even justify. When we are speculating about motives or potential "suspects", it is absolutely relevant to the discussion to... talk about them?

So that's not what whataboutism is and it's ridiculous how much of an overused thought terminating cliché it has become.

The Swedish coast guard knew of this since Tuesday. I would guess it simply haven't disseminated as fast after the initial shock.

In Swedish: https://omni.se/fyra-gaslackor-upptackta-tva-i-svensk-ekonom...

I wonder how many subs are now patrolling that brand new gas pipeline from Norway/Denmark to Poland, looking for previously installed explosives:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic_Pipe

And I am sure they know who did it, as the ocean floor is rumored to be filled with special audio and other type of sensors.

I believe this is confirmation that all 4 lines in Nordstream have been sabotaged and are out of commission for the near future.

Also confirmation that alleged attacks were in international waters.

The difference in magnitude of the explosions could be a clue to the method of sabotage. There was also a 17 hour delay between the 2 main explosions, that haappened 4.6km apart

I’m a bit feared about the undersea communication cables.

Actually...

so, the giant elephant in the room: this works just fine if it was done by US and/or allies. It is even a quite valid geopolitic strategic move - tough a bit crude, but hey this is war -, even risking the EU to discover it.

But then, the russians are the only other ones that actually know they didn't dit it. Hence, an automatic license to answer was granted. They know the other side won't answer to their answer, because of escalation to kinetic or worse, nuclear.

So, one possible, even the most feasible to be done without serious risk of escalation, would be to just go and sever some transatlantic cables. It's all the way international waters, it's accesible for underwater cover ops, it's not like messing with a nuclear reactor inside a state-nation, or cyber-trashing someones mainland infrastructure.

So, if the russians didn't did it, they have now some "credit" to spend. You can just wonder where and when they will do this.

At this point (and probably every other one too) I don’t think Russia can be considered one thing that acts in the country’s be interest. Between Putin, the oligarchs, the army and the other factions I have missed, there are a lot of motivations and we don’t see them.

Which ones? https://energyindustryreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/...

That is a good point, they also could be targeted. But I think there is enough redundancy in that case.

Especially they can be repaired very quickly and the crews have a lot of experience given that damages e.g. from anchor droppings, earthquakes or ground-trawler fishing nets are very common.

Worst case would be someone damaging a lot of cables at once, e.g. near Highbridge, Skewjack, Bude (UK) or Bilbao (Portugal) - almost all Europe-US links end there [1], so a single sabotage submarine could place time-based explosives that cause a sudden catastrophic loss, large enough to overwhelm the capacity of cable runner ships.

In any case, a complete loss of communication between the US and Europe is highly unlikely. European traffic would simply be redirected among the bunch of SEA-ME-WE cables and hop from there over Malaysia and Japan to the US East Coast. A ton more latency and likely much less capacity along the route, but enough to survive.

[1] https://www.submarinecablemap.com/

Is it generally feasible to increase the capacity of surviving links dramatically "simply" by upgrading the equipment on land to the newest/most expensive stuff? Or would you need to upgrade all the repeaters in the sea as well?

Fascinatingly, I had thought the same as you, but it seems at least some submarine cables can be upgraded after installation, e.g. EIG [1] and AJC [2]. No idea what they do with the repeaters though, the distances involved in these cables are definitely higher than the 100km spacing repeaters have [3]. Maybe someone can chime in with direct experience?

[1] https://www.submarinenetworks.com/en/systems/asia-europe-afr...

[2] https://www.computerworld.com/article/3485615/capacity-upgra...

[3] https://www.networkworld.com/article/2235353/the-incredible-...

One would hope, but it's probably pretty easy for a nation state to attack dozens or more cables, and the sea is pretty huge and hard to police

https://www.submarinecablemap.com/

Time to get a ham radio license maybe

Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2. All I have to say is wow. 58% of Germany’s gas came from Nord Stream 1.

How big of a deal is it for the pipelines to be filled in seawater?

Some german sources said that unless it gets fixed soon the seawater will quickly corrode the metal pileines. Other people said that this can be prevented by pumping gas (air?) to keep the tube over pressurised but not sure for how long this can be done or whether it is happening. But if there are multiple holes at least a portion of this is definetely filled with water by now..

But I think by now the project is dead, its just a scrap metal..

Pipelines are finished -- can't be used for anything now. Maybe scuba training or something in the future. With some luck maybe exposed parts will assist aquatic life in forming reefs etc. The harsh reality is this project should never have been given the go ahead -- it made economic sense but not political sense.

Germany essentially switched from baseload nuclear to baseload Russian gas.

I personally can't think of any other logical explication than German politicians having been "bought by Russians" to explain that decision.

I definitely saw this kind of stuff coming like 10+ years ago as they went full steam ahead with energiewende.

> I personally can't think of any other logical explication than German politicians having been "bought by Russians" to explain that decision.

German here. Russian gas was absurdly cheap, I paid 5ct/kWh in 2015 and that included taxes. Large industry which was exempted from at least some of these paid even less. There simply was no economically viable alternative, even renewables today are more expensive than Russian gas was back then.

Yes, there may also have been corruption involved as well (just look at former Chancellor Schröder who started the entire NS1/2 mess, Merkel just ran along with it), but the primary motivation always has been price.

Hell even the primary motivation for NS1/2 was price, as there are no transit fees associated with it, unlike Drushba/Soyuz. The second motivation obviously was to reduce the leverage of Ukraine.

Side note: Assuming a household with 12.000 kWh/a thermal energy consumption, that was 600€ a year/50€ a month back then. At current gas prices, it's ten times that... which is the cause for widespread discontent and outright existential fear in society at the moment. When you only have 200-300€ left after rent and necessities, 50€ for heating is manageable - but 500€ certainly is not, and the new gas prices representing the current future market prices that will hit in next year aren't even priced in.

> I definitely saw this kind of stuff coming like 10+ years ago as they went full steam ahead with energiewende.

Lol what? Energiewende? You mean Mr. Altmaier and his conservative friends sabotaging the wind and solar industry wherever they could, leading to well over 100k lost jobs [1]? Fuck that shit.

[1] https://www.iwr.de/news/erneuerbare-energien-beschaeftigen-u...

> There simply was no economically viable alternative,

nucl... ah no that's bad

> nucl... ah no that's bad

The madness factor of nuclear power - safety, waste, availability factor (France!) - aside, nuclear power is economically even worse than brown coal [1, page 8], once you include externalized costs such as teardown, maintenance of the permanent waste dump sites or the insurance that an NPP would need without the taxpayer guarantee.

[1] https://www.bundestag.de/resource/blob/887090/1867659c1d4edc...

does it take into consideration future emission costs? I speak a bit of german but not enough. I think it says in 2021 prices of everything?

OP gave the price - would nuclear have been cheaper than that? And if even if it was, it takes an age to come online.

It should have been done, but the reasons it wasn’t aren’t just outright corruption or anti-nuclear sentiment.

Nuclear is the opposite of economically viable. It's the most expensive way to generate electricity.

>There simply was no economically viable alternative

This was the lie that German politicians propagated after having been compromised. The obvious reality is Nuclear is economically and environmentally viable.

You can't heat homes with nuclear, that is the problem - you can't build them close enough to dense cities to make district heating viable due to the accident and terrorism risk.

Yes, you can use nuclear power for electric heating, but well... France shows at the moment why this is a particularly foolish idea, their complete inability to keep their historic NPPs running and the new ones actually built (Flamanville...) is causing a lot of strain on the entire European electricity and even gas market, because German gas peakers now have to compensate for the lack of French NPPs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerhard_Schröder

> Gerhard Fritz Kurt "Gerd" Schröder is a German lobbyist and former politician, who served as the chancellor of Germany from 1998 to 2005|

> Since leaving public office, Schröder has worked for Russian state-owned energy companies, including Nord Stream AG, Rosneft, and Gazprom

They're not even trying to be subtle about it, it's just plain sad

The Finnish gas grid provider said that it is not too bad as long as they are not left in that state for too long.

To fix them they would have to be filled with seawater anyway as you would need equal pressure on inside and outside the pipe to do any fixes.

But more importantly I doubt there is any political will to actually fix these. Russian gas in EU is as good as dead in the short term future. And by the time there would be the will to use these pipes again EU should have moved off gas for the most part anyway.

Hard to say, if they get filled with ice plugs could be out of commission permanently.

So is it now free-for-all to destroy underwater infrastructure?

The first problem will be to prove who did it. After that, I do not think it will be "free".

Nordics/baltic states have bunch of surveillance in the Baltic Sea since forever, as Russia has been discovered time and time again to do their own surveillance there. I guess we just have to wait until evidence gets served from any of the states around the sea.

It no longer matters who did it, if you think about it.

Think submarine cables of global cloud providers? ;-) Will Elon Musk and the Military be the only ones with a working Internet?

What are the potential environmental impacts of this?

Not much. Unlike oil, the gas either dissolves in water or rises into the atmosphere - assuming that 100% of the gas rise up, it's the CO2 equivalent of two weeks of Germany's emissions [1].

Yes, it's a lot, but unlike an oil spill there won't be much other impact.

[1] https://www.zeit.de/wissen/umwelt/2022-09/nord-stream-pipeli...

Minimal. Its only the pipes leftover gas that is escaping, compared to a oil field. Together with that gas rises, contamination of water is minimal, again compared to what an oil leak would do. Adding up to that experts say that long-term effects of these leaks are essentially not going to be noticeable.[1]

https://news.err.ee/1608730996/scientist-minimal-lasting-env...

https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/2022-09-28/ty-article/nor...

1.3 million cars driving for a year [0]

[0]https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/28/nord-str...

According to this tweet [1] by someone at a German climate NGO it is about 15 Mt CO2e, looking at the greenhouse effect of the Methane in the next 20 years.

[1] https://twitter.com/SaschaBay/status/1574664872293715968

I m beginning to think it might be sabotage ...

this was reported by H I Sutton June 18 : "2 #Russian Navy warships operating off Danish island in Baltic yesterday Matches broadly with claimed Russian Navy violated Danish territorial waters earlier that day. Denmark has supplied Harpoon to #Ukraine and was hosting a democracy festival on the island" https://twitter.com/CovertShores/status/1538270419551145989

Nord streams are dead in the water.

Brandon's Prophecy:

https://www.newsweek.com/video-biden-saying-end-nord-stream-...

Had to be done in the case anyone thought to ask for negotiations or plan to muddle through the winter with heater set to 19C.

I find interesting how inside this post, opinions not supporting the hypothesis of USA behind the sabotage are being systematically voted negative...

Impressive how one way of thinking and acting go together...

and yes, this of course will be downvoted... why try to understand others points of view? Better silent them!

I do not understand how damaging the pipeline would benefit the US.

Preventing Germany from negotiating a new deal in winter when they're out of cheap gas

Making sure Europe will buy more of their fracking LPG

Making it harder to secure a diplomatic end to the war (selling more weapons, strengthening their position in europe, &c.)

Some other long term shenanigans that will be declassified in 50 years

It wouldn't be the firs time the US does something shady, I'm not saying it's them but I would absolutely not be surprised if it was, I would also not be surprised if it was Russia even though it sounds equally dumb

https://ec.europa.eu/energy/sites/ener/files/eu-us_lng_trade...

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-lng-exports-europ...

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-wikileaks-idUSKBN0...

I thought that would push Germany and Italy to go nuclear, instead of distancing from it. Maybe short time they have to buy gas somewhere else, but for the long run, I see nuclear power as alternative.

I do not understand how messing with the gas of EU will difficult a diplomatic way out in a conflict between Ukraine and Russland. Nobody inside the NATO wants this to escalate a little bit more. (I hope at least)

Don't forget stealing Europe's industrial base!

https://www.wsj.com/articles/high-natural-gas-prices-push-eu...

Honestly as evil as it is, for once the US foreign meddling seems to make sense from a purely strategic standpoint.

(By contrast, not sure what Iraq, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan etc gained us (unless you happened to be a military contractor or weapons manufacturer).)

Iraq made some sense if you see it as a war to make sure no major energy-capital flows went through the Euro (Iraq started selling their oil in Euros in the late 90s). The US war machine wants to go to war with everyone, from time to time American economic interests lets them.

Ah, interesting, thx!

Iraq: Saddam wanted to move to the Euro for his oil trade.

Libya: Gaddhafi wanted to move to a gold backed African Lira.

Afghanistan was initially due to 9/11 and then became a weapons testing ground.

Syria: "We're keeping the oil."

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/keeping-oil-syria-trump-cons...

> By contrast, not sure what Iraq, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan etc gained us (unless you happened to be a military contractor or weapons manufacturer

Pretty sure it's a big point, gotta keep the war machine running

None of these points make any sense to me.

For as long as the war goes on, Germany will buy as much US gas as it can get its hands on, to the exclusion of Russian gas, as best it can and regardless of price. US energy companies aren't going to benefit more.

Furthermore, say what you will about Biden, but his gradual approach to sanctions at the beginning of the war shows that he's been trying to end things diplomatically from the start. Go back and read news articles from March about the war hawks in Congress shrieking that Biden wasn't being aggressive enough. See also the withdrawal from Afghanistan; Biden's not a hawk.

Furthermore, right now the US's premier geopolitical goal is to assert its hegemony via weakening Russia. For that, it needs NATO solidarity, which is at an all-time high. A weakened German resolve due to freezing weather would threaten to enrich Russia, but would not otherwise break NATO's resolve; the rest of the sanctions would continue unabated. After all, Germany has still already been buying gas from Russia all this time. But backstabbing an ally would shake NATO's resolve, if it were discovered. It's all downside and no upside for the US. It would be an irrational desperation move, and the US is not currently desperate.

I don't know who did this. Weirdly, I don't think it was Russia either; Putin may be acting erratically, but I think there would be ways to sow discord among NATO with less cost to Russia than this. We need more information.

> None of these points make any sense to me.

Wait and see, the fake weapons of mass destruction or the spying on allies didn't make sense either, yet they both happened

No, those made perverse sense. The US was desperate to be seen doing something, anything for the sake of retribution in the wake of 9/11, it would have fabricated an excuse to invade so-and-so country regardless of Cheney's graft. The financial motivation was a convenient byproduct of the geopolitical motivation. But in this case, the financial motivation would be in direct opposition to the geopolitical motivation.

mmm, it's a bit more crude than just sign a deal with Russia and just go and make happen not one, but two Nordstreams, not precisely backstabbing those two, but you see the point: Everyone out there is at end looking for themselves.

Hence, there's no guarantee whatsoever than if EU begins to crunch under the winter, it wouln't just call it a day and request please open ND 1 + 2, we just need to refill reserves, then little more, and then they're back to full operational status.

So, it could weaken NATO just if it can be fully demonstrated, no doubt at all, that it was them. If you can't, it is just twitter and inet noise, nobody can base politics over rumors.

I said in another comment, this is war - kinetic, hybrid, cyber -, quite a difference with the usual geopolitical game. Some stuff you just can bet, you need to be sure.

At the end, if Germany or EU as whole steps back from its current status (re-opening ND1+2, or other actions), it could equally desastrous from NATO. Now you have no good choices, just bads ones and worst ones.

The argument is that it prevents Germany from making a deal with Russia once the freezing winter sets in.

It also limit's Russia's ability to profit from selling their gas to the EU and may benefit US energy companies by raising prices.

It is one straight benefit: now UE hasn't any other option but to relay on US + allies, to be gas providers.

This was not the case with Nordstream 1 + 2 in operational state.

Again, US + allies as much as the russian folks, aren't playing any games, this is war for resources (the whole bunch of gas under south Ukraine), you have to win, there's no other acceptable outcome.

It locks Germany into its geopolitical position.

Germany's fucked, been trying to get an independent strategic position for 100+ years and continually sabotaged by Anglo-Saxons.

Germany screwed itself by ending natural gas exploration and shutting down its nuclear plants. They’re about to burn more coal and wood this year than they have in years.

The efforts by these news outlets to peddle pure propaganda like "energy experts think it's Russia" is ridiculous. We have zero proof as of now that it even was sabotage, although I admit there is a lot of circumstantial evidence that it was deliberate.

If Western governments have any evidence it was Russia, then present it; otherwise STFU with the propaganda. Just because one is an "energy expert" doesn't make one God.

It makes no sense for it to be Russia or Germany, they can simply turn off the flow (Russia already did). So they have lost control as it cannot now be turned on.

Any other country, and factions within Germany or Russia might have a motive.

But yeah, people are rushing to fit every event into a "Russia bad" narrative...

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