“How America took out the Nord Stream pipeline”

Gazprom, Russian gas monopoly, has on Kremlin’s orders first threatened to, and then suspended gas supplies to Europe in an attempt to blackmail it to stop supporting Ukraine under a threat of, as they put it, “freezing Europe”. In the process unilaterally breaking existing delivery contracts. There were no Western sanctions targeting Russian gas - it was entirely a political operation initiated by Russian government, “weaponizing energy supplies” as it often referred to, in the course of hybrid war.

Kremlin has miscalculated - Europe was able to largely avoid the intended crisis, while simultaneously Gazprom lost its largest market. The pivot from Russian supplies did come at a significant cost though.

Now that the Western sanctions are strangling Russian economy - if Gazprom wanted to come back to European market - they would be first greeted by billions of dollars of contract charges in arbitration courts.

It has long became obvious that Gazprom will likely attempt to use claims of force majeure to try to avoid financial penalties. And as it became customary for Russia - start preparing fertile ground in the courts of public opinion by planting various stories misdirecting the blame and muddying the waters.

The EU politicians may have expected to declare an unprecedented economic war on Russia while the latter dutifully continued to fulfill its gas contracts to the EU. Seems plausible given the geopolitical mastery the EU posesses.

But does anyone else actually believe that? The other contract party trying to destroy your economy is a pretty good reason to terminate a contract. Failing that Russia could keep inventing problems with turbines. Or sabotage the pipelines somewhere one can more easily repair them.

I do remember how several media organizations and politicians from the EU jumped at accusing Russia with zero proof. Once the media mania subsided several US newspaper reported that indeed there was no proof whatsoever and they had jumped to conclusions.

The later conspicuous silence from EU governments on a potential culprit, lack of evidence pointing at Russia and several statements from acting US politicians threatening NS and gloating over its demise plus a former Polish politician thanking the US certainly don’t do anything to clear the US from suspicion. Still, this remains all circumstantial evidence.

But not even this kind of circumstantial evidence exists pointing to Russia as culprit. Just far-fetched theories about them wanting to dodge contract penalties or doing it to show that they can. This is as credible as them doing it as an experiment to see what happens when you blow up a pipeline, really.