Who Blew Up Nord Stream? Investigators Focus on Mysterious Passengers on a Yacht

The entire discussion on what exactly you need to perform this operation has resulted in a whole bunch of contradictory opinions.

And how to expect a Navy/Army/Air-force to notice and study in detail what every little boat is doing. And even more difficult to notice what a diver or two are doing.

And you're assuming they actually went all the way down; someone else mentioned an ROV, but if you know where the pipeline is you can probably sink explosives on a weight too. It doesn't have to be accurate, not when the pipe will collapse and be contaminated with little encouragement.

Since we're well into speculation mode here, try this: footage of the aftermath[0] reveals an enormous 50-meter hole in the pipe, which was made of pretty thick metal. I suppose it would have to be, to carry gas under pressure from within as well as withstand being kept empty, as it was at the time of the explosion, under pressure from without.

How big does an explosive have to be to cause that much damage? Pretty big, I think. Big and heavy.

How close does an explosive that big have to be? Not very close, I think.

Of course, there's a trade-off! The close it is, the less big it has to be and the farther it is, the smaller it can be. But a 50-meter is much bigger than it needed to be to disable the pipeline. It is almost as if the people dropping the bomb couldn't be sure how close they would get with it, so built a big enough bomb to ensure rupturing it whether it landed directly on top of it or a number of meters away. Maybe they got lucky, and expected a smaller hole. Maybe they got unlucky and expected a bigger one.

I mean, the BBC footage involved zero people getting in the water. They just went to the area and dropped in a camera on a long cable and navigated to the hole.

It's possible that nobody even got in the water for the bombing. They could have used a "fish finder" to make sure they were pretty close to the pipe, and even drop a test object to see how the underwater currents might shift it, but it was a pretty big bomb, I think it probably mostly went straight down. Close enough for a big bomb to make a hole in a big pipe, anyway.

0. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-63297085

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwIWG5_rgC0 [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aV2kBfhqkGk

>Achim Schlöffel, a German extreme diver who runs a diving school and helps companies protect vessels and underwater installations from sabotage, said explosives could have been planted by a group of well-trained technical divers accustomed to working at such depths—around 80 meters—assuming they had several days to do so.

>Six divers, he said, could have lowered the explosives in several dives using commercially available equipment such as underwater scooters or propulsion vehicles, airlifting bags and buoys, and a portable sonar. “I know dozens of professional divers who would be up to the task,” Mr. Schlöffel said.

Only thing I'm lacking are the forged passports and the explosives.

A sufficiently rich Ukrainian in the construction industry or something like that could probably have the right contacts for both of those[*].

It also probably takes less explosives than you think since the water is going to amplify the blast (pretty sure the US Navy dive manual has a good section on explosives in water and top tips like making sure that you at least get your torso out of the water if you can).

You wouldn't need a decompression chamber for those dives at that depth.

(The _Shadow Divers_ book also documents a colossal screw up on bad gas for the depth, and the hazards of going inside of wrecks at depth, which don't apply here)

> I am also wondering how this work was performed without Norway or the US noticing it.

Most things that most boats do aren't noticed by anyone. If it wasn't that way, then drug smuggling would be a whole lot harder.

[*] I'm betting Ukrainian because the pipeline wasn't benefiting them and was supplying piles of cash to their enemy, it seems kinda obvious to me.

I don't believe Russia did it though; sure they wanted to shut down gas flow to Europe, but they did that by just... turning it off.

Ukraine is a candidate, because forcefully shutting off a source of income to Russia would help them. I don't believe that (+ the sanctions) have been able to stop Russia though, they've got other sources of income, enough savings to last a while, and a strong grip on the population so it cannot revolt or anything.

And the US is a candidate, on the one side as an ally of Ukraine trying to force Europe to stop sending money to Russia, and on the other as a seller of LNG at increased prices.

But it could be any, and I doubt any conclusive investigation will be published as-is or unsealed during our lifetime.

Now none of this means it actually was Russia, I don't claim to know any better than anyone else. But there was certainly a motive (for some in) Russia to want NordStream out of the way.

I'm not saying they did it, but just wanted to counter your argument that "there was no motive for Russia to blow up the pipeline"

Not true, and not the same thing. When you shoot the hostage you now who did it to put the blame in court, this is still unclear who did what.

Russia's motive of destroying the pipeline was to legally shut down gas for Europe during the war without incurring any legal aftermath for it.

Simply just cutting off the gas would have made Russia legally liable for damages in court later when it will want to resume business in the future after the war.

Having the pipeline mysteriously blow up gives Russia plausible deniability for not being able to supply gas to Europe during the war:

"You see your honor, we wanted to fulfill our contractual obligation of supplying gas to Europe, but we couldn't because the pipeline was destroyed. Not our fault."

It was already announced the hostage was going to be shot at that point tho? Germany said they'd call it quits and then did. The company construct behind it was going to go bankrupt.

And the thing is, it works. Propaganda works. HN is not some enlightened community that is immune, you'll get downvoted for fairly obvious conclusions that run counter to the official narrative.

Once you stop treating Russia like a monolith prone to only rational geopolitical moves, suddenly motives are everywhere.