Milov released a pretty comprehensive video on the nord stream sabotage and surrounding factors. his main points are:
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the pipes themselves were designed to withstand a ship sinking and crushing them. that much steel and reinforced concrete comes with specifications that only the builder would know. without knowing the specifications, it is impossible to detonate them with a clean opening like those on the video from eu investigators. the builder was a russian company connected to putin, the precise metal/concrete specifications are proprietary and known only to them.
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the amount of explosives needed is likely in the 1000 kg range. the depth of such a dive would require decompression chambers. there’s only ~2000 such capable divers in the world, all employed in offshore industries. their training and certifications are very tightly controlled, and all civilians are known to intelligence agencies, whereas military divers identities are secret. basically rules out the private yacht theory rented in germany by ukranians.
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russia conducted naval exercises in the baltic as little as a week before the explosion, much closer in time and space than the NATO exercises. we also know that russia had developed this offensive capability of their submarine program. precise detonation of 3 out of 4 gas pipes also points to a military capability.
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on the subject of why russia blew up their own pipes. what was severed were: both pipes of NordStream 1, and one of the pipes of NordStream 2. NordStream 1 was operational (but stopped for maintenance), and gas needed to be supplied according to existing contracts. Nord Stream 2 was not operational and not certified due to the war in ukraine. No contractual obligation to send any gas there. By severing Nord Stream 1, russian gas supplier would not face penalties for breaching NS1 contracts. By leaving one pipe of NS2 viable, putin was attempting to force a panicked Germany to certify NS2.
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the explosion happened on the heels of ukrainian counteroffensive operation in kharkiv, where putin needed to make a big retaliatory move, and that’s when he shot hundreds of rockets targeting the energy grid. he was ultimately unsuccessful in freezing neither europe or ukraine, but by demonstrating this capability he is making EU start being cautious about their ocean pipelines, e.g. the planned link between Norway and Poland.
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Alright I buy that.
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Russia also conspicuously not screaming bloody murder about obvious international terrorism is something of a tell.
As said above an obvious strategy was to freeze Europe which was as written about many times in many places. It only didn’t happen because of climate change… this time.
None of this is hard. Unless you’re certain people. WhY wOuLd RuSsIa bLoW uP tHEiR oWn PiPeLinE??!?
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i think warm winter played a role, but EU actually prepared for the shutoff all throughout summer of ‘22. the storage was 90% full, and LNG deliveries made up more than enough.
But what if the CIA convinced the Russians to do it, huh?
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Feel like I’m always seeing articles from Ukrainian leaders talking about upcoming offensive plans. Is it odd that they keep referencing it with seemingly kinda specific timeframes/goals/etc? I’m guessing they need to talk about it to get more equipment support? Is it just so obvious there not point in being quiet about it?
this is make or break it moment for ukraine, and they are not going to rush with it, so the upcoming offensive tiemframe always comes with a 2-3 weeks window to start. but yeah, there is an element of psyops to it. they are hoping it has a demoralizing effect on the mobiks, and makes it more likely they flee or surrender.
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A Biden admin official recently told members of Congress that Ukraine has the military capability to take back Crimea
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a huge 70km long trench you say? from a country that “has” deployable hypersonic rockets? and a military space capability? gtfo.
Saw on NYT that one these leaked documents saying Ukraine would be mostly out of s300 missiles by sometime in May and they make up like 85% their total air defense. Are there more of these stocked up somewhere outside of Russia that Ukraine could get access? Can they manufacture more? Or they going to have to try to make up that entire amount with western systems?
Makes sense about the handheld stuff numbers being off but I thought the patriot/other western systems genuinely only replaced a tiny fraction of the total air defense? Like it might take 30 to cover Ukraine and we gave them 2 (numbers completely made up)