One of the pipelines is still operational. Weird, eh?

Very weird. Would you volunteer a theory? (since that is probably all we can do for now).

I think you are smart enough to guess why, and infer who did it.

I would say the operation went off as planned. The capacity to ship gas on Nord Stream 1 was cut, but luckily, the pipeline hadn't been in use for a month at the time. According to this site, https://berthub.eu/gazmon/ , In March 2020, 100-150 GW of Gas went from Russia to EU, right before the pipeline cut, that had gone down to 50GW, and after the cut it dropped to 30GW.

So the question is, what was the strategic effect for the US, Ukraine, and/or Russia to have done this?

My take, its almost as good for Russia to play victim than it is for the US to cut Russia's Gas. It would be interesting to see how dominant this story was in Russia, given the Ukrainian advances in late 2022.

Russia had stopped gas flows on NordStream 1 26 days prior to the explosion [1].

This was after a series of reductions, stops, and restarts where they reduced flows and tried to get Germany to break sanctions to send parts. That they then ultimately rejected and wouldn't receive. E.g. [2].

When Germany offered the parts. They refused them, stopped NS1 entirely and offered to activate NS2 with Germany. [3] Germany refused and resisted the blackmail attempt.

Then the explosion happened a couple of weeks later. After that Russia again offered to activate NS2 with Germany. [4]

In this context, the US going ahead with the plan to demolish NS1, and leave NS2 50% operation makes zero sense.

[1]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1331710/nord-stream-phys... [2]: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/kremlin-says-gazprom... [3]: https://www.rferl.org/a/putin-nord-stream-closed-energy-cris... [4]: https://www.dw.com/en/putin-offers-europe-gas-through-nord-s...

Everyone knew who did it five seconds after it happened. People are denying it for political reasons only. And that's fine--that's how politics work.

Biden pretty much gave it away. In a press conference before the invasion he assured the German media that nordstream 2 will never happen and when asked how the US has any say in a German / Russia venture he said he it will never happen, trust me.

Blowing up the pipeline is the only way to make sure. The only other option would have been to somehow sanction Germany if they turned on Nordstream 2 but that would also be bad for the US that needs to be able to operate their missions from Ramstein.

I thought there was subsequent reporting that Biden got a commitment from the chancellor (embarrassingly, I can’t remember if it was before or after Merkel left) that if Russia did invade, Germany would pull the plus on NS2. That could just as easily explain the comment, no?

no :)