The Nord Stream I & II natural gas pipelines running through Russia and Germany experienced gas leaks one after another on Monday and Tuesday (September 26 and 27), most likely caused by an explosion, and local seismometers also Related events are logged.
The European Union, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Poland, the United States and other countries all warned that the incident was caused by sabotage, and Ukraine pointed the finger at Russia, but the Russian side did not deny the theory of sabotage, "Russia Today" (RT) It even quoted the speculation of a Polish politician that the North Stream trachea explosion was done by the United States, which was later quoted by the Russian government.
The Kremlin called the accusations against Russia, seemingly without naming names, "foolish and absurd" and called for a meeting of the UN Security Council.
U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said he would assist in the investigation and had communicated with Denmark.
The EU said it would respond "strongly and united".
The Latvian foreign minister called this a "new era of hybrid warfare".
Norway, which has many cross-sea gas pipeline connections with many European countries, has indicated that it will strengthen the military defense of its oil and gas facilities.
German "Der Spiegel" (Der Spiegel) previously reported that the United States had warned the German government of a possible attack on the Baltic gas pipeline a few weeks ago; CNN also quoted two European intelligence officials and a person familiar with the explosion. A Russian warship appeared near the site of the explosion; Norway also noted that unidentified drones had flown close to its oil and gas extraction facilities in the past few months.
Russian gas company Gazprom said it may suspend its gas exports to Europe via Ukraine due to a legal dispute with Ukrainian gas company Naftogaz amid discussions over the Nord Stream explosion.
At the moment Europe is entering winter, this series of events has reversed the decline of European natural gas prices in the past month, from a low of about 170 euros per megawatt hour on September 26, to a level of 207 euros on the 28th, which once again caused Concerns about natural gas supplies in winter.
European natural gas prices over the past year.
(Trading Economics)
guess who benefits
The Beixi trachea has a 4.1-centimeter-thick steel inner wall, and an 11-centimeter-thick concrete outer wall, which is extremely strong. It is hard to imagine that there will be three explosions and gas leaks at almost the same time.
Moreover, the incident happened on the opening day (27th) of the first cross-sea natural gas pipeline from Norway to Poland that crossed the Baltic Sea. The latter is a major construction for Poland and even the European Union to break away from its dependence on Russian natural gas, which is even more impressive. Doubtful.
Although North Stream No. 1 and No. 2 still have natural gas inside, they have no longer supplied gas to Germany. The current supply cut has no impact on the European natural gas supply.
At the same time, the two pipelines are not in the territorial waters of Sweden, Denmark and other countries, and do not constitute an attack on NATO countries.
The two pipelines are also largely the assets of Russia’s Gazprom. If the mastermind behind the incident is indeed Russia, this is tantamount to “severing an arm.”
Under all kinds of doubts, everyone is looking for who the beneficiaries are.
Radoslaw Sikorski, a former Polish foreign minister and a current member of the European Parliament, expressed his gratitude to the United States on Twitter right after the explosion, because the explosion was done by the United States and was widely reported by Western and Russian media.
Sikorsky's reasoning is that the Nord Stream pipeline was originally Russia's natural gas supply facility bypassing Ukraine and Poland to Germany, thereby weakening the influence of these countries in European-Russian relations.
In fact, the United States has always questioned the layout of the Nord Stream pipeline and imposed sanctions on related companies for this.
The three locations of the North Stream pipeline explosion and leak.
(Wikimedia Commons)
Is it America?
Sikorsky even cited US President Biden's speech on February 8 before the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian war as "evidence".
At the time, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz visited the White House and met reporters with Biden.
Scholz had not yet decided to cancel Nord Stream 2 at the time, and was dubious about whether Russia would advance, but Biden said in front of Scholz that if Russia invaded Ukraine, "there will be no Nord Stream 2". When a reporter asked how the United States could stop the German-controlled Nord Stream 2, Biden only said, "I assure you, we have the ability to do so."
This re-discovered remark was cited on the Internet as "evidence" that the explosion was what the United States did.
Many people also linked the economic interests of US natural gas exports to Europe.
However, this interpretation is clearly an anachronism.
Unlike the Trump administration, Biden has always hoped to rebuild the U.S.-EU friendship in order to strengthen his rivalry with China. Angela Merkel has reached an agreement on the opening of Nord Stream 2.
Thank you, USA. pic.twitter.com/nALlYQ1Crb
— Radek Sikorski MEP (@radeksikorski) September 27, 2022
At the same time, the Democratic government has a poor relationship with energy companies. At the beginning of his presidency, Biden stopped the construction of the controversial oil pipeline between Canada and the United States. Just this week, the Democratic senator of West Virginia Joe Manchin also pulled back his bill to build a gas pipeline in the state under pressure from party members.
Regarding Biden’s export of natural gas to Europe to make up for the outage of Gazprom, a group of governors in New England and the American Industrial Energy Consumers Organization also expressed their dissatisfaction earlier, believing that the export of liquefied natural gas to Europe has pushed up domestic energy prices in the United States.
Moreover, the supply of the two Beixi pipelines has long been suspended, and the goal stated by Biden in February has been achieved, and there is no need to take the extremely high risk of fraying within NATO and breaking the unity of Europe and the United States in the Russian-Ukrainian war.
Moreover, since the pipeline is a Russian asset, if the Russian side intends to maintain the possibility of re-establishing good relations with Europe and rebuilding trade relations in the future, it can quickly repair the pipeline after the gas leak is expected to end this weekend, so as to avoid long-term damage by seawater-in this way, sabotage action will fall short.
Last July, "Foreign Policy" criticized Biden's agreement with Merkel in a special article, calling Biden's action to allow Nord Stream 2 to open as "Surrender".
(Screenshot of Foreign Policy website)
Is it Russia?
Based on the above considerations, many European public opinion also points to Russia.
On the one hand, Russia has important naval deployments in the Baltic Sea.
On the other hand, the explosion site was just not far from the newly opened Norway-Poland gas pipeline, and there seemed to be a special warning intention.
At the same time, since the Beixi pipeline is only 80 to 110 meters deep, it is easy to be found if it is attacked by a submarine, so it is likely that bombs are pre-arranged.
This may be delivered by commercial ships, or it may be underwater drones.
Some analysts believe that if the incident was done by the Russian side, there is indeed a "door of convenience", which can be used to clean and inspect the pipeline to place explosives.
Some German politicians also believe that Russia does have an incentive to use this to warn Europe, because Europe is very dependent on external cross-sea natural gas pipelines, from Norway to the United Kingdom, France, and Germany, and from North Africa to Spain and Italy.
In addition, as early as January this year, one of the two submarine optical fibers in Norway has been interrupted, and the local police are investigating as sabotage.
The red line in the picture is the newly opened natural gas pipeline between Norway and Poland, and its intersection with the Nord Stream is where the explosion occurred.
(AP)
However, although the Beixi Pipeline is not supplying gas at the moment, it will be difficult for Russia's natural gas exports to be transferred to other places on a large scale within a few years. Taking the initiative to destroy its own gas transmission assets is tantamount to cutting its own fortune and breaking the European Union after the Ukraine war. A major way for Russia to improve relations is to hand over the future of Russia-Germany relations to countries such as Poland and Ukraine.
Kremlin officials said that the destruction of the trachea is a major problem for Russia.
Moreover, if the Beixi Pipeline is destroyed and abandoned for a long time, Russia will no longer be able to play the "energy card" as effective as it is today. It can be regarded as a kind of "self-destructing the Great Wall".
From the above analysis, it can be seen that the identity of the mastermind behind the Beixi case will probably only be a mystery.
Therefore, except for the governments of Ukraine and Poland, which are clearly hated against Russia, the European and American countries that have a consensus that the bombing was deliberate, have not clearly pointed out Russia.
But from this suspected attack, it can be seen that the escalation of the Russian-Ukrainian war has a more ambiguous way besides the nuclear weapons that Russia has repeatedly expressed or implied.
Upgrades other than nuclear weapons
At present, after the four Ukrainian states have been put into Russia, Moscow is scheduled to officially incorporate the Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporozhye states into Russian territory around October 4.
People are concerned about how Moscow will escalate the fighting in response if Ukrainian troops in these areas do not withdraw voluntarily, or continue to engage in war with Russian troops.
First of all, not escalating would be an admission of defeat, which in disguise shows that even if Russian territory (such as Crimea) is "invaded", Russia will not dare to respond violently.
Escalation is inevitable if Putin is to maintain his strongman authority.
One of the upgrades is to use the newly mobilized recruits to strengthen the attack on Ukraine.
But judging from the fighting in the past seven months, this is likely to be a time-consuming and tragic move.
The second is to take the initiative to attack Ukraine’s infrastructure. It seems that after the Ukrainian army counterattacked a large area of Khrkov in early September, Russia used missiles to hit the power supply facilities in Kharkov, Zelensky’s hometown of Kryvyi Rih) dams in general.
However, this kind of strike requires long-range precision missiles, which is expensive, and Russia lacks such weapons. After the outbreak of the war, because of the semiconductor sanctions, it is more difficult for Russia to create new precision weapons.
Therefore, it is probably beyond Russia’s ability to make Ukraine retreat in the face of difficulties by remotely attacking infrastructure.
The next step is to go further, and people immediately think of nuclear weapons.
When Putin announced the mobilization, he already said that he would use all weapons, and he specifically mentioned the issue of nuclear weapons, indicating that this was not a bluff.
Later, Dmitry Medvedev, former Russian president and vice-president of the Federal Security Council, also had a more pronounced warning.
While this isn't the first time Russia has hinted at mobilizing nuclear weapons, it's really become a big issue now (Merkel also warned recently to take Putin's remarks seriously).
The picture shows Russian President Vladimir Putin (left) and Defense Minister Shoigu attending the opening ceremony of an Army Forum on the outskirts of Moscow on August 15, 2022.
(AP)
There are actually three possibilities for the escalation of nuclear weapons: one is the nuclear test warning, the other is the use of tactical nuclear weapons with very low yields on the battlefield, and the third is strategic nuclear weapons that can really destroy entire cities.
There is a contradiction here: if the Russian side is not crazy, the latter two are completely impossible; however, the prerequisite for the nuclear test warning to be effective is that the outside world feels that a real nuclear attack is possible.
This becomes a psychological war, not a nuclear war.
But judging from the Beixi explosion, it is not necessary to escalate to the level of nuclear weapons in order to fight psychological warfare.
An attack similar to the attack on Beixi, on the one hand, it is difficult to find the culprit, but on the other hand, it has a major psychological impact.
Even though the attack itself did not affect gas supplies in Europe, European gas futures prices rebounded after the explosion.
Moreover, the explosion also made Europe suddenly worried about other key infrastructure not limited to gas pipelines, which can be regarded as a warning without causing immediate damage.
And this upgrade is not limited to Russia, but can also be used by the Western camp.
Russia said last week that it had blocked an attempted Ukrainian attack on the Turk Stream gas pipeline, which Kyiv denies.
Whatever the truth, the North Stream bombing also proved that such obscure attacks are possible.
If Russia shows signs of escalating the war against Ukraine after the four states join Russia, even close to the level of using nuclear weapons, under the consideration of avoiding a nuclear war and a full-scale war, ambiguous war actions can also be an option for Europe and the United States.
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Before the damage to the Nord Stream natural gas pipeline, US media: European officials found the Russian Navy support ship Nord Stream natural gas pipeline leaking nearby. The European Union and NATO called the sabotage of the Nord Stream natural gas pipeline. Gas North Stream gas pipeline leak suspected of sabotage German media: CIA warned of an attack a few weeks ago
