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Pretty obvious sabotage. Neither a whale, nor a trawl can do it. Who benefits is a different question. Russia is economically damaged but once deciding that se
by pvaldes 4y ago
Pretty obvious sabotage. Neither a whale, nor a trawl can do it. Who benefits is a different question.
Russia is economically damaged but once deciding that selling gas to Europe is not more an option, Putin has now a plausible excuse to not fulfill the gas contracts anymore, without being economically penalized for breaking those contracts, because... not my fault.
It is desperate also to spark the flames of war in their population. So can use also the issue as leverage to force apathetic Russian people that for some strange reason don't like to die to accept the new situation.
If Russian people keep refusing to fight in the war, the war is over. And if Russia lose this war, Putin is politically dead and will be removed from the power by any means necessary. And removed means, probably killed by its own people. He needs to put their citizens in a much worse situation, so can justify a full call to arms.
European Union does not have nothing to gain with this.
USA could benefit as gas seller and to force Putin to not use nuclear arms in Ukraine near the remaining pipes. Putin went to Belarus only few days ago.
Other could benefit for undisclosed reasons. (Edited the China could benefit part, it was clearly a stupid idea)
- valuearb 4y agoPutin doesn't care about contracts. He does care about having operational pipelines so he can use them as leverage with the west when Europe runs low on energy. The US finally cobbled together a coalition to block Russian aggression, and the coalition is enabling Ukraine to win this war. Why would they want to destroy this coalition getting caught sabotaging pipelines in Europe? Occcams razor says typical terrible Russian maintenance.
- pvaldes 4y agoNord stream 1 was finished in 2011 but Nord stream 2 finished in 2021. Even with lousy maintenance, one year old pipelines shouldn't break by corrosion, concrete cracks or fatigue of materials. Four old and new pipelines breaking in exactly he same day or week is very suspicious. Shouldn't happen, unless there is a common cause and they are correlated somehow. I assume (could be wrong) that Nordstream 1 and 2 don't run exactly by the same location in the sea bottom so one minor explosion in the old one shouldn't affect the other one. If is not fatigue of materials, only could be (I'm speculating) the pressure raising in the pipes for some reason until blowing it. I don't know if this can happen with the pumps stopped or a half speed, but looks like a plausible cause. In any case a drone with a small explosive charge was found yet in nov-205 near the Nord Stream pipelines not far from the location that was damaged in 2022.