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miohtama

This is the pipe that connects Finland and Estonia.

Russia is suspected.

Wikipedia page on the pipe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balticconnector

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A newspaper is publishing that 'government sources' suspect Russia, there's a press conference at 17:30 Finnish time

https://www.iltalehti.fi/politiikka/a/07fa3666-2804-4d9a-98c... (in Finnish)

> "Although much is to be determined, in mid-Sep @gapinskimj wrote in our Kaliningrad Military Digest about the Russian Sibiryakov hydrographic survey vessel's movements near the Balticconnector. We're not pointing fingers, but it's highly likely that Russians surveyed the pipe"

https://twitter.com/konrad_muzyka/status/1711388016000827427...

So far I haven't seen anything indicating Russian involvement, both seismologists and the navy have confirmed that they haven't detected anything that indicates sabotage. Has there been any additional information after those?

Literally the article

The article states one unnamed policy source, whereas the navy and seismologists have made public, named, specific statements. That's why I'm asking if there's anything of substance beyond she-said-he-said.

They haven't detected an explosion. There are other ways to break a pipeline.

No one is arguing that. I've asked a question of whether there's more concrete, factual information and so far it seems the answer is no.

"NORSAR have detected a probable explosion along the Finnish coast of the Baltic Sea at 01:20 (local time in Finland) on 8th October 2023. /.../ The local magnitude of the event has been estimated at 1.0, which is much lower than the Nord Stream explosion detected in September 2022."

https://www.jordskjelv.no/meldinger/seismic-signal-detected-...

I wished people would have learned to be a bit more careful, after the false allegations against Russia in the NordStream bombings.

> false allegations against Russia

Only way to know they're false is if you know who actually did it. Do you?

There's also cui bono.

How would Russia benefit from destroying pipelines that it can just turn off?

It's like burning bridges for no reason, so game-theoretically speaking it doesn't make much sense.

It also might have been a play by putin to weaken/put in line his gazprom cronies.

You are not wrong, but as always, reality is more nuanced than assigning utilities to a game. Russia would benefit in two ways:

a) Sending a message about capabilities and willingness to attack infrastructure (in NATO countries!),

b) Sowing distrust and misinformation (see e.g. Hersh article and US-Germany relations).

If you believe (big if!) Hersh's single source was a Russian asset, then b) worked wonderfully.

Overall I'm with you, current evidence doesn't point towards Russia.

- Panic in the gas market causing rising prices

- Causes accusations between NATO members

- An attempt to claim force majeure to get out of their gas contract with Germany so that Germany can't seize their frozen Russian funds for non delivery.

Also, one shouldn't assume that an apparatus which blundered its way into this costly Ukraine quagmire for no benefit is acting 100% rationally.

A commonly missed detail is that only one of the two Nordstream 2 pipes was blown up. After the event, Putin reiterated that he was "ready" to resume gas deliveries, if only the EU would play ball:

https://www.euronews.com/2022/10/12/president-putin-tells-eu...

This followed a crescendo of Russian shutdowns of Nordstream 1, all "explained" with blatant excuses,

https://carnegieendowment.org/politika/87837

https://www.politico.eu/article/olaf-scholz-nothing-stands-i...

Blowing up one of the Nordstream 2 pipes was the remaining way to put even more pressure on Germany ahead of the heating season. Germany had already decided not to certify Nordstream 2, so from Russia's point of view there was only economic upside to whacking it: a finite chance of Germany caving vs both pipelines remaining unused for the foreseeable future.

On top of that, there was an obvious security-related upside. By demonstrating the vulnerability of Western energy and communications infrastructure, the event delivered a not-so-subtle threat. The choice of locations was also "interesting": in the economic zone of NATO candidate Sweden, close to its electric cable to Poland, and in the economic zone of Denmark, close to the new pipeline from Norway to Poland.

Game theory goes out of the window when considering the actions of megalomaniacs.

As far as I know, they never figured out who did that. Could have been Russia although the reasoning seems absurd, with excuses like, Putin is so crazy he would blow up his own pipeline.

Anyway, the fact that they just threw an accusation like that, widely in the media, and never bothered to definitively conclude an investigation into the cause puts all "pipeline" news into boy-who-cried-wolf territory for me. (Enjoy that sentence.)

Der Spiegel[1][2] and Washington Post would like a word with you ...

I can't speak for the rest of "the media," but what I remember was a different narrative, more along the lines of, "This sounds like something that Russia would do, but it really only hurts Russia, so maybe they didn't. Hey look at that new shiny story over there ..."[3]

Der Spiegel stuck with the story and is convinced it was "Ukraine," but it isn't clear to me if they mean Ukraine the state or Ukrainian citizens with a bunch of explosives and a yacht.

Which, I'm sorry, I know natural gas is important, but what fun I want to see the movie.

[1] https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/investigating-th...

[2] https://archive.ph/20230526120614/https://www.spiegel.de/pol...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Nord_Stream_pipeline_sabo...

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