The shilling is immense on this one. The botfarms must be working overtime tonight.
Gas Leak in the Baltic Sea
671–680 of 1001 posts
Re: Gas Leak in the Baltic Sea
#672Earlier quoted context omitted.
Whoever did it - any further debate along "let's make friends again with Putin and go back to the cheap Russian gas as it once was" lines is now settled. That alone will have interesting consequences across EU.
That debate was long dead at least while Putin remained in power
Don't underestimate the power of desperation. If europe was literally freezing to death they would buy russian gas.
Re: Gas Leak in the Baltic Sea
#673Re: Gas Leak in the Baltic Sea
#674Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m sure he takes the appearances he can get after having all his sources of funding cut. I hope you’re being paid well to call people propagandists who have devoted their lives and sacrificed everything to speak truth to power. I don’t take it at face value and it does seem he has an understandable bias at this point. The gray zone is super strange to read, but these are investigative journalists on the ground. Plea…
Claims the Mariupol theatre airstrike was the responsibility of Ukraine's Azov Regiment rather than Russian forces. "speak truth to power"... Ya, about that... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariupol_theatre_airstrike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Blumenthal#Russia_and_Ukra... https://www.newstatesman.com/world/europe/ukraine/2022/05/fa...
This is the article. Wikipedias naive crowd sourced model has been co-opted by the state. I can’t read the paywalled new statesman article but I see from their recent covers that they have an agenda on this issue
https://thegrayzone.com/2022/03/18/bombing-mariupol-theater-...
Edit:
https://apnews.com/article/Russia-ukraine-war-mariupol-theat...
This seems like a pretty well researched account that refutes the false flag idea strongly. The grayzone article still presents some interesting primary sources even when they seem to be wrong here (which is often the case when headlines end in a question mark)
Can’t reply below but your skirting of paywalls isn’t as cool as you think. Pay or read something else. You’re stealing. Also, insulting my intelligence doesn’t reduce my suffering in case you were wondering.
Re: Gas Leak in the Baltic Sea
#675If I were a betting man, I'd put my money on Poland. The Polish prime minister immediately called "sabotage" and fingered Russia, while everyone else is still saying "it could be sabotage but we need to investigate first". Russia wants the taps capable of being turned ON at their discretion, not permanently broken. This hurts their bargaining position in a big way because they've just lost their biggest source of lev…
> Poland doesn't receive gas via Nordstream, so damaging it doesn't hurt them in any way.
Not directly, but via Germany.
Re: Gas Leak in the Baltic Sea
#676If I were a betting man, I'd put my money on Poland. The Polish prime minister immediately called "sabotage" and fingered Russia, while everyone else is still saying "it could be sabotage but we need to investigate first". Russia wants the taps capable of being turned ON at their discretion, not permanently broken. This hurts their bargaining position in a big way because they've just lost their biggest source of lev…
I’d be _immensely_ proud if it was Poland.
What is there to be proud of? Some kind of weird payback for being kicked out of the Deutsche Bahn first class?
Re: Gas Leak in the Baltic Sea
#677Earlier quoted context omitted.
Common theme I've heard here (Kyiv, Ukraine) is that this sabotage is in Putin's direct interest. There are rumours of political infighting among Russia's leaders and that there are several factions trying to seize power, however since there is no clear winner, those guys need powerful allies, EU being a very important one. The idea is that Europe really wants to buy Russian gas, but not from Putin, so if Russia some…
Why is Putin direct interest destroy a source of income and leverage to the country!?!? Now Germany can buy gas from 2 sources: Ukraine and USA. This explanation makes no sense to me.
Russia doesn’t really care about Western money anymore. They can’t spend it due to the sanctions anyway.
Re: Gas Leak in the Baltic Sea
#678A plausible theory for why Russia has done this could be to avoid fines. It is likely that Russia has agreements with steep penalties for if they voluntarily don't provide gas like they agreed too (like what they are doing with Nord Stream 1). Blowing large holes in the pipelines could allow Russia to claim that they cannot provide gas because the pipelines are broken, effectively avoiding the fines.
So illgellay invading a country is no big deal but a fine for breach of contract would warrant what could be seen as an act of war on a nato country ?
Re: Gas Leak in the Baltic Sea
#679Earlier quoted context omitted.
They stopped sending gas over on Nord Stream 1 with the excuse of maintenance and repairs specifically as leverage for Germany to sign off on opening their brand new pipeline Nord Stream 2 for business. Now, both pipelines have been blown up. It doesn't make any sense for it to have been Russia.
Why not? If it is stopped by the Russian order, Russians violated the contract. If it is stopped because unknown terrorists blew up the pipeline, it's force majeure, Gazprom is in the clear. Also, they have one more pipeline left. Which they are also threatening to - guess what? - shut down. https://www-moscowtimes-ru.translate.goog/2022/09/27/gazprom... Doesn't make sense for it to be Russia? Or does it now?
Still doesn't make sense. NS2 was held offline by Germany and could easily have had technical difficulties as well if that were to change. NS1 could have been left offline pretty much indefinitely without serious attempts at such contractual plays, because this sort of thing would of course have ended any chance of future Russian deliveries. Besides, there isn't much left that sanctions don't already target.
However, them being destroyed for now will take a lot of pressure to appease Russia out of German domestic politics, lots of political figures were gearing up for trench warfare on opening NS2, and Russia could have used NS1 as a bargaining chip to get Germany to desert Ukraine. There's good reason to suspect the German electorate might have been quite open to such an arrangement by late winter, and imagine what that would have done to western unity. Why throw away such leverage, especially as you can still blow them up later?
This also takes any plan B involving Russia off the table entirely, meaning that Germany will absolutely have to double down on LNG and renewables and restructure its industry, with obvious consequences for future business opportunities.
Re: Gas Leak in the Baltic Sea
#680If I were a betting man, I'd put my money on Poland. The Polish prime minister immediately called "sabotage" and fingered Russia, while everyone else is still saying "it could be sabotage but we need to investigate first". Russia wants the taps capable of being turned ON at their discretion, not permanently broken. This hurts their bargaining position in a big way because they've just lost their biggest source of lev…
Or, Russia realizes that Nord Stream leverage isn’t working and is now moving to attacks which implicitly threaten other pipelines (e.g., Baltic Pipe) for a stick to replace the apparently useless carrot.