Russia says UK navy blew up Nord Stream, London denies involvement | Hacker News Reader

Russia says UK navy blew up Nord Stream, London denies involvement

reuters.com

Whoever did it, I can understand the motivation for a supporter of independent Ukraine to do it, because it cuts off a source of funds to Russia.

What I don’t understand is why (as some news reports / sources suggest) Russia would do it. What would they gain? If they want to cut off gas and use that as leverage, far better to shut off the gas and their end and leave the pipeline so that they can resume deliveries if the gas pressure gambit works. Blowing up the pipeline shuts off any potential of ever exporting their gas, which generates currency.

> can understand the motivation for a supporter of independent Ukraine to do it, because it cuts off a source of funds to Russia

No gas was going through those pipes. This impacted Russian funding to no degree.

> don’t understand is why (as some news reports / sources suggest) Russia would do it. What would they gain?

I'm honestly having trouble finding a great argument for anyone doing this. It could be a non-state actor. But Russia's benefit is multifold. It communicates a threat, e.g. willingness to damage Norwegian pipelines without getting caught. It distracts NATO and allied military assets, always a plus when at war. And it sows mayhem in the energy markets, which means prices go up. (Which happened.)

It also allows Russia to spin a narrative of the West as terrorists (which they have done), claim themselves as victims (which they have done), and maybe galvanize the people domestically that they are trying to mobilize.

Not that Putin has ever done a false flag to bolster his own popularity in Russia... oh... wait...

The fact that NS1 was temporarily shut down in July before the September explosion doesn’t mean it wasn’t a near and long term source of funds.

Also, if Russia wants to threaten Norway’s Europipe surely they can telegraph this in more effective ways than blowing up their own valuable gas pipes.

Putin may have an interest in destroying the pipelines himself

Inside Russia, there's probably some sentiment to end the war, dispose/blame everything on Putin, and resume the gas trade. If Putin removes that option, his opponents will have little to gain from getting rid of him as they'll inherit a mess with no way to rebuild.

It could have been negligence during maintenance:

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

This is super interesting, I think this is in fact my new favorite explanation.

(It's down right now but I found it at https://web.archive.org/web/20221001025812/https://thelawdog... )

Last week it was the United States, the next week it will be Poland.

To be fair, it probably was one of the three. I would put my money on the US.

I have felt that it was definitely the US... I mean President Biden literally said on Feb 7, 2022 that "We will bring an end to it [Nord Stream 2] if Russia invades Ukraine" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OS4O8rGRLf8

It seems wild to me that this isn't brought up more. Russia could totally have done it, but I mean blowing up a pipeline that took a long fucking time to build, at your cost, seems pretty irrational unless to just be a show of force against the EU.

Yeah, that video tells you that there is a very high chance that the US blew it (Nord Stream 2) up.

I'll be waiting for the 'fact checkers' to spin up 'what Biden actually meant' to completely deny this involvement.

Yeah I am getting downvoted on the comment you replied to for stating facts (this video exists where Biden says X)

The US is generally too smart, and powerful enough, to not get its/our hands dirty. We need plausible deniability at least.

Even when we commit the most severe war crimes (Iraq), nobody can do anything anyways -- but we don't want to give up that soft power when we can so easily get other folks to do our bidding.

If all else fails, we send in the CIA.

Israel does a lot for us, but in this case they were probably too close to Russia.

Who else could have enough sophistication to make it happen? UK would be a good choice, and they made a strategic decision long ago to stick with the US no matter what -- e.g. Iraq.

I find it hard to believe the UK would be stupid enough to do it directly, as opposed to some hired third party, at least, but you never know. They were already out of the EU, so maybe this was a parting gift to the Continent for all the Brexit-induced suffering.

If the UK did do it, it would be more likely a parting gift for the fact that Putin sent military personnel into the UK to assassinate [1] a naturalized Briton living there, not caring about others that might have been involved, and using poison that would definitely be traced back to Russia as a final "fuck you".

I doubt the UK did anything, personally. But Russia is seriously on the UK's shit-list, so if they did, it'd be understandable.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Alexander_Litvine...

i don't think that's very plausible -- because it would represent a massive escalation, would put whoever did it in serious legal jeopardy, and would severely hurt UK/EU relations -- and probably a bunch more reasons.

it's such a massive disaster that it could really only be done with tacit US approval, but probably a lot more than that.

given the EU's capitulation to US leadership/domination, whoever did it is probably safe.

still, i think of all the suffering that may be caused by the act...

the US has proven over decades that we'll do anything -- including the unthinkable -- to maintain our global dominance. now, Russia has just demonstrated their own willingness to go way too far -- with the invasion of Ukraine and all the crimes after. has yet another country taken a step towards Crazytown and proven that they too are willing to go way too far?

was it? i recall Russia saying it was 'the West' or some other party that would most benefit from it.

maybe someone else said it was the US?

I know the US and UK media are hellbent on saying Russia blew up their own pipeline. ok.

people tend to use throwaways for headlines that don't conform to US/West narratives, unfortunately. but i figured this article had AP approval, so would not be as easy to dismiss.

  US Media's Intellectual No-Fly-Zone on US Culpability in Nord Stream Attack (fair.org)
  14 points by throwaway_ns 21 days ago | hide | past | favorite | 6 comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33129935

Britain is notorious for having been called 'Perfidious Albion' for centuries. There is a good reason for that.

From 2015:

https://www.pipeline-journal.net/news/explosive-laden-drone-...

From March 8: Russia threatens to cut of Europe’s gas supply by closing off Nord Stream 1

https://edition.cnn.com/europe/live-news/ukraine-russia-puti...

Everything the west has done is a huge failure

They failed to shut down russia

They failed to become the voice of reason

They failed to become the peace actor

They failed to provide assistance to Ukrainian population

They failed to provide help to their own citizens due to rising price of energy and inflation

And worse, their secret service and intelligence team failed at hiding their mission and they suffer from massive leaks from their own employees

They are now trying to save the face by trying to slow down their escalation, since the nuclear threat propaganda flopped hard

This generation of western leaders are no match with their predecessors (wich were already no match with their own predecessors), this current batch should be replaced asap, specially considering that China, Pakistan and Brazil are next, and that doesn't look good at all

Reply on news.ycombinator.com