Which is a shame as I think there can be some interesting questions about this
I have seen speculation that this was done just to throw more chaos into the energy market sort of like causing damage to a lot of power related things in Ukraine
@JoeW The impact of this should be limited though. NS2 wasn't in use and NS1 was already running at reduced capacity in any case. I've also heard speculation that it could be a warning, for example that some of the pipes carrying Norwegian gas could be next. With that in mind, I guess an interesting question would be how countries are allowed to protect pipes and other infrastructure outside its EEZ. I'm afraid the answer is probably that they mostly cannot.
@JJJ I agree that the direct impact of this should be limited was more commenting because it has a large impact on who gains from the attack as it might not be the people who would sell more because of it.
@JoeW Even when it comes to selling, I think the main point would be how it affects the gas price rather than the quantity sold. The pipe was running at a much lower capacity recently but the monetary value was higher than last year because the price had gone up so much.
I also think many countries couldn't risk blowing this up even if they wanted to. I think Russia is accusing the US, but if it came out that the US did this then that'd be a confidence crisis in NATO beyond what the US would want.
Combine that train of thought with Russia having targeted power production and distribution in Ukraine and it provides for an interesting line of thought
Yeah, I don't really see what Russia would get out of it though. So the one speculation I mentioned is that it's intended as a threat, but that's also a bit weird to me. If you want to cause maximum damage then you'd hit the right pipeline unexpectedly. If it's a threat warning the West not to go further in Ukraine then this might not be big enough to get the message across.
Isn't Which countries do have both a motive and a capability of disrupting Nord Stream? a more ambiguous and less precise duplicate of https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/75825 ?
@JoeW Yea I don't think the flag was correctly understood. That said, because the first answer was self-deleted after a few minutes I don't think I should mod hammer it necessarily. It does seem to meet the standards for answers even if it might not be the best answer. Like we discussed before, it's hard to say what makes a good answer here because the blame game is inherently speculative.
Isn't Which countries do have both a motive and a capability of disrupting Nord Stream? a more ambiguous and less precise duplicate of https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/75825 ?
