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 delive

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-europe-hes-ready-to-resume-gas-supplies 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://carnegieendowment.org/politika/87837 https://www.politico.eu/article/olaf-scholz-nothing-stands-in-the-way-of-russia-delivering-gas-to-europe/ 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.