Why would Russia want to even get out of those contracts? If Europe is willing to pay, they will gladly supply gas, as they have done for many many decades. Even at the peak of the cold war, they were reliably supplying gas to Western Germany for example. It is very lucrative for them. And in any case, why do contracts between Russia and Europe even matter at this point. Any party can just do whatever they want.
There is no point is "sending a message", it's very obvious that it is possible to blow up an underwater pipeline. Anyone worth sending a message to would have already known its possible.
The obvious real motivation here is to prevent any negotiation over re-opening the pipeline.
Then explain why Russia had already cut off the supply of gas for clearly spurious reasons. And why Russia has used shutting off gas as an economic weapon before, including against Georgia and Ukraine in the past.
I’m not convinced Gazprom would’ve done this to get out of penalties, but your statement is incorrect. Contracts still matter because this isn’t an all out existential war where nothing else matters. Relations will have to normalise at some point, and Gazprom is still selling to other countries and can’t show itself to them as an unreliable partner that doesn’t care about delivery contracts.
Sending a message is not just about demonstrating the capability, as you’ve focused on, but showing the willingness to actually do it.
Whats the point of turning off the gas as leverage if it *stays off*? That would be no leverage at all.
Showing that just switching away from Russia as a supplier is not enough to be safe, since they could just hit that one just as easily.
As mentioned elsewhere in this discussion Russia blew up the Georgian pipeline transporting gas between the two countries once before.
You notice that when Russia turned off the gas before, they never said, "because we want to screw you", but instead cited maintanance. If they could just turn off the tap without reason and contracts be damned, why would they do that?
Russia cited maintenance when turning off NS1 because they probably had maintenance to do that was difficult in a war zone. Also, NS1 traverses Ukraine, and they had previously accused Ukraine of siphoning.
It’s in Russia’s interest to make its gas delivery reliable— that’s how you keep Europe dependent. The US wanted to end that dependence and ramp up US LNG market share. https://peoplesworld.org/article/pipeline-ploy-how-u-s-natur...