Occam's razor applies here. In the past, militaries would burn the boats and bridges behind them to ensure no retreat within their ranks. So now it doesn't matter how cold it gets this winter, you will ride with the US/NATO on this adventure whether you like it or not.

Occam razor here would be internal fighting about Russia factions. The cost/benefit of getting discovered vs not here are not in favor of any external NATO-ish player since there is already enough cohesion, while getting caught would be catastrophic. Literally little to gain and all to lose. And the temporal difference between the reported seismic events is also against the idea of an external country doing it: you wouldn't wait that long between events since it would massively increase the risk of getting discovered. If you are doing a proper sabotage you'd have events close to each other (30m or so) or very spread (days away)

The US/NATO/Ukraine has 100% control over the media narrative in the West, it would be impossible to "get caught". Anything that comes out that is against the desired narrative is simply waved away as Russian propaganda.

Metastable scenario is metastable. Which quantum of energy or momentum broke the metastability is simply not an important question.

Peter Zeihan has repeatedly pointed out that permanently ending Russian oil exports is now within the reach of even Latvia's navy.

Coincidentally the Baltic Pipe becomes operational this week, might as well be a larger international operation. Operation which Putin with Schröder will certainly not like, and which will give hiccups to Merkel.

If I could put on my amateur geo-political-analyst hat for a moment, who could be behind this and why?

Seems like a Putin move, since he dared using (probably) a sub in other nations' waters. Reason? To show Europe he means business? To show Europe he's not planning to rewind anything to the way things were in 2021?

If one is of a sufficiently dark view, it may even be some western power wishing to drive home the point that Russia will not - full stop - export gas in any significant quantity to Europe anytime soon.

I would believe it more likely to be the Russians testing the waters, so to speak - finding out how far you can go sabotaging infrastructure.

After all, starting with two non-operational pipelines makes consequences less severe at both ends, while gaining the perpetrator some experience how to evade detection. (Which may come in handy later!)

> it may even be some western power wishing to drive home the point that Russia will not - full stop - export gas in any significant quantity to Europe anytime soon

Then it would be incompetent. There is political resolve against Russia in Europe. Keeping the ability to bomb the pipes is one thing. Doing it in the midst of that resolve would be self defeating.

-But that resolve is feared to be weakened by falling temperatures in Continental Europe.

Surely it cannot be completely outside the realm of the possible that Someone(tm) helped EU politicians do The Right Thing(tm) by ensuring they couldn't give in to Russian demands this winter even if they'd wanted to?

(I believe this one's on the Russians - but I can see other actors finding it beneficial that Russian exports cannot easily be resumed. Especially as long as the Kremlin denying it had anything to do with something is largely seen as evidence it did indeed have something to do with it.)

> it cannot be completely outside the realm of the possible that Someone(tm) helped EU politicians do The Right Thing(tm) by ensuring they couldn't give in to Russian demands this winter even if they'd wanted to?

Could be. But doing it now and like this (three simultaneous incidents that are also highly repairable) would be stupid. If it’s American it’s because placed mines went off early.

-Easily repairable may be a stretch, it is my understanding there are no shutoff valves along the length of the pipeline, so if they're all breached (4 pipes, each ~1200km long, slightly over 1m in diameter) then that's about 5B liters of water which needs to be pumped out after whatever damage done where they were punctured has been repaired.

(Presumably the water inrush is slowed by the escaping gas sufficiently so that the pipeline doesn't sustain further damage, but I'm just guessing. Being an electrical engineer this is way outside what I dabble with on a day-to-day basis)

I'm curious why you're avoiding the obvious party: the USA did this.

Biden even stated he would do it.

https://www.reuters.com/world/biden-germanys-scholz-stress-u...

It's impossible to completely rule out some sort of US sponsored covert action, but that seems highly unlikely. The risks outweigh any possible rewards. If the operation went wrong and got exposed the political fallout would be catastrophic.

Right now the US is the only country really "winning" the war in Ukraine so there's no need to do anything so crazy.

> If the operation went wrong and got exposed the political fallout would be catastrophic.

No worse than the US blatantly overthrowing numerous democratically-elected governments. There was zero fallout for any of that.

The US has long considered itself immune to criticism when it comes to crimes against humanity, such as this.

Watching Americans fall over themselves to deny this fact is not fun, at all. It seems we are indeed destined for further fallout as a result ..

The US has done terrible things nonstop the past decades and it hasn’t suffered from any kind of political fallout.

Ah, this analysis is in the same ballpark as misinterepting what Bill Gates said about vaccines and lowering the rate of population growth in Africa as "Bill Gates wants to lower the population in Africa!" and then concluding that Bill Gates started Covid so he can vaccinate and kill people, "see, he even stated so!".

Nord stream 2 had already been halted; Biden already got what he wanted. Far more likely IMO is that Putin did it hoping to blame it on the US to divide NATO.

NS2 was completed and ready for use, in spite of the US' worst efforts over the years to prevent its completion. The only issue keeping NS2 from usage was policy, and there is a great risk that the US' will not get its way, policy-wise, over Europe.

So destruction ensured the NS2 would not be used for peaceful energy economy between Russia and Europe.

There are two scenarios.

1. Ukraine or pro-Ukrainian forces.

2. Russia. Attack the gas market which just settled, and raise the prices again.

There is another option which is being discussed in Norwegian media now - that the Russians have used the pipelines essentially for storage of excess gas (Seeing as the pipelines are basically, combined, a 5M cubic meter pressure vessel) That would go a long way towards explaining how several ruptures happened in relatively short succession - pipes being loaded up with too much gas (after all, the more gas stored, the more money in the bank for later on!) Once the first one burst, someone probably re-evaluated that idea, but letting off gas in sufficient quantities fast enough may not have been possible. Of course, if this was indeed the case, I assume it will very soon be very evident - I can't imagine that the rupture caused by an external force will be indistinguishable from that of it rupturing due to overpressure.

It could also be Putins way of saying; see what I can do. I can do the same to the pipelines from Norway. There has been a lot of unidentified drone sightings in the Norwegian part of the North Sea in the last week.