The Nord Stream pipelines were no longer in operation when they were blown up, because Russia had already stopped the gas supplies through them months earlier. So no, the attack on Nord Stream did not cause "hundreds of billions of economic damage" or "push millions into poverty".

The only way to prevent this economic damage would have been to prevent this whole war from breaking out to begin with. Any other scenario ends with Russia blackmailing us with our dependency on their natural gas, the blackmailing potential which they had strategically built up over the preceding two decades.



Anyway, the absolute least the German government needs to do to save its face (at least somewhat) is to get this individual arrested and extradited, then trialed and sentenced harshly. I'm talking charges of the caliber of terrorism, treason and such. Personally, I would even be open to cruel and unusual punishment to make an example, but our courts will never allow that to happen.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Aug 15 2024 06:28am

This is the state of the mainstream media today. Yes they truly believe you are this stupid to believe a couple of Ukrainians got drunk and ended up blowing up a massive underwater pipeline.



https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/nord-stream-pipeline-explosion-real-story-da24839c

Sounds like the beginning of a Tom Clancy novel.

LMAO!

Who doesn't know the moment you go on a yacht trip with your friends, get drunk and randomly decide to go diving with a couple of explosives?

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Aug 15 2024 09:40am

Ukraine MIGHT get some JASSM's:

Biden ‘open’ to sending long-range cruise missiles to Ukraine
The Pentagon is already working through fixes to allow Ukraine to launch the weapons from its fighter planes.
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/08/15/biden-missiles-ukraine-russia-00174147

as long as the pipelines were intact there was a way back to stop the madness, but this terror attack cemented the downfall we have witnessed since then

there was definitely a scenario where the german government crumbles under the pressure and starts talking to russia again

the nazis couldnt have that

In early 2022, Germany had pipeline capacities to receive 128 billion cubic meters of natural gas from Russia per year, or roughly 10.6b m³/month. Less than half of this capacity, 55b m³/year, came from Nord Stream 1. (Nord Stream 2 was never in operation.)
https://www.tagesschau.de/wirtschaft/gaspipelines-kapazitaeten-101.html

The actual supplies of pipeline gas received from Russia before the outbreak of the war were less than half the max capacity, at roughly 5b m³/month.
https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/1310816/umfrage/monatliche-deutsche-gasimporte-aus-russland/

So there actually was a way to maintain the pre-war status quo even without Nord Stream 1. Yes, the two alternative pipelines, Jamaal through Poland and Transgas through Ukraine, were sketchy. The two most hawkish countries could have cut them off. But note that Germany was not the only country being supplied through them, much of central and western Europe also relied on Jamaal and Transgas. And countries like Spain or Austria were never too keen on the sanctions to begin with. In any case, by unilaterally shutting down Jamaal or Transgas, Poland/Ukraine would have drawn the ire of far more than just Germany.

So the only scenario in which taking the Nord Stream option off the chess board would have provided the hawks with real benefit is one in which Germany and Germany alone folds while everyone else toes the line. How likely is it that Germany's sycophantic, spineless government, which has always been submissive to Washington and Brussels, breaks ranks like that, without being backed by countries like Austria, Slovakia, Spain or Italy?

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Aug 15 2024 06:16pm

Germans threatened Russians with economic war to get spot deliveries instead of long term take or pay contracts around 2008 and they got them. Germany was importing ca 55cbm of gas from Russians combined yearly before the outbreak of the war. Rest was supplied to other countries. Hence capacity comparisons need to take total import to Europe. Import from Russia declined from over 150 billion cubic meters (bcm) in 2021 to less than 43 bcm in 2023.

It’s strange to blame Russians for “spot market” deliveries - it was Germans who wanted them - not Russians. If you don’t sign long term contracts, you can’t complain supply is not 100% readily available. Gazprom has delivered exactly what was contracted to the dot before Nord Stream was blown up and Germans refused to investigate whodunnit.

Now Germans have turned around 180 degrees and signed long term take or pay multidecade contracts with Americans and Qatar. The same take-or-pay contacts they fought Russians so hard for. Not to mention they are now paying higher LNG price instead of cheap piped gas - making a lot of energy intensive industries uncompetitive.



Germans need to wake up and realize they have been royally fucked and finally stand up for themselves. This is a total travesty. What happened to the German pride? Gone with the wind and replaced by DEI trainings?

likely enough when people take to the streets

germany got LUCKY as fuck the following winter was very mild, i remember how badly just a handful of cold days depleted the gas supplies

we were only an extended period of frost away from mass protests of freezing people

you describe this scumbag government perfectly, they would break ranks immediately if their jobs were in danger

This is only true until early 2022. Also note that it was unusual for Russia to not agree to more deliveries in 2021. Normally, a supplier is willing to send more than contractually obligated if the price is right; the Germans were willing to pay spot market prices in 2021, but Russia still didn't send more. I've posted the charts about the filling level of German gas storages many times in this thread; the Russians spent all of 2021 deliberately making it impossible to fill them up, deliberately made sure that Germany was going into the winter of 21/22 with dangerously low filling levels.



This is a brazen lie. Russia had already cut off the gas supplies through Nord Stream 1 months before it was blown up, using the flimsiest of excuses.


There is no denying that the German/European energy policies from the mid-2000s through 2022 were a disaster. It was a mistake to bet on spot market prices remaining below the prices which long-term contracts with Russia would have enshrined. It was a mistake to run headfirst into a strategic dependence on a single supplier. It was a mistake for the country's industry to rest its entire business model on the perpetual availability of cheap energy while falling behind on innovation and competitiveness.

But just for the record: multidecade contracts with Americans and Qatar, while more expensive, still offer a strategic advantage. The Americans are allies, Qatar is no military threat to Europe.



And do what? German arms supplies aren't vital to Ukraine; the war will go on even if Germany wanted Ukraine to surrender. A resumption of normal pipeline shipments is completely unthinkable while the war rages on. And even if it ended, Russia's infrastructure has taken damage from lying idle for years. Some LNG is already being shipped to Germany/Europe today (after being relabeled in India or w/e). Also, why would Russia agree to favorable terms after everything that happened? If Germany folded now and came crawling back to Putin, he would have all the leverage in the world and fuck them in the ass during the negotiations.


This is a classical example of the concept of path dependency. It would have been far and away the best solution to prevent this war from ever breaking out, but now that it has happened, there is no easy or quick way back. The best Germany/Europe can hope for is that some kind of "fair" peace can be negotiated and economic relations with Russia can be strengthened again, some 5-10 years down the road. They will, of course, never go back to pre-war levels of dependence on Russia, though. And a peace treaty isn't realistic right now, either, since both sides show no intentions of letting up.