> 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!