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Comment by mhermher | Hacker News Reader

I think it's unreasonable to believe that you could intentionally half-way blow up a pipeline. And the only reasonable conclusion here is that the intention was to blow all of it up.

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.

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> 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.

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.

The point of turning off the gas is to demonstrate the point that you can turn it off *or on*. That you have control over it.

Whats the point of turning off the gas as leverage if it *stays off*? That would be no leverage at all.

A new Norway-Poland pipeline was opened one day before the NS attacks. And the attack occurred not far from it.

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.

Pipelines can be repaired and one of the NS2 pipes was left undamaged.

As mentioned elsewhere in this discussion Russia blew up the Georgian pipeline transporting gas between the two countries once before.

Each pipeline consists of two strands that are some distance apart. So blowing them up separately is certainly possible. In the end those are 4 pipelines, they're just not all named separately.

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