Gas Leak in the Baltic Sea

This is a common sentiment ITT. Where is this sophisticated critical analysis whenever we discuss the actions of e.g. USA?

Without gas, Russia is in a worse position at the negotiating table, since it cannot promise to resume shipments in return for removal of sanctions. This is actually something that the pro-war faction (and Putin personally) would love. Conversely, the elites who want to revert back to status quo before the war would never do this.

Russia always wants plausible deniability. That's why they used lies about repairs as a front in order to shut off gas previously.

Prologue: Putina out-maneuvered the Oligarchs that helped re-elect Yeltsin, and once decreed Pres, started to take them off the board when convenient or when inconvenienced. #### Clearly not coincidence, probably not an accident, and aligns rather boringly with earlier KGB inspired, and FSB implemented, Putina tactics to remind Russians of FEAR™ and that he can be Strong for Them (see almost any "Chechen" terrorist attack).

Putina (being the current Russian state) isn't going to personally profit from those pipelines short term, so use them as a weapon (all his other ones are evidently shite, or phantom spreadsheet entries). Now EU citizens can see Gas just pissing away in the sea AND at its transmission point (flaring) nightly on TV (TV has special power for him). While they stare directly into the face of a Ned Stark worthy Winter, cold, hungry and dumbfounded as tons of long reliable jobs are furloughed because its too expensive to make things on account of Energy decisions made decades ago.

So, now an easily forgotten, mediocre KGB operative, dulled by Dresden and steeled by the hard realities of life in Leningrad (changed back to Saint Petersburg by the time he skulked back from Dresden) put all his chips on the table, didn't know they were counterfeit, and now is doing whatever he can to change the outcome. Just like a former KGB flame-out with heavy gangster influence would.

I can't see a path of sane negotiation or de-escalation here while he's in play. Any weakening of EU/NATO stance is going to allow cash infusion that quiets Oligarchs (any left alive) and everyone else in the gov't line of embezzlement, while emboldening Putina.

The most tragic (and thusly, Russian) aspect is that he's trying to channel Stalin (in a positive way?) and be that Man of Steel - even using Nazi's as a prop - and just becoming the very boogie man he heard in every story as a wee lad from a nation of people traumatized by the deaths of TWENTY MILLON Soviet citizens. This of course follows not only after, but because of, the un-hinged purging they both initiated on their own, for completely and yet complimentary, paranoid delusions.

> Besides, there isn't much left that sanctions don't already target.

Frozen Russian assets, AFAIK, for now remain frozen. They could be un-frozen and directed to other owners. There's pretty much zero political risk towards Russia - nobody cares what they think anymore - but there's a problem that the Western legal system isn't really happy with just taking somebody's property because you hate them, and establishing such precedent might not be politically good. But if you have some good reason - e.g. voluntary violation of contracts - then it's different business.

> as a bargaining chip to get Germany to desert Ukraine

Germany didn't really "sert" Ukraine that much. They just recently declared they won't - on the 8th month of war, when Russia is mobilizing its reserves - give Ukraine any tanks because it's too hard for Ukrainians to operate them and it'd take too long to teach them. I mean, they are giving some things, but way below their capabilities and try to slow-walk it a lot. Of course, they could stop completely, but that'd probably be political suicide for whoever is in control. "Work as much as you have to not be fired, but not even a little more" is the strategy here. Would it be ever non-suicidal for German government to openly cave to Russians (with the full knowledge that from now on and forever, they are Russia's bitch)? I don't think so.

> Germany will absolutely have to double down on LNG and renewables and restructure its industry,

They really don't have much choice here, if they're not going the "Russia's bitch" road. The war is not really done, and it's not going well for Putin, so he'll squeeze anything that can be squeezed. He's cashing in (did I mention the mobilization?). There's no long term soft influence plan anymore - there's the fire sale plan now. If Germany does not capitulate - and I don't think Germans are inclined to - Russia will squeeze them and they'd have to find the alternative.