[int_19h]

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).

[phpthrowaway99]

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.

[migro23]

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.