Quote (Black XistenZ @ Sep 26 2022 10:59pm)
There's still massive land-based pipelines, so the punctures of the Nord Stream pipelines would not stop Europe and Russia from resuming most of their gas trading if both sides want to. Therefore, your explanation that the US, or "warmongers" in the EU, are behind this - as some sort of preemptive sabotage of the gas infrastructure - makes no real sense. There's so much pipeline capacity sitting idle at the moment that the damage to Nord Stream doesn't make a practical difference.
This is nonetheless an interesting incident. My hypothesis would be that it's one of two things:
1.: Russia tried to empty the gas that was still left inside the actual pipelines, perhaps in preparation for the pipes being idle for a long time - and in the process, the pipelines were inadvertently damaged.
2.: Russia wants to demonstrate that gas pipelines at the ground of the Baltic Sea are vulnerable - a thinly veiled threat that they could attack the pipelines connecting Norway to continental Europe, and how fucked Europe would be if that "happened" in the deep of winter.
It's a huge portion of pipeline capacity, and the remaining pipelines run through the most hostile (to Russia) countries.
Also it's absurd to think Russia did this, lol. As silly as thinking Russia bombed their own Azov POWs, or bombed their own soldiers at their own nuclear power plant. But I guess if you believe any one of these absurdities, you may as well believe all of them.