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 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.