| The question no one asks is "how long does it take to repair a break in the pipeline?" The whole pipeline is still there, this is damaged sections. This would be a known risk of an undersea pipeline: stuff undersea gets damaged by ships all the time [1]. I would wager, were we in normal circumstances, we'd be talking 6 months. There'd be big money at stake, vital infrastructure, and that's about as long as you've got till winter in Europe normally. We would have spare pipe sections, we've still got all the plant and equipment for putting them in place. Basically, this is not unplanned for event. But does Russia, Putin specifically, think the pipeline will be of any benefit to them over the next 6 months? If Russia withdraws from Ukraine, sure. But why would that happen? Because Putin has been deposed (and is probably dead) - and the main way to accrue the sort of allies you'd need to do it would be to promise them a bigger cut of the new revenue to the state provided they played ball. Taking the pipelines out of circulation in the short term cuts off internal negotiating power for would be usurpers for Putin specifically. Which for current day Russia, is the only consideration that matters. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamchatka_(ship) |
I won't pretend to understand the motivations here but it definitely further drives the wedge between the EU and Russia.