The exact reasons aren't entirely clear, originally they hated NS because it allowed Europe to ignore Ukraine in the gas trade which left them more exposed. By the time of the full scale war I would bet the reason was more "fuck Russia" than anything more carefully reasoned.
(Not saying that's the case here, all considered)
When the pipeline was sabotaged, no gas and no money were flowing anyway, which makes it even more absurd. There is a very high likelihood that the front lines would be in the exact same place if Nord Stream had not been sabotaged.
Except of course, the EU would have had more leverage in negotiating LNG deals with the US and Qatar rather than making emergency deals.
EDIT: Downvoted while the Ukrainian transit pipelines were open from 2014-2025 and yielded Russian transit fees. And while Nord Stream was built partly because Ukraine stole Russian transit gas in 2006: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia%E2%80%93Ukraine_gas_dis...
If it had been done to a US pipeline, it would have been called terrorism.
But actually, by the time of the bombing the Russian gas was only flowing through Ukrainian pipelines. So Ukraine was ensuring "income to the Russian war machine", while Nord Stream was just costing them money; at most it could have been used as collateral in a loan.
Is it?
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/russia-china-bless-v...
So Russia can now export gas, get foreign currency, and buy weapons with the money. I do not see any strategic wins here.
Additionally, China gets an economic boost. That is a sublime strategy.
1. Power of Syberia 1 throughput is not fully utilized.
2. China pays half of the EU price.
3. Power of Syberia 2 not be build in the near future. It's not the deal to actually do something. It's too continue further discussion.
The strategic win in bombing Nord Stream was that Ukraine finally got Europe on their side. Before NS was blown up many countries, especially Germany were sitting on the fence, reluctant to give Ukraine any help. They were hoping for Ukraine to lose the war quickly, then they would give Putin some slap on the wrist punishment, and return to "business as usual" with Russia. Nord Stream being destroyed removed the biggest incentive for doing that.
Russian negotiating position is weak and Beijing knows that.
https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/ukrainian-man-ar...
That they did it for their own motivations?
It seems at least as plausible that they did it because wanted to hurt Russia as it does that Washington ordered them to do it, to put it mildly. Washington has been supporting Ukraine during the war but has been rather reticent to support attacking Russian assets that are outside the territory of Ukraine.
Why would you conclude this where every intelligence and law enforcement agency that has looked into it and published a report has found the opposite?
Do you have a basis to conclude that "every intelligence and law enforcement agency that has looked into it and published a report has found the opposite"? You exhaustively went through all Western intelligence and law enforcement agencies and read their reports? So you are quoting other news articles/interviews. Apparently their views differed. Ok.
Nobody remembers anymore that Pres. Biden himself said, “If Russia invades ... there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.” [°] Nor that the very next day, a EU parliament member, and now Polish foreign minister Radosław Sikorski thanked the US for the sabotage [^]. Nor that the same day, a competing natural gas pipeline has opened, the Baltic Pipe [_].
None of this matters, because "Ukrainians bombed it". Because WaPo and WSJ said so. In a waterway that is heavily controlled by all kinds of NATO vessels. Where NATO had an exercise 3 months before that, called BALTOPS. Come on.
[°] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OS4O8rGRLf8
[^] https://archive.ph/20220927190022/https://twitter.com/radeks...
"Nord Stream sabotage: Berlin issues arrest warrant for Ukrainian man"
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2024/08/14/n...
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/what-is-known-about-nor...
"There will be no longer a NordStream 2, we will bring an end to it"
Shocking, there is no longer a NordStream 2. =D
"Georgia started war with Russia: EU-backed report.
An independent report blamed Georgia on Wednesday for starting last year's five-day war with Russia, but said Moscow's military response went beyond reasonable limits and violated international law." [0]
[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/world/georgia-started-war-wi...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Georgian_War
what a coincidence. Georgia started the war just after the "exercises" where russia rehearsed just that war.
You shouldn't be calling for violence in response to a political disagreement.
(I'm not entirely sincere with the original snipe.)
The US were not thrilled about it when it was being constructed, obviously, but this was normal tensions towards Russia, prescient in the end but here we are.
ROLF - that must up there with "we want the hostages back and we're actively working towards that goal".
https://www.reuters.com/world/biden-germanys-scholz-stress-u...
Halted.. Absolutely, political pressure on Europe to not sign or use it.
You've made the leap to blowing it up somewhere, that is the stretch I'm not buying until it's admitted to. Personally, as an Irish who knows the history of occupation during tense years, I'm not surprised what a well trained spec ops can do with some basic equipment, so my money is on Ukrainian people just doing something Impressive but I'll wait for the facts to say it's exactly what happened.
There were several countries arguably interested in getting rid of that pipeline (Ukraine, Poland, the US), but Ukraine wanted it the most, had easy access, and there's no need to overcomplicate internet theories.
No, "normal" humans don't dive to 80m deep, where the explosion occurred. Any diver, whether professional or recreational (which is my case), will know about this. I don't have a (alternative) theory about this, I'm just stating facts. Well, the alternative theory, if we are speaking of divers, is that they had some very special equipment and were extremely skilled. It wasn't some random people, renting a random boat, renting random diving gear and buying random explosives ..
This simply isn't true, I myself after a technical advancement in my PADI to be certified on a rebreather went >80m many times. It's absolute more common than it was in the past.
Those who are trained with special forces as alleged would also be required to be qualified.
My main point is that it's not as rare as some might think, it's becoming more and more recreational.
The people who did it definitely took on risk, but in my eyes, more so because if something did happen to go wrong, there's no support to help you out (that we know of). It's a flying with 1 engine scenario. The fact that it was pulled off is impressive. But for any rec divers, don't try without the right training, equipment and people with you.
"The open-sea diving depth record was achieved in 1988 by a team of COMEX and French Navy divers who performed pipeline connection exercises at a depth of 534 metres (1,750 ft) in the Mediterranean Sea as part of the "Hydra 8" programme employing heliox and hydrox."
Sounds like 80 meters is cake walk for any modern naval institution.
https://www-ostsee--zeitung-de.translate.goog/panorama/exper...
>Advanced Mixed Gas Diver (80m)...The Advanced Mixed Gas Diver course is a great way to extend already considerable open-circuit mixed gas diving skills.
Not trying to give any hints there, just sharing some rummors.
Yes, it's an operation that requires coordination and planning, which is why it's reasonable to assume it was carried out by an intelligence agency and not a lone fisherman with a grudge. But once you're in the realm of intelligence activities, this isn't exactly the "let's blow up their pagers" level of complexity.
Bringing that bridge down is also much harder than blowing up the pipeline, because the bridge is covered by a lot of defenses, and naval drones will always have limited payload (if they want to be fast enough to evade defenses). Dudes performing a dive in the middle of the sea far from the battlefield are much less vulnerable.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/25/world/europe/cia-ukraine-...
The first Kerch Bridge attempt was only a partial success. Traffic continued almost the next day. The second attempt was a complete failure. For the refineries, Ukraine uses at least GPS.
The sail boat theory is plausible from diving standpoint, but they allegedly installed explosives on NS-1 and NS-2 sites that were at least 100km apart, within 10 hours, with no decompression equipment. If they can do that, why do they repeatedly fail at Kerch Bridge?
The bridge is approximately 3km long or so, which makes it relatively easy to maintain a continuous 24/7 armed presence to prevent sabotage. An underwater pipeline is a 1200km stretch mostly in other international territory that is hard to protect. Definitely much easier to blow up a pipeline than it is to blow up a bridge.
https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/nord-stream-pipeline-explos...
it's the clusterfuck of EU police inactivity afterwards that needs to be paid more attention to
I didn't know dementia is so contagious.
A month or so later, Russia launched the 2022 offensive against Ukraine, and there was no longer any question of NS2 entering service because it was clear to all that the preconditions for Germany's rescission of approval for the pipeline had been satisfied. With that context, Biden's answer is best understood as him being quite confident in the quality of US intelligence that Russia was planning an imminent invasion of Ukraine that Europe was assessing as faulty. So while Europe was interested in the question of "what if Russia doesn't invade Ukraine?" Biden's answer was (in not so many words) "I'm not contemplating that scenario."
My money is actually on Polish special forces (or one of the Baltic states), in an effort to force Germany to be serious about weaning itself off Russian natural gas.
It didn't make much of a difference to Germany since the gas flow via NS1 was already switched off for a while and NS2 never had delivered any gas before the sabotage happened. In the end it was more of a symbolic gesture to freeze the status quo that was already in place anyway.
Russia warns Europe that it will freeze to death if help to Ukraine will continue -> Russia stops NS1 to demonstrate their economical superpower -> EU companies are looking for $18 billion compensation -> NS1 blows up to make an excuse.
The EU is screwed by all energy oligarchies, including transit nations.
For example, Seymour Hersh (renowned wartime investigative journalist), published a brief on US involvement: https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/how-america-took-out-the...
AKA: Argument from ignorance
The funnier / biggest irony is that US and Russia are working together to fix the pipeline, buy distilleries in Germany to sell to the Germans Russian gas at US prices.