[JoiDegn]

That is what I thought as well and I similarly discounted the likelihood that Russia did this but I have changed my opinion on this particularly because I don't think Germany is actually going to run into (a lot of) trouble this Winter and probably also not next winter. And if Russia agrees that this is likely to be the case and also that there is not likely going to be gas deliveries through North Stream in the coming years then destroying it could at least serve the purpose of increasing doubt and creating uncertainty especially if it could be pinned on other actors (i.e. the US).

Here is why I think Germany will be relatively ok:

German source on Zeit.de showing gas deliveries from other countries making up a big chunk of Russian deliveries and German gas reserves being almost full and gas demand being ~25% under the average demand in the past years (probably largely due to the price of course). https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/energiemonitor-deutschland-ga...

Additionally LNG terminals are due to come live in December (if there won't be delays).

[pydry]

The storage provides 2-3 months' worth of gas. It being full is not enough to ride out a rough winter without rationing. Meanwhile even with a new LNG container port they still have to pay through the nose for all that American LNG.

Germany will probably survive without a rash of people freezing to death but economically it is going to suffer very, very badly.

[stavros]

Maybe demand is lower because the price is ten times higher than 2020 levels.