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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   35349 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 26, 2022

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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:

Massive drop in pressure – Nord Stream 2 pipeline apparently partially destroyed

There was an incident on the Russian Baltic Sea pipeline, as confirmed by the Danish shipping authority. The operator Gascade speaks of a sharp drop in pressure in the tube. An accident is considered unlikely. The timing of the accident suggests sabotage.

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?

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.

Why would russian competence at large-scale mobilization or logistics or strategy have anything, at all, to do with their competence at an individual sabotage mission? If russia was, say, Chad in africa, you'd expect them to be related - but russia is clearly capable of maintaining nuclear weapons, spy satellites etc, and the failures of the war don't necessarily suggest they'd fail at that. That doesn't have much to do with anything.

No idea if anyone did it, or who, at all, but that approach isn't useful.

Russia hasn't really shown any competence in small tactical operations (Hostomel airport, Zelensky death squads, Snake Island) or intelligence operations (Sims 3, "Signature Unclear"). Personally I'm not surprised that they can blow their own pipeline on international waters I'd be more surprise if they did it without leaving a shitton of evidence. We'll see in the coming days.

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