I don't know which is why I think step 1 is to call Russia's bluff and ask them to start pumping Nord Stream 2, which they claim is fully able to operate. But

I don't know which is why I think step 1 is to call Russia's bluff and ask them to start pumping Nord Stream 2, which they claim is fully able to operate. But why should these claims be wrong? Consider the following facts: 1. The Siemens factory in Canada received a turbine and then repaired it. Do you think they would say nothing if they received a gas turbine and then discovered it was fine, that the shipping was a ruse? Do you think they would lie about making non-existent repairs? If they were silent on discovering that they'd be accused of being traitors, especially as they are a German company. That situation just seems totally implausible. If Russia were faking it why even ship a turbine to Canada in the first place? And why would Germany go to such lengths to get it back? 2. Nord Stream AG is a European consortium based in Switzerland. It's not a Russian company. They haven't contradicted any of these claims about broken compressors. 3. Russia invaded in February. Look at Nord Stream flow data (https://www.nord-stream.info/ https://www.nord-stream.info/) and do a query for the start of 2022 to the present day. Unfortunately their CSV/Excel export is buggy and only exports the current page not all results but you can just page it through in your browser. Flows are totally normal until about June, yet Russia was sanctioned almost immediately. Moreover, after the annual maintenance period (during which flow rate drops to zero) it briefly returns to its pre-maintenance flow of ~700M kWH/day for a week before dropping again to 300M kWH/day. These sorts of patterns aren't consistent with political decisions (in which case you'd expect it to go to zero and stay there), they are however consistent with equipment being phased in and out ... which is exactly what everyone involved with the pipeline seems to be saying. Also, the claimed scenario just makes no sense on its own terms. OK, let's assume Putin is trying to hurt Europe by refusing to sell gas. The point of doing that would be to create enormous political pressure to end sanctions but for that to work, Russia has to say "we are restricting gas because you are aiding our enemies, stop aiding Ukraine and we will restore the gas". It makes no sense to impose conditions on gas supply and then not tell anyone what the conditions for restoration are whilst simultaneously shipping turbines around the world and claiming it's technical issues. That just confuses matters and makes it less likely to achieve your goals. As for missing documents, yes, of course it's possible. If a very large, dangerous piece of equipment came back from a factory run by declared enemies of my country I'd want really deep and thorough details on what was done to it, with sufficiently precise data that I could actually find and check all the modifications myself. You seem to be assuming the documents in question are a one-pager customs form or something but we don't know what they are (or at least I've seen no mention of further detail).