What's the part that's hard to imagine? It's literally just a boat ride to a publicly-known location that isn't monitored in any way, diving to a depth humans can dive to, placing some standard military / commercial explosives, and getting out.

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.

> diving to a depth humans can dive to

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 ..

> No, "normal" humans don't dive to 80m deep, where the explosion occurred.

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.

I want to clarify my answer here as I made it seem a bit more nonchalant than it is, there is definitely some technical training that needs to be done to dive deeper, as you say no recreational scuba enthusiast should just try it. There are different gasses that you need and a whole different approach to preparation and decomp.

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.

You can look this up on wikipedia you know: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_diving

"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.

An 80 meter bounce dive is a cake walk for anyone with advanced technical dive training. Any motivated middle-class person could acquire the necessary skills and equipment to do it safely in a few years of steady effort. It doesn't require anything like the complex saturation diving procedures and equipment used by COMEX or certain naval institutions.

You have no clue about the "facts". Diving to 80m+ is no big deal now. Hundreds of random amateur tech divers do that every weekend as a casual hobby. They typically own their own gear (not rental), which can purchased new for about $30K including training. The equipment such as a closed-circuit rebreather (CCR) and drysuit is somewhat specialized but widely available on the open market from numerous manufacturers. I know a number of divers living in that region who have done much more complex and challenging dives, although obtaining and using the explosives is a separate issue.

Hard, but doable. Here is the analysis by an experience diver.

https://www-ostsee--zeitung-de.translate.goog/panorama/exper...

Right, Achim Schlöffel is legitimate. In terms of complex tech diving he has been there and done that, and has the pictures to prove it. When he says something can be done there's no reason to doubt him.

https://is-expl.com/about/instructors/wgZMC8Y7

Googling for 10 seconds comes up with

>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.

There are a lot of rummors going around (Espcially in Poland) that diver name was Volodymer Z. and currently he is in Ukraine.

Not trying to give any hints there, just sharing some rummors.

They actually dived pretty deep (most Scuba gear and divers are limited to 40 meters), the planning of the operation was meticulous in that pretty much nobody saw the divers, and the explosives had to be designed with a good knowledge of the pipeline and its concrete. Ukrainian operations during the war have demonstrated that their typical MO is a lot more "seat-of-the-pants" than this operation would suggest.

You're literally arguing that a government intelligence agency couldn't find a couple of experienced people, provide them with commercially-available equipment, and get them to coordinate a medium-complexity task.

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.

Their sabotage attempts of several bridges in Crimea did not go this well, suggesting that the Ukrainians alone aren't the best at understanding explosives, and their successes like "fly a bunch of FPV drones out of a shipping container" are quite a bit simpler than this. "Intelligence agency" is a spectrum of capability. Suggesting that an intelligence agency that tried and failed to blow up a bride twice was the same as the one that executed a flawless operation against an underwater pipeline is a bit far-fetched.

Snuggling and launching drones from deep within enemy territory is a much more complicated op than a couple of dudes diving in the middle of nowhere.

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.

Wait, NORD Stream was BEHIND enemy lines? And is as short a span as a bridge (so more easily monitored complicating things). How many people traveled across the Nord Stream pipeline a day that required the operators to be hidden from?

It's not at all obvious that e.g. the drone attack, which involved >100 drones assembled inside Russia by human operatives who were able to safely exfiltrate, and 5 different storage containers, in a coordinated strike on 5 different airfields hundreds/thousands of kilometers apart and away from the border, is a less complex operation than the destruction of NordStream

They have demonstrated capabilities like blowing up the Kerch Strait bridge or several Russian oil refineries without US help, what makes you think Nord Stream is too difficult for them?

According to the New York Times, Ukraine receives major help from the US on all fronts:

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?

> 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.

Why bring up "decompression equipment"? Have you ever even done any tech diving? We just deco in the water. No special equipment is needed beyond a rebreather or some stage tanks.

They sent their A team for the pipeline and B team for the bridge?

We can't prove that there wasn't some US assistance (i.e. can't prove a negative) but there's pretty strong evidence that it was primarily a Ukrainian operation.

https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/nord-stream-pipeline-explos...

Yeah it didn't seem very difficult

physically it wasn't that hard - ship, explosives, scuba divers

it's the clusterfuck of EU police inactivity afterwards that needs to be paid more attention to

Yes.