> Destroying the infrastructure doesn't give Russia an additional capability
Remember the many deaths of important people in Russia but also abroad?
It could very well be about "sending a message" while maintaining plausible deniability. Just like when the Russian oligarch was murdered in Spain a few months ago, and his whole family. Russia had nothing to do with it! But all the others got the message - you are not safe anywhere.
Similar here. There are a lot of other pipelines. If you look at the news, Poland opened a new pipeline from Norway exactly now! What a coincidence in timing?
The threat is that they can destroy any important infrastructure, cables and pipelines, under the sea, and there is no way to prove it was Russia.
It fist very well with how Russia operated this year. The many many different threats, direct and indirect, and demonstrations to actually carry them out.
To me, it's plausible. Much more so than "the US did it", or even Ukraine. Neither has any reason to stupidly risk their relationship with the Europeans for that, Ukraine least of all, and the US is already set to be the main supplier of LNG (German article: https://www.merkur.de/wirtschaft/usa-wird-wohl-wichtigster-l...). Gas exports for the US are nice to have, but not nearly essential, I think the US's own independence was the main driver in investing into domestic fossil fuel extraction, exports are a distant second. And they already got them, as I pointed out, no need for such a stupidly risky thing. Russia on the other hand does not need to gain anything, they can be content setting up a bigger threat scenario now that Putin escalated almost as much as he will be able to excluding using "WMD".
Remember the many deaths of important people in Russia but also abroad?
It could very well be about "sending a message" while maintaining plausible deniability. Just like when the Russian oligarch was murdered in Spain a few months ago, and his whole family. Russia had nothing to do with it! But all the others got the message - you are not safe anywhere.
Similar here. There are a lot of other pipelines. If you look at the news, Poland opened a new pipeline from Norway exactly now! What a coincidence in timing?
The threat is that they can destroy any important infrastructure, cables and pipelines, under the sea, and there is no way to prove it was Russia.
It fist very well with how Russia operated this year. The many many different threats, direct and indirect, and demonstrations to actually carry them out.
To me, it's plausible. Much more so than "the US did it", or even Ukraine. Neither has any reason to stupidly risk their relationship with the Europeans for that, Ukraine least of all, and the US is already set to be the main supplier of LNG (German article: https://www.merkur.de/wirtschaft/usa-wird-wohl-wichtigster-l...). Gas exports for the US are nice to have, but not nearly essential, I think the US's own independence was the main driver in investing into domestic fossil fuel extraction, exports are a distant second. And they already got them, as I pointed out, no need for such a stupidly risky thing. Russia on the other hand does not need to gain anything, they can be content setting up a bigger threat scenario now that Putin escalated almost as much as he will be able to excluding using "WMD".
By the way, Der Spiegel is reporting that the CIA warned the German Government that an attack on the pipelines might be imminent. (Paywall and German -https://www.spiegel.de/politik/beschaedigte-gasleitungen-cia...)