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Comment by treis | Hacker News Reader

This is a fascinating mystery. There's at least 4 parties that you can make arguments for/against:

Russia

For: Plunge Europe into an energy crisis to force concessions in Ukraine

Against: It looks a lot like a glass cannon to me. Meaning, Europe will now change their behavior to remove dependence on Russian energy.

USA

For: They've been against the Nords from the beginning and could pull something like this off

Against: Big escalation, huge potential blow back from Europe, and economic fallout is bad for the midterm elections

Ukraine

For: Removes a large source of Russian leverage over Europe

Against: Doesn't seem like they could pull it off and it risks the support from Europe they do have

Random European Country

For: Lots of them don't like the dependence on Russian energy and many of them have the means

Against: Huge escalation with Russia and risks discord amongst the EU

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Russia could just turn off the taps instead of blowing it up... Russia spent billions building these pipes to bypass transit fees through other countries.

This is not a mystery. The US has the most to gain from this: increase Europe's energy dependence on the US by literally forcing Europe to not use cheap Russian energy

People got so bought into the "Russia always bad, NATO always good" propaganda line that they have to perform Olympics level mental gymnastic to try and put the square peg into the round hole.

> Russia spent billions building these pipes

Exactly. And where do you think at least half those billions of government money has ended? In the pockets of all involved in the building them. And no new pipes are being build now. Not very profitable for the oligarchs, isn't it?

Why these unknowns didn't blew second pipe of NS2? It is moderately possible that it was done to pressure Germany to open NS2 (and it may happen next year, nobody knows how future will be shaped). This will legalize NS2 and then Russia can repair 3 other pipes (and repair corp will pocket half of the funds, again).

Also legalizing NS2 will pave the way to building 3rd and 4th pipes in the Turkey system, which Kremlin want very much. And builders of these potential southern pipes will do what? Correct, they will pocket half of the money.

There are a lot of moderately probably arguments for Russia doing it, and all involved can profit from this - Germany, Turkey, Kremlin, Russian builders and gas oligarchs. Sure, Russian people will be poorer, but when it was ever a consideration of Kremlin? :)

Why would Europe sit idly by while the US unilaterally reshapes their energy policies?

And we're talking about 50 meters of a pipeline several hundred KMs long. It's a trivial repair job compared to the effort to build the pipeline and its economic value. It temporarily changes the calculus but doesn't change the long term picture if Germany still wants to buy gas from Russia.

Plus, it seems likely to galvanize Europe into becoming much more of an independent actor. Destroying a major energy source is pretty far over the line of how you'd expect allies to treat each other. It would be a dramatic step and thus far the response has been pretty drama free.

> Why would Europe sit idly by while the US unilaterally reshapes their energy policies?

Because these are our client states. NATO's purpose is to bend Europe's will across the Atlantic and away from having mutually beneficial relationships with Africa and Asia.

They aren't our allies; they are our client states. The European leaders align with what Washington wants, and not what the majority of their people want. The US doesn't have allies... only interests.

We are crushing German industry; this is beneficial to us, because it allows our industry to thrive and helps reshore production. We get to sell more energy to Europe; this is beneficial to us... and so on.

The US has by far the most to lose by doing this. Blowing up Germany's energy supply in their backyard, without them finding out? Can you possibly imagine anyone sane agreeing to that?

Russia risks what? Gas they can't sell anyway? Their incentive to stop the war?

The US risks NATO by blowing up Germany's energy. It's completely insane.

> Against: Doesn't seem like they could pull it off

This is very wrong. My brother is a technical diver, and after the blast I had a long chat with him about what it would do to achieve this. After going over the location, the estimated amount of explosives needed to break the pipes, and the depth, he came to the conclusion that he could have done it with 2 friends and a budget of ~10k€.

This was before these new pictures that paint a picture of a more powerful blast than he assumed, but it is still well within the capability of a bunch of very determined activists. This absolutely didn't need to be a state actor.

I came out of the discussion with a newfound appreciation just how fragile a lot of our billion-euro infrastructure is, and how easy it would be to disrupt.

How is Ukraine getting explosives and divers to Nord stream without being caught? That's the issue. You'd need a fairly sophisticated spy network with experience in covert operations. I don't think Ukraine has that.

How did Ukraine pull off the truck bomb on the Kerch Bridge then? They clearly have some capability.

Who says they did?

Both Russia and Ukraine.

Ukraine says it was a false flag operation:

>But Mykhailo Podolyak, a top adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, says Ukrainian intelligence believes that Russian forces planned the attack as a pretense to escalate the war in Ukraine.

>"The Crimea bridge incident gives the Russian military a convenient alibi for all of its defeats in southern Ukraine," Podolyak told Ukraine's national broadcaster.

https://www.npr.org/2022/10/13/1128625322/crimea-bridge-atta...

Underwater drones would be a rather easy way, no deep sea divers needed. Just have a drone pull a mine-clearing charge (a long flexible hose filled with high explosives) and drop it next to the pipe and detonate it.

These pipes lay at ~70 m depth so the drones can be wire-controlled. A small fishing vessel would be enough to deliver them.

These are several inch thick pipes encased in a foot of concrete. And they made 4 holes IIRC. So we're talking probably a ton or so of explosives.

That's not drag a hose behind a commercial drone. That's specialized equipment with trained operators. I just don't see Ukraine being able to pull that off.

I think you underestimate the efficacy of explosives under water:

...since an underwater explosion (particularly one underneath a hull) can produce greater damage than an above-surface one of the same explosive size. Initial damage to a target will be caused by the first shockwave; this damage will be amplified by the subsequent physical movement of water and by the repeated secondary shockwaves or bubble pulse. Additionally, charge detonation away from the target can result in damage over a larger hull area. [1]

The pipes have ...two layers; the inner pipe steel which is between 27-41mm thick with antifriction coating and a concrete steel outer coating between 60-110mm thick with corrosion protection... [2], far from the 'several inch thick pipes encased in a foot of concrete' you mention. They were also under high pressure, probably around 200 bar at point of attack [3]. Given that the pipes are at a depth of around 70 meters there this means they had an overpressure of around 193 bar so it would not have taken that much of a crack to cause them to rupture. Once ruptured the whiplashing effect - think what happens to a water hose when you turn open the tap but now with 193 bar of pressure behind it - would take care of the rest.

[1] https://wikiless.org/wiki/Underwater_explosion?lang=en

[2] https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/nord-stream-risk-of-...

[3] https://www.wermac.org/nordstream/nordstream_part3.html

News outlets said it wouldn’t be possible for divers but 80m isn’t impossible for divers. The one thing that makes me think state actor is the timing of the bombs. Too close for activists to coordinate IMHO.

There are a lot easier targets someone can attack for undefined terror than this pipeline.

The motivation should make sense, Russia makes sense, it was probably Russia.

And in regards to past Russian behavior even more realistic.

Plus Ukraine being found out by their lifeline countries (NATO) is wayyyyy too big of a chance to take. This was 99.9% likely to be the russians.

Danish-Swedish investigators estimated the explosion to be equivalent to 500kg of TNT. That hardly sounds like a three men job to me.

> [Russia] Against: It looks a lot like a glass cannon to me. Meaning, Europe will now change their behavior to remove dependence on Russian energy.

Europe was _already_ working about as hard as they could on removing their dependence on Russia though.

Another way to see this would be that around now might be the last chance for something like this to hurt Europe and still have time to put political pressure on afterwards.

If this had been done in the middle of winter, Europe would treat it as an attack and would be on their guard, but now Russia can play political games in the background to destabilize Europe or at least reduce Europe's will to help Ukraine.

The thing about motivations is that there's also the possibility of one party doing this just to have the blame put on another party.

Seems risky to think you'd be able to get away with this without someone developing some reasonable suspicions. Which makes me lean towards one of the Western parties. Don't think Russia would be able to pull this off without getting caught and if caught you'd think the US would be trumpeting the proof from the roof tops.

It would be a high risk play but Russia is likely the one to lose the least from it if caught given their current position. Russia is also a nuclear power so even if the US had proof they may not want to escalate the conflict that much. There's also the question of the truth even mattering since in the age of constant online propaganda you can influence enough people to have an impact even if the documented truth is otherwise. Then again the current US administration may feel the risk is worth it for a better chance in the upcoming election.

This is a classic FSB/KGB propaganda technique ("So you're saying there's a chance" --Kruschev). This is 99.9% the russians.

Poland: they hate Russia and Germany and a job like this is well within the capabilities of GROM.

For Russia, in the against you should add that they mostly owned the pipeline, they could have switch it off without destroying it and destroying it means not being able to use it to sell oil to Western europe against. I can't see any way it would make sense to them, even accounting bad calculation like the Ukraine invasion.

NS1 was already switched off for about a full month by the time the explosions happened, and NS2 was never put into production (and was unlikely to ever be put into production after Russia invaded Ukraine).

One of the theories I've seen espoused is that Russia is basically going "nice pipeline, shame if something happened to it" to the new Norway-Poland pipeline which was inaugurated about the time of the explosion.

Switching it off might involve conractual penalties. Blowing it up and blaming it on whoever can be argued "force majeur".

Assuming that Russia aims (or aimed) to (re-)open the pipes one day blowing it up costs far more that those penalties.

Thinking of countries as singular, cohesive entities might be over simplified in this case.

Another thing for Russia, showing that they can and are not afraid to attack such infrastructure of EU countries. It's safe because it's "their" pipeline and cheap if they don't think they would've resumed operation in the future anyway.

This story sounded plausible as well...

https://thelawdogfiles.com/2022/09/nordstream.html

I want to believe this explanation (under Occam's Razor), but from the article: "Danish police believe 'powerful explosions' blew *four holes* in the pipe and its newer twin, Nord Stream 2.

Wouldn't a rocketing hydrate plug likely blow a single hold in the pipe?

Multiple plugs?

Just watched one of the videos. I'm not an expert on this at all, but it looks to me like the pipe was blown out from the inside.

https://twitter.com/GuyReuters/status/1582292909667516418

My best guess is that it was Russia for internal political reasons aka to remove the ability of Russia to back out and resume business as usual after some concessions.

The Russian government not being a monolith, there must be factions who’d like to stop fucking around in Ukraine and get back to printing money pumping gas to Europe. The peace incentive gets much weaker with the destruction of Nord Stream.

A speculation - why it couldn't be some private entity with strong political views? Either hired by state actor or not

Orchestrated by Ernst Stavro Blofeld and the SPECTRE. Why not?

The only one who would do this are the Russians. The risk vs. reward for the other nations (getting caught) is simply too high.

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