I think it's unreasonable to believe that you could intentionally half-way blow up a pipeline. And the only reasonable conclusion here is that the intention was to blow all of it up.

Why would Russia want to even get out of those contracts? If Europe is willing to pay, they will gladly supply gas, as they have done for many many decades. Even at the peak of the cold war, they were reliably supplying gas to Western Germany for example. It is very lucrative for them. And in any case, why do contracts between Russia and Europe even matter at this point. Any party can just do whatever they want.

There is no point is "sending a message", it's very obvious that it is possible to blow up an underwater pipeline. Anyone worth sending a message to would have already known its possible.

The obvious real motivation here is to prevent any negotiation over re-opening the pipeline.

Each pipeline consists of two strands that are some distance apart. So blowing them up separately is certainly possible. In the end those are 4 pipelines, they're just not all named separately.

> Why would Russia want to even get out of those contracts? If Europe is willing to pay, they will gladly supply gas, as they have done for many many decades. Even at the peak of the cold war, they were reliably supplying gas to Western Germany for example. It is very lucrative for them. And in any case, why do contracts between Russia and Europe even matter at this point. Any party can just do whatever they want.

Then explain why Russia had already cut off the supply of gas for clearly spurious reasons. And why Russia has used shutting off gas as an economic weapon before, including against Georgia and Ukraine in the past.

I’m not convinced Gazprom would’ve done this to get out of penalties, but your statement is incorrect. Contracts still matter because this isn’t an all out existential war where nothing else matters. Relations will have to normalise at some point, and Gazprom is still selling to other countries and can’t show itself to them as an unreliable partner that doesn’t care about delivery contracts.

Sending a message is not just about demonstrating the capability, as you’ve focused on, but showing the willingness to actually do it.

The point of turning off the gas is to demonstrate the point that you can turn it off *or on*. That you have control over it.

Whats the point of turning off the gas as leverage if it *stays off*? That would be no leverage at all.

A new Norway-Poland pipeline was opened one day before the NS attacks. And the attack occurred not far from it.

Showing that just switching away from Russia as a supplier is not enough to be safe, since they could just hit that one just as easily.

Pipelines can be repaired and one of the NS2 pipes was left undamaged.

As mentioned elsewhere in this discussion Russia blew up the Georgian pipeline transporting gas between the two countries once before.

Upsides for Russia? Really? Getting out of contracts? LOL! Pretty sure those would be irrelevant given all the sanctions. Let’s check the upsides for Russia: losing $10 billion+ of investment, billions in future revenue, and ending Germany’s strategic dependence. And you think they care about “contracts”? Amazing. https://fair.org/home/us-medias-intellectual-no-fly-zone-on-...

Can you stop the hyperbole?! Yes they definitely care about contracts, if they don't honour contracts even in the situation of sanctions confidence in doing business with them would plummet, also in Asia etc.. This is how the modern world works.

You notice that when Russia turned off the gas before, they never said, "because we want to screw you", but instead cited maintanance. If they could just turn off the tap without reason and contracts be damned, why would they do that?

War and acts of God render most contracts moot. It’s a silly argument. And plenty of countries (smartly) renege on contracts all the time for even less dramatic reasons and do not suffer long, if at all, in the international capital markets. IMF/World Bank are not as important as they used to be. Compared to China, they’re now bit players. This is how the modern world works.

Russia cited maintenance when turning off NS1 because they probably had maintenance to do that was difficult in a war zone. Also, NS1 traverses Ukraine, and they had previously accused Ukraine of siphoning.

It’s in Russia’s interest to make its gas delivery reliable— that’s how you keep Europe dependent. The US wanted to end that dependence and ramp up US LNG market share. https://peoplesworld.org/article/pipeline-ploy-how-u-s-natur...

You are thinking of the Soyuz or Brotherhood pipelines, which go via Ukraine (and there is a third option: the yamal pipeline that goes via Poland). NS1 and NS2 go directly from Russia to Germany via the baltic sea, which Ukraine has no direct border with, so are nowhere close to any war zone. The compressor station, which allegedly had technical issues, is located in mainland Russia (far far away from Ukraine).