“How America took out the Nord Stream pipeline”

It's a great story, but it's all unsourced and could be a decent Tom Clancy story at best. You could probably write a similar one with Russia or German agents as the key players and be just as convincing.

The only anchor in reality appears to be Biden suggesting that they knew how to take it out which seems like a pretty weak place to build a large story.

What I find particularly odd is that this entire thing appears to be based on a single, unnamed source "with direct knowledge of the operational planning".

> What I find particularly odd is that this entire thing appears to be based on a single, unnamed source "with direct knowledge of the operational planning".

Why is that weird? Assuming this is true, there would be rather many people with such knowledge. One of them may feel the need to talk. Would you expect such a source to be named?

Also, I find it a lot easier to imagine why the US would want to do this, than why Russia or Germany would want to do this.

You can easily imagine any of the Baltic states, Poland, Ukraine (with some local help) or even Finland, Swede or Norway doing the deed.

Or, since the pipelines are well known and not difficult to reach, basically everyone with access to explosives, a boat a divers with explosives skills. None of which is particularly hard to come by.

At that moment in the war, even Putin had a lot of strong motivations -- lock out the option of bringing Nord Stream back online and close to door on de-escalation. As a side-benefit, the possibility of driving a wedge into NATO. I also found https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34713402 interesting. Who knows.

Putin was already effectively doing that, by demanding payment in rubles and making weird terms. If Putin wanted to shut down Nordstream, he'd just stop sending gas. What was Europe going to do, sanction him more?

I can see the US doing it as they've been vocal opponents to nordstream since its inception, I can see Ukraine wanting to do it although I doubt they'd have the resources, might also have been some other rogue European faction wanting out from under Putin's thumb.

The "Putin did it" hypothesis was that he did it to prevent internal replacement. Suppose that some Russian rival wanted to replace him. They could kill or imprison Putin, end the war in Ukraine, restart the gas pipelines, and have a lot of gas money from Europe to distribute to supporters.

Destroying the pipelines removed the potential reward for an internal rival to replace him.

> Suppose that some Russian rival

Putin's rivals make Putin look soft. If they do take power, they will end the conflict quickly and definitively.

There is no mechanism by which the war can be ended quickly and definitively without global murder-suicide. (Aside from Russia leaving, of course.)

Huh? Indiscriminate bombing US-style will do that in a flash.

Heck leveling Kiev will do that too. Could be done in a day.

If Russia levels Kiev and starts moving in to the rest of the country, a) Ukraine will almost certainly not surrender, leading to prolonged insurgency, and b) I expect ground troops from neighbors, EU, and possibly NATO will come into play.

Meanwhile, all the rhetoric of Russia “saving” a brotherly nation goes flying out the window.

>Ukraine will almost certainly not surrender

Of course it will.

>ground troops from neighbors, EU, and possibly NATO

They are not suicidal, I don't think.

>Russia “saving” a brotherly nation goes flying out the window

Yes. That is the reason war will continue the way it is now: very slowly, and stupid.

Edit: reddit spacing