Can you name a single other instance in history where a country at war significantly damaged its ability to raise money for the war to “send a message”? What exactly is the message? The US didn’t think Russia had a submersible and some C4 and now they do?
Well, a strategic goal to let Europeans suffer during winter in order to shatter our resolve to support Ukraine, while avoiding contractual penalties for unilateral cessation of gaz delivery, can explain the benefit of exploding the pipeline. This can explain also the fact that the fourth pipe was left intact - as a potential carrot to Europe...
I do not pretend that the above is truth, but it seams to be a plausible explanation.
I don't see why this is so downvoted. People are doing a lot of mental gymnastics to discount the possibility of Russian sabotage here and I really don't understand why that is. Nothing is certain, but I think it's silly to discount Russia being responsible it for the reasons people are giving.
I’m genuinely curious where the gymnastic is? I am asking in good faith. What is Russia’s interest in sabotaging it? They can’t sell gas to fund their war machine.
What’s the US interest? Now Europe must buy LNG from our fantastic gas companies. US exports of LNG are at an all time high price. Europe is pissed off at our rival. Not to mention our commander in chief threatened to blow it up, why?
Everything here says it’s in the interest of the USA, not Russia. I don’t feel like I’m bending any logic, in fact I feel like this is the only common sense way to think about it.
What people are saying is that he wouldn't be stupid enough to kill off something that is a vital source of foreign currency in wartime, and could be used as leverage in negotiating with the EU. Except it wasn't operational and was proving to be useless as a bargaining chip.
The gymnastics come in believing that the guy who was willing to throw caution to the wind in starting a war with Ukraine (causing his economy to take a hammering and killing trade with the EU, running the real risk of pushing NATO entirely into NATO's arms) is somehow going to be precious about a pipeline that had ceased to have any value. I don't see it.
Russia is the only country who could do it without risking provoking a war.
Russia knew they weren’t going to make any money on it due to the strong reaction to the war on Ukraine.
Russia could have decided to do it to remind Western Europe that it could do the same to other pipelines they depend on.
None of that is determinative that Russia did do it, but it’s sufficient to me to indicate that they could have done it, and insisting that it’s absurd is, well, absurd.
Russia is also not a single actor. There are factions, and they have different interests. The "liberals" aka the economic bloc in the administration - who know full well what kind of shitshow is ahead in the long term - would prefer the war to die down, and for gas to start flowing again, preferably in exchange for dropping sanctions. Because of that, they're a potential threat to the war faction; think of how some parts of the German military repeatedly tried to arrange for secret negotiations with the Allies for an example of how it could materialize. But if there are no pipelines, the "liberals" have no gas to offer in exchange for concessions even if they somehow manage to stop the war and remove the war party from power. This makes their platform less attractive.
(To be clear, this is all just conjecture. The factions are real enough, and have motives that could make players in this game, but it's obviously not the only viable explanation.)
My best guess as to Russian interest is that by performing the sabotage in a difficult-to-attribute manner it plants the seeds for anti-US (and by extent, anti-Ukraine) sentiment in the public perception in the EU. More or less the governments of EU countries need the will of the people to back military aid to Ukraine, so giving the public something to latch on to from an anti-US perspective is valuable in that it could lower or prevent aid.
The Russians can also probably be secure in knowing that NATO won't publicly identify Russia as responsible as that would probably mean war and it has been very clear that NATO's top priority is avoiding the spread of the war in Ukraine.
There are some other possible Russian motivations I've seen, but put less stock in like capability demonstration and limiting incentives for a coup.
You need to stop thinking like a rational capitalist. It's a common problem for westerners to try to look at Russia from this angle.
It makes the cost of energy go up in Europe and the US, which exacerbates the existing problem of monetary inflation caused by the recent pandemic. It was meant as punishment for the West's support of Ukraine to increase civil discontent with the existing pro-Ukraine western governments. This allows the electorate to be more receptive to populist candidates funded by Russia with anti-Ukraine positions which will give Russia what they want.
Then, Ukraine goes to Russia, gas goes back to Europe via the still intact pipeline, European money goes back to Russia, and Russia wins.
That scale of sabotage wasn’t a casual act. Russia knew Europe was going to shut down its imports anyway, so perhaps it was a threat, but one that didn’t involve casus belli.
Russia was the only country that could do that without risk of widening the war.
I’m not saying they did do it, but I see no reason for everyone to insist it’s obviously false.
> The US didn’t think Russia had a submersible and some C4 and now they do?
The US wasn’t the target, European powers were, and the message was about will (though like other Russian threats over the same policy issue, it was a false message, despite the dramatic form), more than material capacity.
Russia comes to mind, in the weeks before the explosions when they launched a ridiculous cascade of excuses about why they can't fulfill contracts on the existing, undamaged pipe. They quite literally left huge amounts of money on the table only to send a message. Must have been difficult, internally, to keep up.
Germany declared war on Russia which was allied with France. And Germany did not declare war on any of those countries out of will, but due to an alliance with the Austro-Hungarian empire.
As parent said, Germany didn’t declare war willingly, they had no choice but supporting the alliance. You cannot just change sides in war as it suits you.
For starters, Germany declared war on Russia five days before Austria-Hungary did. But even if it were otherwise, they still had a choice whether to honor their obligations or not.
Furthermore, there's substantial evidence that Germany - or rather, some German factions - was very specifically pressuring Austria into a war, precisely so that it could then be "joined":
Extremely far-fetched, you'd have to convince me that the Russian government and military are full of total morons.
Building a pipeline is not cheap, not in money or time or bureaucratic effort. It's easier to just stop supplying the gas if you want to make an obvious threat.
> Extremely far-fetched, you'd have to convince me that the Russian government and military are full of total morons.
They launched a full scale invasion of Ukraine while denying they were doing so and failed at every one of their military objectives while causing their economy to collapse due to the massive worldwide sanctions. What other evidence could you require?
Exactly. Putin started an incredibly expensive war that could prove to be financially ruinous for Russia, I don't know why we're supposed to believe he wouldn't be so careless about a pipeline that wasn't even operational at the time. I'm not claiming to know who did this, but I don't think we can say it couldn't possibly be Russia