This one? Anything that messes up with the credibility of NATO governments (and France is one of the pillars of NATO) could help Russia. Which of course doesn't prove that it is Russia, either.
- Russia did it as a false flag operation to sow distrust between NATO members.
- Russia did it because the long term contracts for Nordstream 1 required them to supply cheap gas, whereas they'd get market prices for the remaining pipeline of Nordstream 2.
It is remarkable that all Western agencies have backed off from both claims.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/qa-nord-stream-gas-sabo...
Plenty of people claiming that Russia did it.
But that doesn't detract from what I wrote.
Terrorists surely want as much, rapid, coverage of their acts as possible (even if not wanting anyone to know they're terrorist acts). If internet were out that probably makes the acts less impactful.
> It is of course possible that Russia did this particular one, but it is not Russia's style. Why now and not in 2022? Why don't they cut Internet cables? Why would they do it when they know there will just be a backlash?
Because Russia likes to pretend it's not them (you know that)
And they have been going around internet cables in an inappropriate way
Because now there's a major event happening in France, where disruptions will be shown globally and affect people from many places congregating for a singular event. It shames France on the global stage, Putin likes shaming leaders who he thinks are weak.
> Why don't they cut Internet cables? Why would they do it when they know there will just be a backlash?
Internet cables have much more redundancy than a rail network, you can't route trains around the world to get to their destination just some hundreds of milliseconds delayed, it's disruptive but workarounds are embedded in the design of the system, not so much with rail during peak summer season in a very touristic country while hosting a major sporting event.
Do you think Russia really cares about the backlash? They keep pushing the boundaries to test responses, what kind of backlash do you think France would give to a nuclear power while they can't show with 100% certainty was Russian? That's the MO of Russia, I don't understand why you are trying to defend it.
It might as well not be Russia but the suspicions aren't far fetched, given stuff like this: https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2024/07/24/russian-...
The closest narrative they produced were "independent Ukrainians using a sailboat", after which they closed the investigation.
So, whose style is Nordstream? Under Reagan, another Russian-German pipeline was sabotaged.
It is of course possible that Russia did this particular one, but it is not Russia's style. Why now and not in 2022? Why don't they cut Internet cables? Why would they do it when they know there will just be a backlash?