Any sort of underwater demolitions is pretty much the opposite of "trivial". How much diving have you done? The real world isn't like a James Bond movie.

I didn't say that underwater demolition was trivial.

I said that they surely had military trained in that sort of thing. Actually they even seem to have a 1st Underwater demolitions Unit, so...

It's getting those people to the Baltic that seems trivial to me. That does not mean I am accusing them, but that means they are on my list of suspects.

It's still possible enough for a nation that splintered off a previous world superpower. It's not like Soviet combat divers and their expertise just up and disappeared once the union dissolved in the 90s

BUDS is literally that, every SeAL does that. Not optional.

Not accusing the SeALs just the force I'm most familiar with.

A pipeline is impossible to guard so it's so so easy, it's a cakewalk. The real challenge is the impunity, you don't want to get accused like eg Allended accused CIA of blowing up its pipelines in Chile (gasoductos y olioductos) and the train line. It's a one-dimensional structure that is vulnerable along the entire distance, and more valuable the greater the distance it covers, so more valuable as it is more vulnerable.

Really to protect a one-dimensional resource conveyor, you need retal. There's nothing else. Everybody talks about protecting themselves, yeah and what wear a helmet to cross the street? No, no helmets! Yeah then make the pipeline's steel a meter thick, to protect it.

Retal.

America does that, when terrorists blow up its pipelines in Iraq for instance, they hunt them down and make them regret doing so. Not say they're sorry, make sure it turns out to have been a bad decision in hindsight. Those pipelines don't need to be any thicker. It's the thickness of the initiator's skull that must be overcome.

I'm fairly certain that BUD/S doesn't cover diving to the depths of those pipelines. Initial SEAL dive training is focused on open circuit compressed air and oxygen rebreather equipment. Deep, covert demolition missions like this would likely have to be done on a Mk16, and most SEALs lack that specialized training. I doubt the US Navy actually sabotaged those pipelines, but if they did then the diving was more likely handled by EOD or MDSU personnel.

Dude it's no problem. EOD can do it. SeAL can do it. Like splinter cell unit of the Army can do it. Every nation can do it. I could learn to do it in high school. Any diver. Anybody. Easiest shit. The issue is not getting caught. Not like diving a mile down like the guys at oil platforms, gotta live always under pressure, 80 meters, easy shit. And the difficulty is depressurizing, not pressurizing. And like 200 meters below sea level you go into like a trance...eh. Still can accomplish the mission, if they can translate into trance-ease.

It's nothing. Not a whole lotta guards from the Kremlin with their evil faces like movie bad guys (they're never not the bad guy) the whole time watching over the pipeline, let me tell you.

They do 100x harder shit than that every day. Navy SeALs are in 40 countries on any given day, that's just SeALs. Like no risk of death from that, no risk of needing to use SERE training, NOTHING, BUDS, basic underwater demolition, EASIEST SHIT!