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by migro23 1359 days ago
People need to stop thinking of 'Russia' (or any other country for that matter) as a single monolith. For example, a possible motive that may be bad for Russia but good for Putin is that maybe he wants to deter any would be assassination attempt coming from within the Kremlin by making it abundantly clear that there will be no going back to business as usual if he was to be eliminated. Blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines is a very good way to achieve that.

We as regular citizens have limited info, really we don't know what's going on. But don't assume it definitely isn't Russia because of whatever reason that happens to seem plausible to you.
1 comments
phpthrowaway99 1359 days ago
This could be the same for the US or Ukraine. So considering that, all things being equal, it sounds pretty terrible for the main Russian goals, so I'm going to say no it wasn't Russia.
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int_19h 1359 days ago
Nobody knows what the "main Russian goals" are. I mean, I'd hope that nobody is taking this whole "denazification" business seriously.

There's a very real possibility that the actual goal of this entire mess is/was for Putin to get into the history textbooks as one of the great Russian leaders before he dies from cancer (or whatever it is that he has).

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phpthrowaway99 1358 days ago
This is exactly the same point the previous poster made. Sure we don't know the real hidden motives of Russia or Putin, but you could say the same for the US and Biden. So ignoring crazy random guesses, you can say that all things being as sane as you'd hope they are, Russia destroying their own ability to say "if you agree to this or that, we will turn back on the gas flow you need to provide affordable energy to your citizens" would be pretty foolish.

On the other side, Ukraine destroying the pipeline and making sure EU members don't give it to Russia in order to restore the flow of gas makes pretty good sense.. as long as you don't care about the EU citizens.

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migro23 1358 days ago
I was countering the idea that was being repeated throughout this thread which was "of course it couldn't be Russia who did this, it is they who stand to benefit if it is functioning". This conclusion is errorsome for all kinds of reasons as there are plenty of motivations for why Russia and more specifically Putin would do such a thing.
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