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/r/stupidpol is abuzz with news of both NordStream pipelines being damaged, in what mainstream sources openly speculate to be an attack:
tagesspiegel.de (google translated)
welt.de (google translated)
Stupidpol being stupidpol, blames it all on the west (either the US or UK)... but it feels like the kind of have a point? Russian performance in the war doesn't exactly scream competence, so it would be surprising, if they pulled something like this off, so deep in NATOs turf.
When we were discussing the coming winter, some people were saying "the European gas storage is filled up, it'll be fine", but isn't the gas storage more like a buffer, designed to take advantage of the decreased demand over the summer, to even out the increased demand in winter, working on the assumption that there will still be a constant supply of gas coming in? Does this change the calculus at all?
Why'd they be sabotaging their own pipeline ?
Biden himself hinted USA is going to do "bring about an end to Nord Stream 2" and declined to elaborate.. A submersible drone bomb was found on site couple of years back.
It'd be redundant (and risky) for USA to sabotage Nord Stream 2, as it was killed and buried the day Russia attacked Ukraine. Trying to continue the certification would be a political suicide in Europe unless Russia faces a complete regime change. It's Nord Stream 1 and the related continued dependence on Russian gas that has been the problem.
You are repeating the anglo consensus on the subject without taking into account that European politicians don’t play within the Anglo consensus. Germany has been very clearly trying to keep the Nord Stream open. Scholz posed for pics in front of the freaking turbine like a month ago! I have no clue who did this or if this was sabotage but it’s pretty obvious that in the winter Germany (and many others) would very likely push for resuming gas imports under some pretext. Scholz had a 90 minute phone call with Putin like two weeks ago and we know basically nothing of what they talked about. Russian gas isn’t some moral question, it’s an existential threat to European economy.
Eh. I think there's a spectrum. The German government is trying to avoid paying the cost of supporting Ukraine as much as possible, because that cost will be internally unpalatable. That doesn't translate to rapprochment with Russia, which is broadly a domestic nonstarter.
What inflation per year and how many hours of winter rolling blackouts do you think are going to be needed until Germans reconsider buying gas from Russia ?
Hell, in this situation they may even start reconsidering nuclear power. Which, let's remind everyone against used to produce as much energy yearly as all the nat-gas plants were producing in recent years.
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