But who is that? Ukraine should be fine with having Germany buy Russian gas since Germany keeps sending arms and push others to send arms. I don't see why the US would care either now that Germany is finally moving away from Russian gas. And Russia can just close the pipeline in a less destructive way.

>But who is that?

The USA has long wanted to interfere in Germanys' relations with Russia and has done so, over and over, to ensure they are never true allies.

So, it wouldn't be unreasonable to assume the US is behind these attacks.

Feb 7, 2022

> Biden: “If Russia invades -- that means tanks or troops crossing the border of Ukraine, again, then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2,”

> Journalist: “But how will you do that exactly, since the project and control of the project is within Germany’s control?”

> Biden: “We will, I promise you, we’ll be able to do it,” Biden replied.

I don't want to play conspiracy guy, but the statement stuck in my mind since he said it.

Its not a conspiracy - the US has long wanted a reason/justification for turning off Germany's gas. I guess this is happening, now.

> A conspiracy (...) is a secret plan or agreement between persons (called conspirers or conspirators) for an unlawful or harmful purpose, (...) especially with political motivation, while keeping their agreement secret from the public or from other people affected by it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy

It is a conspiracy.

Not a conspiracy: Biden himself stated - quite publically - that they would do it. It has been done.

Did you not read the quote?

Besides which, the US unilaterally gives itself the right to do these sorts of things at its own discretion on a regular basis.

> Not a conspiracy: Biden himself stated - quite publically - that they would do it. It has been done.

I have no strong opinions yet in the argument over whether or not the USA conspired to sabotage the NS pipelines. I'm just here to point out that secrecy is not a required part of a conspiracy. The literal translation of "conspire" from Latin would be something like "to breathe together", insinuating a synchronization of movements, a plotting together.

But, in our world today, all conspiracies (both confirmed and theoretical conspiracies) seem to get bucketed together. And so in common parlance, as soon as a thing is publicly confirmed as actually happening, in most people's minds it moves out of the "Conspiracy" bucket into the "History" bucket. But that's just a loss of language on our part. As always, my go-to resource in recovering the meanings of English words is Webster's 1828.

https://webstersdictionary1828.com/Dictionary/conspiracy

It's certainly a conspiracy in the sense that the USA and its functionaries are not going to be coming out and directly saying "sure, we blew up Nordstream to remove a Russian bargaining chip and prevent Germany from suing for peace."

They've also not publicised the plan. That stays secret. The plan is the conspiracy.

The USA are the obvious answer. They've refused export licenses for gas for years specifically to keep US energy cheap so the US can compete with german industry.

China are another answer. If they can't get the gas, there is less incentive for peace so more chance of the conflict rolling on and distracting from their activities. Plus, more gas for them to buy more cheaply etc.

Chunks of the middle east as well, they want to replace Russian gas in European markets despite their higher prices.

The list really is quite long.

China seems to want this war to end sooner rather than later based on recent comments from their politburo.

I doubt that Chinese submarine could enter Baltic sea without being detected.

Isn't the whole point of subs is that they can go almost anywhere undetected, Chinese or otherwise? Hence all the fuss about Russian subs (possibly) entering Swedish waters over the last few decades, but no one being sure if it happened or whether the sub in question was actually Russian...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_submarine_incidents#Af...

Though I doubt there is any foul play here at all...

Almost anywhere, yes. But there are only three narrow, shallow straits connecting Baltic sea to the North sea, all under NATO control.

Do nato actually "control" them in the sense of making subs surface etc then? I didn't know that. Cool.

No pun intended but it seems to be a measure to make sure europe doesn't get cold feet politically if their feet get too cold in the winter. Either way it is debilitating to Russia because it impedes their main path to raise revenue to prop up their currency, as the only way to buy gas from russia is rubles. Russia's Ability to transport LNG by ship is abysmal compared to Nord Stream.

Wouldn't Russian gas come with conditions? Like to drastically reduce support for Ukraine? Given time and cold weather, that might not be such a hard sell to the German electorate.

It can be anyone. Could even be a private person. But yeah its definitely not Russia.

Yep, russia controls "the valve", so it doesn't need to destroy the pipelines, and the minute EU (well, mostly germany) decides to negiotiate, putin can open the valve.

With this, even if they negotiate, there won't be any gas soon.

So, it's bad for russia, bad for eu, and the only one being better of is USA... who was threathened to do exactly this more than once.

https://twitter.com/ABC/status/1490792461979078662

Not necessarily as it could be Russian false flag operation to justify retaliation in the form of, for example Baltic Pipe damage

I would say not being able to buy Russian gas is good for EU. Supporting evil empire by buying gas is bad not just for European souls but also for long-term stability, as we can see.

Most of us "European souls" would prefer to stay warm throughout the winter.

It seems quite clear to me that in the short and medium term this ideological stance isn't going to hurt "evil Russian empire" a whole lot, while being extremely disruptive and harmful to everyone in the EU.

Nobody in EU will be in danger of freezing due to lack of gas. There is enough if gas coming from other places than Russia and the governments are mostly subsidizing it.

I don't know why people keep repeating this lie, do they want to support Russia so badly?

The real risk for Europe is a recession due to gas prices for industrial use - but that would mostly impact extremely rich places, like Germany.

You can say that the governments are going to take care of them in the short term and you're probably right. It's unlikely that (m)any people are going to freeze to death, but it's still going to result in countless days, weeks, even months of uncertainty and anxiety for those people. There will be a toll.

Even with subsides and a social support net, we're still kicking the can down the road. The bill WILL come due and it's going to hit those who are poor and "lower middle class" the hardest, as always.

People are increasingly in need of food donations and financial support with skyrocketing energy prices. Similarly, donations have decreased and every charity in my country is running thin on resources. Elderly and other vulnerable populations are especially at risk here as they might not have the resources to even reach out for help and follow through any bureaucracy.

I don't support Russia, I hope they lose and dissolve into irrelevance, but I take a serious issue with the often-repeated viewpoint that brushes all of this suffering aside like it's not a big deal, only to claim that we are all too happy to lower the thermostat by 3 degrees and take some kind of collective stance that will meaningfully contribute to destruction of Russia.

The suffering is greater than most people are willing to admit, meanwhile its effectiveness is questionable at best. I simply don't believe that energy imports from Russia are what's keeping the war going in any meaningful fashion, something that we could easily change if we just stopped importing their gas.

I'd love to be proven wrong on this, but so far I've only seen handwavy explanations that don't amount to anything more than "every little bit probably helps".

The gas is not standing by itself, Russia refused to sell it as a reaction to Western help to Ukraine and sanctions. Getting it running again would require nations to go beg to Russia, who would probably ask for all the sanctions removed and help to Ukraine stop.

But I'm pretty sure both US and various EE countries would not want to do that, leading to fracture and instability in EU and NATO in pretty critical time. For example people of Poland, which hosts literally millions of Ukrainian refugees would probably freak out if what they see as "rich west people" start complaining about money and ask for support for Ukraine to stop because gas is now expensive.

To summarise, we can't buy the Russian gas because they would ask us to do unacceptable things for it, and it would probably destroy EU from within. That's my take at least.

Also seems that someone is taking that choice away now, with blowing up Nord Stream.

As for the impact of sanctions and the energy war, I'm not an expert but I find Perun's videos pretty insightful - but I admit "hour long powerpoint presentation by military analyst on youtube" is pretty strange genre. This video touches on sanctions, economy and the energy war: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ce5TR-qWCk4

You're right I was pretty blasé about the suffering of people, and partially it's because I live pretty close to Ukraine, but still I shouldn't have.

cool. lets see the world now decide how they will play it, i mean here is prior deliberations and intent and we saw today the action itself so if USA is behind this which they most probably are, how will EU for example respond to this aggression? I hope the same response viz a viz sanctions, trade barriers, this and that.????

I mean.. if EU leadership was competent, they'd do the thing that USA is most afraid of.. talk to putin and make a strong europe.

Realistically.. even if they found an american submarine with "pipecutters" still connected to the pipeline, they'd say they'll do everything in their power(!!!)... and then send an angry letter to USA and replace an ambassador or two somewhere.

> if EU leadership was competent, they'd do the thing that USA is most afraid of.. talk to putin and make a strong europe.

Wow Just wow. Ready to place responsibility at everyone but Russia's feet right? Such a blameless third party victim in all of this /s.

The pipeline itself was in good part Merkel's olive branch to connect Putin economically to the rest of the EU. The hope was that giving Russia more to lose would prevent these conflicts. Sure the US, among others, we're wary of this kind of interdependence.

Well, now we know how things shook out and we're all dealing with it. Germany from the back foot this round.

Now I'm not attributing any great foresight to naysayers (US among them), it was a nobel bid for peace on Germany's part and there's always a chance we'd be talking about the brilliance of deepening those connections with Russia.

But we can't.

Russia drove its tanks into Ukraine, nobody made them. They weren't under any great duress. Even the most unjustifiably charitable take of Russian justification accounts for what, just Luhansk and Donetsk? But they tried to take Kiev. Tried to take every bit of Ukrainian's coastline with the Black Sea through Odessa. Russia good out of it's way to poison their reputation here with conquest.

> Russia drove its tanks into Ukraine, nobody made them

So what.. just a meaningless war in a meaningless country, a for the same reasons nato bombed yugoslavia in 1999 and noone cared.

Americans drove tanks to afghanistan, syria, libya, a bunch of eu countries helped them, nato forces are still in syria, and again... noone cares. Yes, some individuals maybe do... especially people living there... but not the EU as a whole.

But now, suddenly, while still having our soldiers station in eg. syria (i live in a small eu country, so we're not eg. france, that we'd had our soldiers occupying a bunch of african states), the media told us to sacrifice our standard of living, work, so the government can take money and send it to ukraine, to be cold, to not shower as much as we wanted, for what? A country that was just a few years ago was the most corrupt country in europe, full of nazis [0], and all the provocations were instigated by the US [1]? We should forget all this, fuck our livelihoods for some geopolitical shitshow?

Thank you, but no.

[0] https://i.imgur.com/mRAaOo0.jpg

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/13/ukrain...

It would be exactly like Russia to do something like this in order to drive a wedge between the US and EU. Look for something Biden said that could be misconstrued as a threat to blow up the pipeline, actually blow it up, and then watch the world blame the US.

There is nothing ever “definitely” about Russia. It could be as simple as “look what we can do”.

Objective reality does exist.

It's not like its impressive to damage the pipeline.

Russia isn't exactly homogenous; satellite states aside even core Muscovite populations are divided in opinion on war and Putin - even if not exactly vocal.

This could range from a small group staging a false flag to push Putin further (he is a surprise moderate of the extremely hawkish Russsian elements) to a different small group staging some form of protest by sabotage .. to any other ridiculous scenario imaginable.

Anyone buying russian gas is pretty much directly funding putin army. No, Ukraine would not be fine with that. All the Baltic states wouldnt mind killing it too. Poland in particular (NL1 killed "Friendship" pipeline) would be most pleased, except its incapable of such moves due to dysfunctional leadership.

China is buying Russian gas and then reselling it to Europe as LNG at a substantial markup.

> I don't see why the US would care either

How naive...

https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/news/as-imports-of-u...

Poland? They were vocal opposers, and the ruptures are close to their coast.

Poland's got the Formoza unit, such an operation would certainly be within their capabilities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JW_Formoza

Not that I believe that would be orchestrated by the Polish gov.

This made me chuckle a bit. The polish government can hardly contract appropriate levels coal so that people who burn it to heat their homes have trouble replenishing their supplies before winter. Just yesterday they came up with 50% tax on excessive income for companies which employ 250+ people, so clearly they aren't capable of planning months or years ahead, let it be the effects of such a strike on NS.

On the other hand, if the US government came up with the idea, Poland would be happy to execute it. Government wouldn't think much about it, they wouldn't even ask for anything in return.

Yeah, that's Poland for you. If US asks us to jump we only ask if it's high enough.

Ukraine will be fine, post-war, with Germany buying Russian gas that went through pipelines on Ukrainian soils, because they get paid transit fees.

No transit fees necessary for Nord Stream.

Ukraine has undeveloped large gas reserves (mostly at the territory currently occupied by Russia), so they could potentially replace Russia in the future as a supplier.

At risk of being a massively unpopular opinion: Ukraine has a track record of being an unreliable trading entity against other European countries, to the point where it looks like they were actively stealing gas that was sold by Russia to e.g. Germany.[1]

Under these circumstances, I'd much rather avoid being dependant on Ukrainian gas and would prefer Russian one every day of the week.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia%E2%80%93Ukraine_gas_dis... (definitely worth the read, gives some background information about why we see what we see in this russoukrainian war today)

I have said this claim many times but it does not match the numbers I have seen on e.g. Wikipedia. Most of the gas seems to be in areas under Ukrainian control.

If they are in russian occupied territory, they can forget about them.

Barring a change in the political structure in Russia, Germany IS off Russian gas.

There are no political alignments that would reverse that given that other options, such as allowing fracking again in Germany, are not even contemplated.