Was the Nord Stream 2 Rupture an Accidental Catalyst?

[ggm]

If you posit poor weld quality lead to one event but then argue this catelyzed an active attack as the second event, why do you not actively discuss weld quality as the root cause of both events?

I see no need for there to have BEEN a second attack, if you posit weld quality caused one failure, its actually more plausible weld quality is an issue overall, than something was done.

The ships could have been doing remote sensing to try and test weld quality, as much as laying munitions.

It feels like partial application of Occams razor or something.

Admitting they did a shit job of laying critical infrastructure is probably hard, for a highly distorted economy. The risk of achieving a window-ejection event, is high.

[sgc]

Well, because as he said, they so far confirm to have found explosive residue at one site, and not the other. And, as stated, there was suspicious activity of a ship directly over the site for a week prior to the attack, where explosive residues have been confirmed, and not over the other site.

[htag]

This is stated in the article.

The theory is that explosives on NS1 were detonated because the failure of NS2 would have triggered an inspection of NS1 that would have revealed the previously planted explosives.

[brutusborn]

Because the theory is straw-clutching to discredit Hersh. These kind of pipelines have extremely rigorous testing regimes. The probability that a weld defect caused failure in a non-operational pipeline is tiny.

[Semaphor]

I read an interesting comment on reddit a while ago, paraphrasing from memory:

Assuming there was definitive proof who did it (and for simplification reason, let’s say it was either the USA or Russia), there is no way they will not classify and bury that. It can’t be the USA for obvious reasons, but Russia would make it too direct an attack on a NATO state, which no one wants either. So the current state of "we have no idea" is the best for everyone involved.

[brutusborn]

What are the obvious reasons it can't be USA? Seems to me there is nothing obvious about this incident besides the fact that it benefits the USA strategically and economically.

[jemmyw]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EeP_ZZbBIl4

I like this analysis, where it was probably Russia, although we may never know, but it's actually more harmful to Russia if we have these conspiracy theories going around the perpetrator/cause. They want people to be panicked by their hybrid warfare and instead the West is largely ignoring it.

[mikeyouse]

That Minerva Julie track is certainly interesting.. a week after Russia cuts the gas through NS1, a Russiann-linked oil freighter (that had just been added to Ukraine's war sponsor registry (https://nazk.gov.ua/en/news/companies-from-the-nacp-list-of-...)) spends nearly a week loitering directly over the site of the explosions that would come 10 days later. Far more open source evidence for this theory than Hersh's, though that's not saying a ton.

[londons_explore]

But if they knew they were laying explosives, would they really do so with their AIS transponder on?

[neovialogistics]

Without appealing to semifamous names who have stated their theories, I'd like to just list the entities with both means and motive that are known to exist, some of which are unlikely candidates.

* Denmark

* Estonia

* Finland

* France

* Gazprom as an independent actor

* Latvia

* Lithuania

* NATO as an independent actor

* Norway

* Poland

* Russia

* Sweden

* Transneft as an independent actor and competitor to Gazprom

* United Kingdom

* United States

Can any of these be conclusively ruled out?

[NalNezumi]

I don't think any can be conclusively ruled out, but if we start to weight each candidate by things such as

* motive(am I gaining/losing leverage by this?),

* ability (can I actually do/help/enable this action?)

* consequence (can I get away with it? Can I muddle it and make people get along with it?)

* context (a war is going on, but so is internal politics; does my context push me for this action?)

I think probably more than half could be reasonably ruled out, depending on how each of those were weighted. And we could probably reason about the accomplices too

[nl]

> Can any of these be conclusively ruled out?

Of course not. It's a fallacy to think it is possible.

Even in the case where someone claims to have been the party that did it and produced documentary evidence showing it the political environment dictates that other parties will claim it is fake or a false flag.

[iavael]

Rule out Gazprom and Transneft, because they are not independent in any way. If you think that there are independent oligarchs that can do such thing, then I have to inform you there are no oligarchs after beginning of 00s in Russia. Sure there are rich people who "own" big companies, but most of them are Putin's friends and others won't even think about anything like "independence". Putin can say one word and these people (like anyone in Russia) will go to jail for 15 years, die strange death or would have to leave country (if they are able to do this fast enough). Berezovskiy and Hodorkovskiy examples were enough for everyone to understand that oligarchy is gone.

Moreover Gazprom and Transneft are state-owned.

[jcranmer]

While this is an interesting theory, it definitely has shades of https://xkcd.com/690/ in it. I never thought I'd see an actual article where I could make that reference. :-)

[Lazare]

It's a plausible theory, and it does at least go some way to explaining some of the oddities.

For example, why such a large distance between the breaks in the NS1 and NS2 pipelines? The detail about the Minerva Julie are suggestive.

How true is it? Or perhaps better, how likely is it that it's true? That I couldn't say. I'd tentatively say it's more likely than Hersh's story, but that's a low bar.

[brutusborn]

What makes you doubt Hersh's story?

[jscipione]

Happy President’s Day everybody.

[jacknews]

It just makes no sense, Russia didn't need to blow up the pipelines, they could just turn off the supply. In fact, they lost a substatial negotiating ability (being able to turn the gas back on) with the explosions.

As always, follow the money. USA are now the fracking gas suppliers to Europe, and have cut European 'dependence' on Russia (aka a modicum of independence from USA) which they'd been bleating about for a long time.

[athammer]

I personally don’t think it’s Russia(I think it’s Poland).

However the theory Russia did it or rather a sect of the Russia’s power structure did it is definitely plausible.

Many hardliners in the government saw the pipeline as a tool to negotiate with the West and a way out of the full scale war many hardliners are calling for. Blowing the pipeline has backed Putin into a corner.

The moderates on the other hand see the same thing as well. This forces Putin into a corner and weakens him considerably if the war goes badly (it was/is).

The only person who didn’t want the pipeline blown up was Putin himself. His power structure all had something to gain if the pipes were blown.

Many people say “well Russia wouldn’t do that” and they’re already wrong. Russia’s motives are not singular they are plural. There are competing groups within the Kremlin that are held together by Putin, not a singular will of Russia.

[cheekibreeki2]

All of these people acting like the the EU hasn't officially labeled this event as sabotage. One only needs to ask who would benefit. Perhaps ask Victoria 'fuck the eu' Nuland.

[thepasswordis]

It's absolutely incredible to me that there is even a question about this.

The Biden administration walked back the Trump policy of sanctioning anybody who did work on the NS2 pipeline. Russia was able to use this as an implied bargaining chip against German support for Ukraine.

Who benefits from blowing up a Russian pipeline in The Baltic Sea? Russia? The country that was planning on using this as leverage? Who could have just as easily simply turned the supply off?

The idea that anybody ever bought that is embarrassing.

Now Germany is also signaling that they aren't on board with the idea of economic sanctions against China: https://news.cgtn.com/news/2023-02-18/China-to-expand-mutual...

Germany is trying to avoid WW3 here, which I think is signaled by their initial reaction to the war, and now signaled again with their response to the idea of economic sanctions against China. In pursuit of that, they didn't want to support the war in Ukraine, for what I think should now be obvious reasons. The US was worried that they wouldn't be willing to risk their population freezing to death this winter, so we blew up the gas pipeline and took the option away from them.

[villmann]

What WWIII? The one where Russia, that has no functioning military, together with Wakanda faces the rest of the world? The rusted non-functioning nukes that Russia has no reason to use and only function as a deterrant?

[throwawaylinux]

Have to wonder whether the Russia investigation looked in the right places. Georgia, Crimea, Ukraine, 1980s wanting its foreign policy back, secretly promising "flexibility" to Putin. Makes you wonder what Putin paid for that kind of flexibility.

[jemmyw]

By the time it blew up Russia had lost their leverage. It was clear by then that Europe was going to absorb the gas situation. That doesn't rule out the US. This is a reasonable take on it that doesn't conclude anything but looks at the reactions https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EeP_ZZbBIl4

[brutusborn]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...

[ChickenNugger]

No

[Arainach]

It's one thing to say it's incredibly unlikely, which is fair. Please don't use terms such as "zero percent chance" - there is absolutely both chance and precedent for pipelines to have catastrophic failure, regardless of timing. The chance is never zero.

[Thorrez]

What is the percent chance that the boat laying the pipe would go way off course 50m from where the rupture would later occur, and not go off course in any other place along the pipeline?

[postsantum]

This stage is called "Yes, we did it but it was an accident"

Expecting the next one - ".. and this is why it was a good thing"

[kilgnad]

You're voted down, but you're not wrong. The government does use agents that spread misinformation. I mean it's a freemarket... perfectly legal for the media too bullshit and perfectly legal for the government to bullshit too.

There is nothing precluding this blog from being written by such an agent.

[_kbh_]

Funny that’s exactly how I feel about the fever dream that Seymour Hersh spewed forth.

[gumby]

> Biden: eyes twinkle "I promise you, we will be able to do it"

There is nothing grammatically wrong with this phrase, but it is highly unusual in US English where a different turn of phrase is used.

However this phrase is common in certain other languages.