NS2 was already dead in the water at that point and Russia had already turned off the tap on NS1.
Also only one of the two NS2 pipes were destroyed, while both NS1 pipes were destroyed.
I think that pretty much rules out the US as a culprit.
And Russia has something to gain by blowing up NS1: Possibly getting out of some long-term contracts that would involve some hefty fines for non-delivery (without just voiding contracts outright which would look bad for potential new customers).
The ostensible motivation of a possible US/UK/Polish operation, as I understand it, was poisoning the well on peace negotiations. By removing the optionality of turning the lines back on, there is less for the Germans and Russians to work with, and therefore less to motivate diplomatic talks in the first place. The Germans may be committed to getting off Russian gas permanently, but they still have to get there from here without losing their economy.
The UK would create unnecessary pressure on its own gas market by taking it down, so no. If the US did it, then it was most likely a CIA op done through third parties and they won't get caught, not anytime soon anyway. But the US does things professionally and they would have blown up all the pipes as opposed to 3 out of 4, so it's probably not them. Poland? Possibly, but it takes a lot of guts. If they did it, na zdrowie to them. I'd say that it's most probably Russia who did it in order to blackmail Western Europe during the winter
and be able to declare force majeure on the contracts and also blame the UK/anglo saxons. Also how it was done, sloppy, with lots of explosives is typically Russian.
Interesting take— have you seen what the US has done in the Middle East lately?
At the end of the day, if Russia were involved, no one would be holding their tongues about the results of their investigations. The only reason the results are being kept secret is because the European vassal states are afraid of publicly accusing the US. Which, given that the US was at least complicit in an attack on Germany, I can’t really blame them.
I think they were speaking in terms of operational proficiency, not strategic wisdom. Whether or not you think assassinating Qasem Soleimani was a good idea, we inarguably did a very good job of it.
Illegally assassinating a foreign official on another country’s territory, in a place where any military activity is prohibited, is not only ill-advised, it’s extremely unimpressive. And we all know very well whose help was involved.
> But the US does things professionally and they would have blown up all the pipes as opposed to 3 out of 4
That's a shakey presumption. 3 out of 4 may have been a compromise between the arguments for taking out the pipelines and the arguments against it. We cannot know for certain how many pipelines the attacker, whoever it was, intended to destroy.
What do you mean it was dead in the water? It was ready to go. Only reason it wasn’t operational was because Germany didn’t certify the project yet— under pressure from the US. Germany and Russia were secretly negotiating and so the US had the pipeline taken care of permanently.
It was never gonna get certified after the invasion, which is what I meant with dead in the water.
And Germany and Russia negotiating over opening NS2?
That makes no sense whatsoever.
If Russia wanted to deliver gas it could have just continued with NS1 or one of the other three alternative pipelines that were available.
It would most certainly have been certified without US strong-arm tactics. And why on earth would it want to just continue with NS1 given that it traverses Ukraine? Ukraine extracted rent from NS1, siphoned gas from it, and could (further) sabotage it.
Got any evidence for the first statement? Germany stopped the certification process of NS2 the second Russia invaded Ukraine in February of this year.
The rest is also complete nonsense - NS1 doesn't go anywhere near Ukraine. It's a subsea pipeline in the Baltic sea.
Ukraine borders the Black sea and not the Baltic sea.
Also NS2 is right next to NS1..
Sorry, I misspoke— NS1 doesn’t go through Ukraine. I was alluding to the pipelines that do carry Russian gas through Ukraine, from which it extracts billions of dollars— all the more reason for US/UK/Ukrainian sabotage of Nordstream pipelines. As for Germany not certifying the pipeline, that’s all political theater.
Restarting the NS2 certification process was nowhere to be seen on the horizon, so there is no real point to blow it up from the standpoint of the US (nevermind that actually blowing it up would be insane for the US.. the reality would be diplomatic and soft-power options, of which the US has plenty).
It was dead already.
Also all signs were pointing towards NS1 and NS2 being dead in the water for the future too, since the gas storage was filling up despite no more imports at all from Russia, the new LNG terminals making good progress, existing LNG import terminals running at capacity.
And would still like to see any kind of evidence from you that Germany would have certified NS2 if the US hadn't said anything.
It was the threat that it would be turned back on that is the reason that rules in US as a culprit. It was already not being used! Russia would blow it up to get out of some contract? Does that sound like a serious idea to you? Do any contracts even matter between Russia and Europe at this point.
Then explain to me why the US would not blow up both pipes of NS2? And instead blew up NS1 completely?
That makes no sense for anyone but Russia (leave the option slightly ajar for selling gas later on).
And the contracts would not quite be irrelevant since they could then try to seize more assets from Russia.
Also a Norway-Poland gas pipeline was opened up just one day before the NS attacks, so could also be sending a message.
Seems unlikely. The US has successfully engaged in much more difficult, intricate operations successfully in the past. Here the attacker didn't even have to worry about collateral damage.
A former Navy SEAL was interviewed and stated pipelines are what they called (IIRC) "friendly targets" — it doesn't take much explosive to take them out (I imagine their pressurization helps, but I don't have subject matter knowledge).
> Do any contracts even matter between Russia and Europe at this point.
Doubtful. I think the most rational reason Russia might have done it was to remove a bargaining chip from any Russian challengers to Putin. But this seems like a stretch; if Putin thought some gazprom executive was going to use the pipeline to negotiate a peace with Europe, he'd probably just order that executive and his family murdered. That seems to be the way he operates.
Self-sabotage to preempt coups is not unheard of though. The organizational dysfunction and poorly trained state of several militaries around the world is probably attributable in part to self-sabotage, by politicians who fear military coups.
Any serious opposition to Putin is actually more hawkish than he is. Not quite something that is covered often in our press. There is no neo Yeltsin lurking in the shadows.
The idea here is that the (NATO) drone on the second pipeline had the wires cut and so failed to detonate, and Sweden recovered it and defused it. Therefore Sweden has the physical evidence and immediately shut down the investigation. The same thing happened in 2015, a NATO explosive drone was found under NS1, Sweden recovered and defused it. Both Sweden and Germany have said they know who the culprit is, but they can't reveal the name for reasons of "national security". Germany said that even speculating about who might have done it in public is a threat to national security, so that public debates about this are also banned there.
That - plus basic cui bono logic - rules Russia out, and it certainly points to another NATO member. Primarily UK with assistance from Poland and coordination and tech gear provided by the US. But it's easy to sheep dip a soldier, you swear them in and they officially become members of the Polish army, they maneover the drone, and then they revert to being British. Then the UK can legally say none of their soldiers did anything, and Poland can say they don't have the technical means, etc. In this way, you can deny everything to the press while not technically lying, even though everyone knows who is responsible.
In a German poll, 95% of the public believed the US was responsible. It's shocking how uninformed Americans are about the actions of their own government, and how differently the US is perceived by the rest of the world vis-a-vis its own people. A similar principle applies to perceptions of NATO (which has only ever fought offensive wars) by people within NATO countries vis-a-vis those without.
In this battle of perceptions, there is a split between the 1 billion in the West and the 7 billion in the rest of the world, with the latter having positive views of Russia and negative views of NATO, while the former have it reversed. This is studied in a Cambridge report entitled "A World Divided" [pdf warning]: https://www.bennettinstitute.cam.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/20...
Page 12 and 13 have some striking graphs on how these two groups, which used to have approximately the same opinions about Russia and the US, are now moving very far apart, basically living in opposite realities. This is why people can say with a straight face that Russia chose to blow up its own pipeline, whereas the US, which threatened to stop the pipeline and has blown up pipelines twice in the past, and was caught planting explosives under the very same pipeline in 2015, is "ruled out" by some in the West. To anyone outside the West, it's absolutely clear who is responsible. And also to 95% of Germans.
> In a German poll, 95% of the public believed the US was responsible.
Citation needed. That doesn't square my personal perception.
And the only nordstream related polls I managed to find where in regards to opening NS2 post-invasion, where > 50% where against it [1].
I heard this on the Duran podcast, which is a good source of geopolitics from a realist perspective, as they follow official readouts fairly diligently (so I don't have to).
They got this from a German government press conference about the investigation being closed. I emailed them if there is an online link to a transcript (it will be in German, but that's fine). If I get a response, I will update. You can search german transcripts of press conferences from Oct 16-17 on the subject of ending the investigation.
>the Duran podcast, which is a good source of geopolitics from a realist perspective
The Duran is a heavily pro-Kremlin source:
>Founded in 2016, The Duran is a strongly right-leaning news and opinion website with ties to Russian state media. Based in Cyprus, the website’s editor is Alexander Mercouris, who in 2012 was disbarred as an attorney in London. According to the Telegraph, he then went on to become a “pro-Russian commentator on world affairs for Russian TV news outlets and websites.”
>In review, The Duran publishes news and opinions with a conservative and pro-Russian perspective
I can't find any statement of the German government anywhere declaring this "closed", much less that they "know who did it". (It'd also be a pretty weird statement to make, given the Swedes, who are leading the investigation since its their territory, only a few days ago formally confirmed that they could prove that explosives were used)
17th October (EDIT: or the days before, slightly conflicting info) apparently the German ships that took part in the first official inspection came back, but ... that's not "ending the investigation"!
