Europe is locking itself in to US LNG

Wasn't it the point of Nord Stream sabotage? https://brian-whit.medium.com/nord-stream-sabotage-a-look-at...

No. This was alleged to be taken out by Ukrainian special forces in order to twist Europe's arm, which is a good thing in the end, but so far as anyone knows it had nothing to to with the US. Until I hear anything proving otherwise I will take what we know as all we know for now.

The US were not thrilled about it when it was being constructed, obviously, but this was normal tensions towards Russia, prescient in the end but here we are.

Are we sure that Ukrainian special forces have the capability to blow up nord stream without heavy US help?

What's the part that's hard to imagine? It's literally just a boat ride to a publicly-known location that isn't monitored in any way, diving to a depth humans can dive to, placing some standard military / commercial explosives, and getting out.

There were several countries arguably interested in getting rid of that pipeline (Ukraine, Poland, the US), but Ukraine wanted it the most, had easy access, and there's no need to overcomplicate internet theories.

They actually dived pretty deep (most Scuba gear and divers are limited to 40 meters), the planning of the operation was meticulous in that pretty much nobody saw the divers, and the explosives had to be designed with a good knowledge of the pipeline and its concrete. Ukrainian operations during the war have demonstrated that their typical MO is a lot more "seat-of-the-pants" than this operation would suggest.

You're literally arguing that a government intelligence agency couldn't find a couple of experienced people, provide them with commercially-available equipment, and get them to coordinate a medium-complexity task.

Yes, it's an operation that requires coordination and planning, which is why it's reasonable to assume it was carried out by an intelligence agency and not a lone fisherman with a grudge. But once you're in the realm of intelligence activities, this isn't exactly the "let's blow up their pagers" level of complexity.

Their sabotage attempts of several bridges in Crimea did not go this well, suggesting that the Ukrainians alone aren't the best at understanding explosives, and their successes like "fly a bunch of FPV drones out of a shipping container" are quite a bit simpler than this. "Intelligence agency" is a spectrum of capability. Suggesting that an intelligence agency that tried and failed to blow up a bride twice was the same as the one that executed a flawless operation against an underwater pipeline is a bit far-fetched.