yeah it’s probably the US that benefits most from it and the CIA certainly isn’t above this kind of thing, but a Western govt coming out and accusing the US of this would be a very poor choice
- have a history of blowing up pipelines, including previously blowing up a Russian pipeline?
- had a chief executive declare that said they "have the means" to put an end to the pipeline, even though it was not in their territorial waters and they had no legal means to do it?
I mean, you can argue that it's speculation, but to argue that it's speculation without basis is false. This is a highly monitored part of the Baltic Sea, right next to a Danish island, in the Swedish exclusive economic zone, and close to a Polish NATO base. It's not the middle of nowhere. It's not some place where we don't know who was there. We know who had ships there at the time of the sabotage, and who had the technical means to do it. That's when you start getting into debates about US versus UK, but not Azerbaijan versus Venezuela.
In the exercise took part Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Sweden, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
and how many terroristic acts of the younger past interestingly happened at the same time and place where some exercises/drills from official side were executed to prevent these.
False flags.
Am I a conspiracy nut now, or what? Crazy? Kassandros? Or just coldly analytical, even while fucking drunk?
I assure you that I'm not 'inventing' this after the fact.
I said these things in a timeframe of maybe two to three hours during the early evening,
while having five glasses of that 'punch'.
With an extra shot of berry 'schnaps' from Estonia.
(Very yummie btw.!)
Deutschland schafft sich ab!
IN VINO VERITAS!
HARR!
Edit: I'm really tired of you naive nay-sayers. You really deserve this shit. Can't be helped.
Edit: Can you imagine how I felt when I've read this a few days after release?
Wasn't meant to say I predicted Baltops, I've been unaware of the specifics at the time. Just that almost no matter where and when, that there are such things, and therefore could easisly be used as cover for whatever.
I'm as a paranoid about the CIA as the next guy but the idea that they would try something like this without political cover seems unlikely to me. Further the idea the Joe Biden would even come close to signing off on this doesn't seem like any version of him. Maybe if he's genuinely off the rails and K. Harris or the Sec. Def. really is running things - maybe then I'd believe this but failing that I can't imagine him being that kind of person or anyone in the chain signing off on this without him on board.
If it was the US - and I think the chance of it not coming to light if it was to be vanishingly small - I would be really interested in the details. I would expect someone handing it to Biden as a fair acompli and him just going with it.
The US is probably the biggest beneficiary but might have asked friends to help out so they weren't so obvious. I'm not totally ruling out the Russian allegation that it was a UK/Ukrainian job, presumably with the UK advising and Ukraine doing. Still who knows?
ukraine itself (or perhaps a close intelligence ally like lithuania), with its constant pressuring of the west to escalate the conflict (including calls for direct strikes on russia), seems like the most likely candidate. there were backchannel efforts between germany and russia to open negotiations prior to the sabotage -- removing NS gas from the equation entirely for germany takes some of the wind out of those sails. besides this we have seen a great deal of ukrainian sabotage of other russian assets and infrastructure in recent months.
Possible, though that would require sending Ukrainian ships and agents a very very far way away. I don't think a clandestine Ukrainian operation on the other side of Europe is very likely in the middle of a war on their own territory.
spiegel posted this a few months ago, claiming that the CIA warned the germans that the russians had intelligence that the ukrainians were planning to sabotage NS:
>The Germans were warned in summer by the CIA about a possible attack scenario on the Nord Stream pipelines. U.S. intelligence claimed to have intercepted Russian communications in which concerns were expressed about possible Ukrainian attacks on Western infrastructure. The Ukrainians allegedly tried to rent a boat in Sweden for this purpose. The CIA did not consider the scenario of a Ukrainian attack to be very credible, but the mere fact that the possibility of an attack on Western infrastructure was mentioned by the Russian side prompted the Americans to warn the Germans about the scenario.
UK was the most active one in supplying and teaching Ukraine to use sea drones for sabotage. Recent attack on Sevastopol and other Russian ports were done by these drones. UK is also known to operate submersible sabotage drones. So it’s basically the moat probable scenario, that UK provided ships, drones and explosives, and some Ukrainian pressed the button.
one of the leading german publications published a claim about german intelligence and and a diplomatic exchange. you can find it compelling or not, but it is not some kind of dubious rumor
It's dubious rumour by German intelligence if the publication is correct. The claimed original source of the intel - Russian intelligence - is already extremely unreliable and adversarial. And then we add Chinese whispers game on top.
It's silly to give any credibility to this type of rumour. We should all wait for hard evidence and if there are none or if it can't be made public, then for courts verdicts.
I think Ukraine isn't as backwards as people assume. And also has legal justification since they are at war with Russia. A crass motive is blowing up a pipeline that wasn't being used forces Russia to devote military resources to protect their oil and gas infrastructure elsewhere.
Western support of Ukraine is supposedly conditioned to defense of their own territory, not attacking Russian territory. This would be outside of that condition, so if they did it, it's best to keep it under.
It's more telling if they don't say, that would mean a Russian or Russian-allied operation is unlikely, because there is no political cost for shaming them even more.
Still outside of Ukrainian territory, the condition for NATO support. And it only transports gas from Russia to Germany, with the winter approaching. Even more telling, the US statement in reaction to this was "a tremendous opportunity to once and for all remove the dependence on Russian energy".
hmm, maybe someone should tell nato about the assassination attempt on alexander dugin inside russia, the suicide bomb attack on russian infrastructure, the helicopter raids into russian territory, etc
i don't think this attack is really as sophisticated as you seem to; the pipeline was about 80-100m underwater -- the ukrainians have (or had) oil platforms in the black sea which would require divers capable of operating at such depths. getting away with it is definitely impressive though.
for purely economic self-interest, it would be a terrible choice. perhaps if the EU got together and came out with a statement, it would be viable. but pissing off the Americans is on no lone Western state's bucket list
escalation of the crises in Europe, which historically - see: WW2 - has massively benefited the US. more incentive to import American gas. damage Russia; the US objected to Nord Stream in the first place. also can be used as justification to increase support for what is essentially a proxy war in Ukraine
the EU/US economic stratosphere is not necessarily a zero-sum game, but in general if Europe’s economy separately takes a hit, the US gets stronger
Prevent negotiations between Russia and Germany particularly. Then sell exorbitantly priced US LNG to a captive Europe. All of which is basically happening now.
Russia benefits if they can spin it as US action, as the damage to US alliance and trust relationships are huge and definitely strategic goals and gains for them. For a while in the beginning, when it wasn't clear that a functioning (but unused) pipeline remained, Russia was off the suspect list. But it turned out the sabotage missed a pipe and that fact keeps Russia high on the suspect list.
As for US, Germany had already given in to the US pressure and nixed the pipeline and made the gas deals. Why would US go and blow it up? It is possible, but makes little sense.
Whoever did this did so knowing that US will ultimately be blamed. Biden kinda set US up for that with veiled threats regarding NS before the Russian invasion. It's either Russia or UK/Ukraine, is my guess.
Most Baltic basin states, except Germany sort of, benefit by reduced reliance of Europe on Russian gas. Russia is constantly making threats to all of it's neighbours in that region but keeps discord in Europe via the gas blackmail. Similar story for Ukraine.
Western Europe - it's also not inconceivable. For example France is a net exporter of energy to Germany, and probably also doesn't like the Russian gas blackmail (while being less susceptible to it herself).
So literally anyone has some kind of incentive. Except perhaps Germany. You could still argue that Germany benefits in the long run as that reliance is bad for them, as it turns out, but it's harder to see them going cold turkey on themselves.
