The kremlin wants to deliberately destabilize Europe and make it as difficult as possible with a big energy crisis, so support and aid to Ukraine falls. And its going bad for putin and his war now so he is also desperate, just look at the crazy mobilization of 300.000 russian to the war.
The russians already know that these pipelines are dead and the export trough them will end and sabotaging them is very much in the russians interest because of the consequences and as we can see now increased energy costs in EU which benefits the russian agenda.
Some say its US because Biden talk. But both pipes was already closed. Nordstream 2 was never used and nordstream 1 was shut down by the russians. The US hade no reason because no gas was flowing.
IMHO its no doubt its the russians, they are the only one that gain from this, in their energy war against EU. They also have submarines in the baltic sea. And its shallow waters between Denmark and Sweden (just 11-18m) that big subs from other countries can not easy pass without getting noticed and a lot of traffic that make it risky.
The most obvious beneficiary of the pipelines being blown are those countries that would stand to lose from the option of resumed delivery being available (and potentially taken) by Germany, that is, Ukraine, Baltic countries (who have a cultural and geopolitical interest in its victory) and the US (which has a geopolitical interest in its victory and a financial interest in selling LNG to Germany). Why do you think that these potential benefits to the countries in question are not real?
In unrelated news a brand new pipeline going from Norway to Poland through the Baltic sea opened just yesterday
https://www.euronews.com/2022/09/27/baltic-pipe-norway-polan...
Talking about poor maintenance in a thread about registered underwater explosions sounds like FUD
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/27/opinion/russia-mobilizati...
> Similar to shooting down your own satellites.
No.
When they do that as a show of force, they shoot down some worthless EOL satellite they don't plan to use ever again. IIRC, the US actually shot down one that was damaged and out of control: a show of force with a "safety" pretext.
You don't shoot down valuable, active infrastructure as a show of force. Russia blowing up Nord Stream would be like the US shooting down brand new GPS or spy satellites.
So? Both are perfectly serviceable, and neither is EOL junk, which is what matters.
Even with your distinction, blowing them us is like the US shooting down a new GPS satellite that just hasn't been officially "turned on" yet, which is pretty much the same loss as shooting down a similar sat that's "active."
It can be argued that this destruction is a loss for Russia, but Putin didn't loose anything.
The pipelines were already closed and will not open in a decade or two anyway because the war and politics. They do not lose any income so why not use it to terrorize and escalate, it's not their first time to mess with foreign underwater infrastructure. Norway->Poland pileline opening is the perfect timing for that.
That would be a tragic miscalculation. If it comes out that Ukraine is responsible, German public sentiment will turn hard.
No more military shipments, maybe even rapproachement with Russia.
If it's a state actor, I'd think about Poland first.
However, it would be an enormous risk for us to alienate NATO in any way. NATO is our only protection and we know it. Without NATO we are extremely easy to conquer - Stalin made sure of that when he drew our current borders.
My money would be on a more extreme internal fraction in Putin's Russia. The objective: close the door on any voices in Russia asking to go back to the way things were.
This is at least my own understanding of Putin’s Russia - Putin only explains who the enemy is and what the Pravda is. Stakeholders vying for power in his orbit then respond by bringing forward complete solutions. He can then reward the ones he likes and punish for the ones that he doesn’t. This gives him a layer of insulation from responsibility. No one can ever say for certain that he ordered the execution of this journalist or was involved in that war-zone hospital bombing. He only has to integrate such events as they happen and refocus attention on who the enemy is. Those factions vying for his attention are also probably sabotaging each other all the time as well.
Anyways, with the conscription rolling ahead in full force and the Russian media proclaiming that enormous losses in Ukraine are due to NATO help; I think there are powerful factions within the Russian system who are pushing for a return to a healthy EU relationship with gas flowing and access to Western tech. And then there are other factions who would prefer the war to continue to escalate. Nothing quite shuts up the former group like the destruction of critical infrastructure needed to revert to the previous status quo.
Same delivery method, no divers needed. Could be almost anyone.
(shrug)
Rumor is, there is enormous pressure on Putin to cede power to Patrushev son.
This may be part if a plan to force him into quitting
> No more military shipments…
What shipments[1]?
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/16/ukraine-slams-germany-for-fa...
But everything smaller than a tank, including lots of hardware that proved extremely valuable in this war, is being shipped.
"Contrary to popular perception, Germany has delivered significant amounts of arms and equipment to Ukraine to aid the country in its fight against the Russian military. In fact, the volume of arms deliveries by Berlin exceeds that of every other country safe for the United States and the United Kingdom. Nonetheless, Germany has faced severe criticism and even mockery for its perceived lack of support to Ukraine and its ill-fated attempts to keep its relationship with Moscow intact. While ultimately positioning itself as a reliable partner of Ukraine, it can be argued that Berlin's communication to affirm its Ukraine stance and explain foreign policy goals has been nothing short of an unmitigated disaster."
Also, they host import USA bases and helped in other ways.
It's funny how public perception of that works. Yesterday saw someone getting mad that 1.3 million of arms exports (paid, not stuff given for free) into another country was approved, "while they refuse to export to Ukraine".
Yes, but that’s assuming proper maintenance.
Russia doesn’t have domestic technology to build or maintain complicated infrastructure like these undersea pipelines. International sanctions against Russia are rather wide. For instance, Halliburton (a US oil field service company) no longer operates in Russia: https://www.halliburton.com/en/about-us/press-release/hallib...
It’s possible these sanctions affected the ability of Russians to maintain the pipeline, which might cause that thing to fail prematurely.
Seismologists are pretty good at telling explosions from earthquakes and other things because they are one of the most common noises they have to clean out when studying natural events.
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.
These days, it wouldn't surprise me if it was script kiddies on Shodan.
In this case, the pipes were basically being used as pressure vessels (I believe it was quoted in the media that pressure in one of the pipes was 105bar/1,500psi or so before the leak sprung).
With nothing but static pressure, I have a hard time seeing how such a pipeline may be sabotaged in SW alone - doubly so as it, as far as I can tell from media reports, really is the proverbial dumb pipe - valves and thingamajigs at either end, but the pipeline itself is essentially just a pipe with no shutoff valves throughout. (Which, in itself I find hard to believe, so I probably had better dig a little bit more!)
Not sure. I know nothing about underwater pipelines :P
Does all the gas leaking to the surface cause boats to sink if they get too close from the change in density?
even assuming they were cut off the moment the invasions began, are pipelines really that fragile that they explode if they're not maintained for 6 months?
Still, you raised a good point. I have no idea how fragile these pipes really are. Apparently, Swedish police is investigating sabotage [2], we might get an answer eventually.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nord_Stream#Baltic_Sea_offshor...
[2] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/swedish-police-investigating-...
It does make sense. The pipelines were already shut down. So the tactical impact of blowing holes in the pipelines is to prevent them from being turned back on. Previously, it was possible that the EU would come to a negotiation with Russia to get gas back. Now, it's not possible, or at least much less possible.
That doesn't tell us who exactly blew holes in the pipeline. But it certainly makes sense as a maneuver in the geopolitical game, to take a certain set of options off the table.
The German government simply didn't grant approval to begin operation.
No underwater bombings necessary.
US / Ukraine are unfortunately the only states for which this makes sense (perhaps US with back-room permission from some people in the German government):
1. Biden stated flat out he would never allow NS2 to go live. "There will no longer be a NS2, we will end it" and when asked by a reporter "how will you do that exactly" he replied "i promise you we will be able to do it". This makes the USA the prime suspect by far, worryingly and alarmingly.
https://twitter.com/ah114088/status/1574435558675316737
2. Ukraine wants to keep Europe from supporting Russia via gas purchases but if the attack is traced back to them it would immediately kill public support for them, this would be an insanely risky and counter-productive move.
3. Russia has no reason to blow up its own pipelines and every reason not to. They were hoping Europe goes back to buying their gas, maybe even ending sanctions to get it. This ends that possibility for a while.
We do really need to cut it out with the absurd "Putin is a 4D chess grandmaster" explanations, they make the west look collectively crazy.
I don't find that worrying or alarming. It would mean the administration knows what they're about and are taking proactive measures to take options off the table for Germany and Russia.
The important thing is that many leaders in NATO and Ukraine fear that the electorate may change their minds. I think they're pretty likely wrong and that Germans aren't that fickle, for good or ill, but I'm probably an insane populist by western leadership's standard.
I hear Germans say that as well, but usually those who are pretty comfortable economically. A large part of the population is anything but, is struggling to keep up, failing to keep up or already living hand to mouth. Previous governments have cultivated a huge low-wage sector and made it really hard for large swathes of the population to keep up let alone advance economically, so a lot of people don't have substantial savings or anything else to fall back on.
Hence the social contract for those parts of the population kind of goes like this: Your net worth is pretty low and your economic mobility is non-existing, but it's fine since you get stability and security and the government-provided safety net will bail you out if you get sick or whatever. But that safety net, thinned and stretched as it is, isn't helping most people cope with the current surge in energy prices, and there's as yet no clear indication how the government will try to compensate for that, let alone keep afloat an economy built to a large part on the availability of lots of cheap natural gas.
If they don't do all of this really well, I guess a large portion of the electorate may prove to be very fickle indeed, and I couldn't really blame them for it. I'm sure most would very much prefer a free Ukraine, and there is a deep desire to be on the "right" side of history, but none of this is enough to lose one's livelihood over. Break the social contract and all bets are off. Screw Ukraine, bring in the cheap autocracy gas, I want my stability back.
There is good hope that it won't come to this, but it's a possibility, and the far right is set to profit from any unleashed German angst, as they have during the refugee crisis and (to a lesser degree, due to their own incompetence) the pandemic. If I were Chancellor Scholz or President Biden, I'd be quite worried about that, and yesterday's strike on the pipelines makes perfect sense in that light. Now there is no "easy" cop-out anymore for Germany.
https://www.kreiszeitung.de/lokales/schleswig-holstein/fehma...
Nowhere near (re-)opening: we don't really know this. The Greens are loud and extreme (saying they don't care how much pain Germans suffer) but we don't know what's going on behind the scenes. USA spies on all the European countries all the time and obviously Russia too, so they presumably have better insight into the true state of German decision making than we do here on HN. It's possible they got some intel that was interpreted as meaning that they were getting close to re-opening NS1 or open NS2 and decided to act before that was possible.
There's also some evidence that this may have been planned for a long time, in which case it would again make no sense to be Russia.
Way back in 2015 an underwater robot laden with explosives was found next to the NS pipelines by Swedish special forces:
https://www.pipeline-journal.net/news/explosive-laden-drone-...
Who was opposed to NS in 2015? Only the USA. But it gets worse :( In August the US Navy entered the area right next to where the explosions happened and then switched off their identification transponders:
https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/schleswig-holstein/US-Navy-ze...
(auto translation) "A total of 4,000 US soldiers, helicopter pilots, marines, doctors and strategists are on their way east. At around 6 a.m. on Wednesday morning, the association had already passed the Danish island of Bornholm, when the Americans switched off their automatic ship identification systems (AIS) and could no longer be located without further ado."
It seems to me like this is going to immediately turn into another COVID lab leak problem where the media and governments go into overdrive to bury the most obvious and straightforward explanation. Give it 24 hours and linking to the articles I just showed you will be banned on Twitter/Facebook and anyone saying "the USA is the most obvious suspect" will be banned from YouTube. Then maybe in three years suddenly it'll become acceptable to talk about.
Look at it this way - how do you think Biden would react if Germany mined a US LNG port?
Also, you're aware that the current situation threatens supply in the UK too, right?
What it does is fixing a major strategic problem of Germany being blackmailed by Russia - a problem which endangered entire Europe. It also makes it impossible for Russia to route gas around Ukraine - which differently to EU countries could then freeze.
Whatever US president a says to reporters doesn't change the fact that US government doesn't care much about pollution when it comes to national security.
- https://earth.org/us-military-pollution/
- https://www.ewg.org/research/decades-department-defense-knew...
Under the sea. It’s not really deep either, 80 to 110 meters.
Also note the recent pro-NS2 protests in Germany, whose energy costs have skyrocketed before winter.
[1] - https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/07/biden-says-nord-stream-2-won...
The NATO as a whole likewise wouldn't blow up these pipelines, for pretty much the same reason. They love options too. But there's a lot of internal dissent in NATO, and it's quite possible that one member (read: the US) wanted to take away an option from another member (read: Germany), namely that option to cave in during the winter and give concessions to Russia in exchange for critically needed gas.
If they did, I'm quite sure Sweden was in on it. Even as a non-NATO member, they have been more deferential to US covert interests than most actual member states, including on torture rendition flights and the persecution of Assange. And it's sadly a bipartisan thing there.
Ukraine themselves would be another option. They certainly have an incentive to want to close off Western Europe's option to give concessions to Putin in exchange for gas, far more than any NATO member. But I don't think they have the capability to take out pipelines in the Baltic, especially not without US consent. But no, you can't blow up pipelines with like that cyberwarfare, and it's not going to fail three places at once.
I want to wait see who Russia places blame on, who the US places blame on, and most of all the actual evidence they can present. Maybe Russia will present non-laughable evidence for once, since I believe - again, for once! that they're actually not responsible this time.
But I wouldn't count on it. Actually I would be shocked.
* China -- Ensures they continue to be the beneficiary of cheap RU gas, which considering their current economic woes, I imagine it is a pretty big deal for them. Broadly, they dislike the Ukraine war because it reduces stability in the region and resulted in deeper western resolve, but strategically a weakened Russia and cheap energy are both beneficial to their interests.
It means that they want to terrorize polluters, regardless of the consequences.
Ecology activist organizations are funded by donations, which would dry up completely at the instant they are proven to be involved in such a disastrous leak.
Or do you have examples of what you call "eco-terrorist" organisations?
A quick skim of the wikipedia article on eco-terrorism shows this is false.
"Arson is a tactic most associated with recent activity in the Earth Liberation Front (ELF). The ELF has been attributed with arsons of sites such as housing developments, SUV dealerships, and chain stores."
Looking at the the wikipedia page for ELF, it doesn't look like they're the type of organization that's a registered charity and runs donation drives
Further down the article also mentions
"Organizations accused of eco-terrorism are generally grassroots organizations, do not have a hierarchal structure, and typically favor direct action approaches to their goals"
which seems consistent with the characterization that they're not the types of organizations that are registered charities and rely on their national reputation to get funding.
A car dealer can be set on fire by a single individual, and even one in a situation of extreme poverty.
> A quick skim of the wikipedia article on eco-terrorism shows this is false.
False yourself. Have you skipped the word CURRENTLY?
Moreover, about
> grassroots organisations
Do you intend to mean that such grassroots orgs would not need PR nor donations?
Then no because grassroots organisations that would not raise donations do not have enough funds to blow a deepsea pipeline.
> The ELF has been attributed with arsons of sites such as housing developments, SUV dealerships, and chain stores.
Yeah right, you see the difference between chain store arson and blowing a deep-sea pipeline now that I'm pointing it to you?
>Yeah right, you see the difference between chain store arson and blowing a deep-sea pipeline now that I'm pointing it to you?
The reasonable conclusion to draw from that would be "this pipeline explosion wasn't caused by eco-terrorists because eco-terrorists aren't radical enough to bomb gas pipelines", not "it wasn't caused by eco-terrorists can only be funded by public donations and they don't want to piss off their donor base".
>Do you intend to mean that such grassroots orgs would not need PR nor donations?
1. Al-Qaeda has PR (think grainy videos, not slick NY PR firm) and received donations[1], but I wouldn't characterize them as the same type of organization as greenpeace or whatever.
2. during ELF's existence, do you think they operated like a regular charity?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Qaeda#Financing
>Then no because grassroots organisations that would not raise donations do not have enough funds to blow a deepsea pipeline.
The wikipedia article also mentions someone being able to procure a RPG-7 from some sort of terrorist organization to launch at a nuclear power plant. Given that it doesn't seem too implausible that a group can acquire a boat and some depth charges without having to run a nationwide fundraising campaign.
Moreover they would need a large team to prepare and execute the op.
No-one on the team would say like "hu? isn't it a bit destroying that what we are fighting for?". Don't you think at least a dozen of potential whistleblowers would pop up into existence and the whole project aborted?
So, no, my verdict is that all of that is so unlikely. I'm trying very hard to not say ridiculous but... oops.
We're not saying that this was ecoterrorism. We're just pointing out that "it's bad for the environment" isn't an argument wherever this was done by eco terrorists.
It remains unlikely, mainly for the original point given. Regardless wherever it's bad for the environment or not, they would've claimed responsibility by now.
In short, rich people and large team = impossible to sustain such a cognitive dissonance.
And in all honesty, between renewables and nuclear (fission), renewables are clearly a better investment.
edit: That wasn't meant to be derogatory. AFAIK large parts of that land will be swamp and mud if the permafrost thaws up. Even now there are large parts with no streets or railways, reachable only by treks over frozen rivers during winter, by sea if coastal, or air. And the infrastructures built on permafrost will suffer too, if it thaws up.
The same way as large parts of Alaska and Canada are.
I'm sure the Russian population does not think like that, but it's not as if they had their say...
No, because if the pipeline is not used, there is an incentive to slow down methane extraction and transport on the Russian side.
But if they can send it in the pipe and make it leak to piss the EU countries off, on the other hand...
> If anything, methane is a bit better than CO2 in the long run.
Hmm... I wonder where you read that because actually it's the contrary: https://www.epa.gov/gmi/importance-methane
After degradation, the methane is transformed in the exact same CO2 it would have become if someone had burnt it, thus it still the same long term pita in addition to the short term headache it creates.
It's a mindbender, but he's also a former KGB officer and may have bombed his own people to justify the 2nd Chechen war[1]. He can only succeed in Ukraine if he divides Ukraine's western allies. What other tools does he have?
It just doesn’t make any sense at all for someone else, it’s either weird, overly convoluted, risky or impossible based on lack of necessary equipment… this isn’t something you can just do a lone wolf terrorist attack against, it’s armoured agains ship anchors, sunk into the seabed, and deep underwater, you can’t just bomb it with some home made depth charges from a fishing boat… which is why this whole thing is so damn weird.
Didn't he also sign up to build a new pipeline into China?
Looks like China stands to win from all this, if Russia can't send the gas anywhere China can dictate the price they will pay.
Nope.
If you think about this on a geopolitical scale, China has every interest in wanting their Northern border with Russia secure, and to advance the Chinese Belt & Road initiative, and collaborate on non-USD currency trading, and other things that make them both sanctions resistant. China also wants Russian Technology where they still hold leadership positions.
Most importantly, China wants Taiwan back.
The global balance of power may shift in China's favor if the best fabs in the world are suddenly Chinese, and they can sanction the US, limiting their access to chips.
These supply chain issues would be a great tool during wartime.
US politicians have finally woken up to the risk of being dependent on China for strategically important semiconductors, hence the support for measures like the CHIPS Act. The window for China to be able to credibly threaten us with sanctions is rapidly closing.
https://usafacts.org/articles/whats-in-the-recently-passed-c...
For China to secure its northern border they need Russia as a buffer zone; they don’t need it strong.
As for technology - Russia has two, nuclear and military. China already got everything nuclear they wanted, and Russian military tech is, as we could all see, rather worthless.
Your speculations are interesting. But the above adds nothing.
There’s nothing magical about having been in the KGB and one can’t determine one’s aptitude for ‘sneakiness’ from same. It’s just silly. Putin has been in power for 20+ years. There’s no need to draw conclusions about his character from his KGB days when you have such a rich history since then.
As an analogy, I remember when folks said Reagan was a great communicator because he had been an actor. Hogwash. He had been a politician far longer than an actor, served as the governor of California, leadership roles in the party and unions, etc. That is, his skill in communication while President was fostered from these experiences and not some ancient movie acting he did.
The US is approaching having a $30 trillion economy.
Apple does $387b in sales. Who cares about $30 billion at the scale the US operates at?
Should the US blow up SAP for the benefit of Microsoft or Oracle? They're a lot more important economically than LNG exports.
Last week the WSJ reported on industries moving to the US. Easier than getting production back from China, eh?
https://www.wsj.com/articles/high-natural-gas-prices-push-eu...
Last I checked only the NSA has done so via hacking in Brazil. But otherwise it's very, very much against US intel-agency policy.
Industries will move to the US, where energy is available and labour laws aren't as stringent.
Biden even had a bit of a Freudian slip when he said "Germany" in that clip and then changed it to "Russia."
Now that the gas lines are done for, Germany can't even negotiate with Russia (or the EU) to get the gas back.
If you include the risk of getting caught or revealed (and you should), it would absolutely make no sense.
However, I don't think Ukraine has the capability to pull this off.
For example, it may benefit China to have their enemies fight, then offer assistance from the sidelines at a charge.
Another option is that an energy supplier competitor did it, knowing that it would send the price of their energy through the roof. Even a few million dollars to have a private submarine sabotage the competitor would result in massive returns, and it would be difficult to trace.
The point is, it's far too early to tell.
Regarding your specific rational:
> Ecoterrorists -- I discount this mostly on the basis that they would have claimed responsibility by now.
I discount this on the basis of their capability and funding.
> NATO sabotage -- this reduces strategic options for several EU countries
It could be that a NATO Country (read: not EU) could want to see the collapse the EU. This would greatly benefit the US for example, as they would then be able to renegotiate all previous trade deals on favorable terms.
> Russia sabotage -- this isn't terribly rational for Russia, but Russia has been unwilling to pursue rational options for a while.
It wouldn't be, unless they have the ability to fix it easily.
> Ukrainian sabotage -- pretty much the only actor for whom sabotage makes rational sense. Especially if it is a demonstration of Ukrainian cyberwarfare capabilities.
Cyberwarefare didn't rip a hole in a pipe. Cyberwarefare also didn't create an explosion. I would be also interested to know if Ukraine has any operations submarines right now - because where would they refuel for example?
> * Poor maintenance -- this strikes me as unlikely because NS1 is quite new infrastructure (2011), so it would have to be extremely substandard to have failed this quickly, and I believe most of the construction was done by European and not Russian firms, so I don't think that's at all plausible. But there may be some failure modes I'm not thinking of here.
Over 10 years even the best infrastructure could deteriorate with abuse. Bridges can collapse if not well maintained within this timescale, and the ocean is a much worse environment.
Until the investigation is perform though, we simply don't have enough to go on.
I mostly agree but... You could make the same argument for bits of the middle east, Norway and the USA (the US refuses to export gas to the EU to make US industrial products more competitive).
Sabotage? Maybe! Ukraine? Maybe or maybe others!
It drives the market prices up (anything that spooks market participants will), and creates an ongoing situation that adds pressure on governments to act.
How can cyberwarfare blast something some km close to an underwater gas pipe? remote controlled submarine?
TL;DR
> "The pipeline software that was to run the pumps, turbines and valves was programmed to go haywire, to reset pump speeds and valve settings to produce pressures far beyond those acceptable to the pipeline joints and welds. The result was the most monumental non-nuclear explosion and fire ever seen from space."
Ukraine is a long way from the Baltic and very busy getting invaded, so I think the chance of them pulling off something like this without US knowledge is practically zero.
I'm skeptical of that claim. It is sourced entirely from an autobiography, and there's no corroborating evidence of the explosion from any other source.
> Russia has been pressuring Germany to re-open NordStrom 2 for weeks now.
Maybe, but Germany hasn't been close to yielding to that pressure.
It doesn't have to be close to yielding, or even particularly likely to be close in the future. Planning and accounting for unlikely contingencies is prudent.
Suppose analysts calculated a mere 5% chance Germany considers yielding to pressure this winter. Why take that risk? Blow up the pipe and bring that risk down to 0%.
Iran had the most infections and the virus is designed to attack centrifuges. Israel took over the code base during the Obama administration and made the virus more viral, but the targeting remained the same.
Essentially what you've written here is not only inaccurate but I'd say a conspiracy theory in that you're implying the US took custodianship of the code back and began using it again, which is entirely unfounded.
* Ecoterrorists -- I discount this mostly on the basis that they would have claimed responsibility by now.
* NATO sabotage -- this reduces strategic options for several EU countries (albeit a strategic option that isn't really being exercised and is almost universally disfavored).
* Russia sabotage -- this isn't terribly rational for Russia, but Russia has been unwilling to pursue rational options for a while. I can see someone in Russia thinking this will stoke anger in Germany (and the rest of Europe) that may create European pressure to force Ukraine to end the war (which is the most viable path I see at this point for Russia winning the war).
* Ukrainian sabotage -- pretty much the only actor for whom sabotage makes rational sense. Especially if it is a demonstration of Ukrainian cyberwarfare capabilities.
* Poor maintenance -- this strikes me as unlikely because NS1 is quite new infrastructure (2011), so it would have to be extremely substandard to have failed this quickly, and I believe most of the construction was done by European and not Russian firms, so I don't think that's at all plausible. But there may be some failure modes I'm not thinking of here.