Remember the many deaths of important people in Russia but also abroad?
It could very well be about "sending a message" while maintaining plausible deniability. Just like when the Russian oligarch was murdered in Spain a few months ago, and his whole family. Russia had nothing to do with it! But all the others got the message - you are not safe anywhere.
Similar here. There are a lot of other pipelines. If you look at the news, Poland opened a new pipeline from Norway exactly now! What a coincidence in timing?
The threat is that they can destroy any important infrastructure, cables and pipelines, under the sea, and there is no way to prove it was Russia.
It fist very well with how Russia operated this year. The many many different threats, direct and indirect, and demonstrations to actually carry them out.
To me, it's plausible. Much more so than "the US did it", or even Ukraine. Neither has any reason to stupidly risk their relationship with the Europeans for that, Ukraine least of all, and the US is already set to be the main supplier of LNG (German article: https://www.merkur.de/wirtschaft/usa-wird-wohl-wichtigster-l...). Gas exports for the US are nice to have, but not nearly essential, I think the US's own independence was the main driver in investing into domestic fossil fuel extraction, exports are a distant second. And they already got them, as I pointed out, no need for such a stupidly risky thing. Russia on the other hand does not need to gain anything, they can be content setting up a bigger threat scenario now that Putin escalated almost as much as he will be able to excluding using "WMD".
By the way, Der Spiegel is reporting that the CIA warned the German Government that an attack on the pipelines might be imminent. (Paywall and German -https://www.spiegel.de/politik/beschaedigte-gasleitungen-cia...)
It's not a bad strategy per se. As the parent comment said, this could be done to limit the choices that the future government of Russia will have. And in the present, this fact being public could be used by some political forces to create extra leverage.
There was a good game-theoretic example explaining why limiting your own future choices can be a good strategy which I can't find right now. So I'll try to re-tell it. Suppose you want to buy X, and you're willing to pay as much as $20 for it. You know that the seller is likely to agree even on $10, and they know that they know that you're likely to pay more for it. So for both of you the bargain happening is better than not happening as long as the price is within the range $10-20, but both of you know that both of you know this, so you both will be trying to squeeze as much as you can out of this deal.
In this case, artificially reducing your own capabilities and making it public can help convince the seller to sell it to you for less than $20. Say, you can sign an agreement with a third party saying that if you pay more than $10 for X, you will have to pay 11$ more to the third party. Now your possibilities are limited and you can't buy X for $20 anymore, so the only acceptable price for you is 10$, to which the seller has to agree because they know that otherwise the deal won't happen and they will lose.
It gets funnier if both you and seller sign these kind of contracts quietly, and then announce together making the deal impossible.
Or UK ?
Have you been following the news? The current Russian regime is threatening the use of nuclear weapons, and massacring thousands in war crimes in Ukraine.
The EU has already set up permanent alternatives to Russian gas: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-27/europe-is...
The current Russian regime will never be able to repair relations with the west to the extent that will allow the Nordstream pipelines to resume operations.
The next regime might be able to repair relations, but the current regime doesn't care about that: they'll be dead or imprisoned for life before any new regime can take over.
With the EU shifting to other permanent sources for its energy supply, it's doubtful they'll want to switch back to Russian gas ever. Getting burned once by a rogue regime using gas supply for leverage is quite enough.
The new supply chain isn't yet ready to a sufficient level. The pain inflicted by missing gas could become high enough for some "moral flexibility".
Apparently some state actor did see a greater-zero-chance for resumed operations. Otherwise, why blow up the pipeline...
False flags are Putin’s MO. https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2012/11/22/finally-we-know-...
https://www.businessinsider.com/how-the-1999-russian-apartme...
Never say never.
Destroying the infrastructure doesn't give Russia an additional capability (degree of freedom). It removes the degree of freedom to restart supplying gas. And thus removes this option for Russia to use as a bargaining chip in negotiations.
I would say this is either the US, Ukraine or a EU state. To remove the threat that the EU later in the winter falters in negotations due to public pressure to turn the heat back on (literally).
The US has the additional incentive that they want to become the only gas provider to the EU via LNG terminals. That gives them an edge over the EU both economically and politically.
The Ukraine has the additional incentive that the remaining pipelines from Russia to the EU run through Ukraine. Removing the alternative options keeps the EU allied through dependence.