Whether or not Russia was behind the Nord Stream blasts, little was at stake
Dan Sabbagh
Kremlin officials have talked up implications of the gas pipe explosions but there is no reason to expect a western military response
It may never be possible to determine definitively whether Monday’s underwater explosions at the two Nord Stream gas pipelines were the work of Russian sabotage, but it is certainly the way to bet.
The incidents took place close to – but just outside – the 12-mile territorial waters of Denmark’s Bornholm in the Baltic Sea, the kind of calibration that might be expected from a state actor mindful of the country’s Nato membership.
What is not immediately clear is how any attack would have been carried out. A submarine targeting the pipelines should have been detected in the Baltic’s relatively shallow waters, where depths rarely exceed 100 metres. But there is no mention of submarines from the countries investigating the incidents.
Nor is Baltic the location where it would make sense to deploy deep-water Losharik submarines, which could be deployed by the Russians to cut the communications cables that run deep under the Atlantic, where the waters have an average depth more like 3,500 metres.
One British military source speculated that mines may have been discreetly laid from a disguised commercial vessel and detonated days or weeks later. That would be an operation that would need to have been undertaken with some care, but not particularly specialised military resources.
This last part is guesswork and western officials were quick to stress on Tuesday that the explosions appeared to have affected Russian-owned assets.
The Nord Stream 1 pipeline between Russia and Germany is 51% owned by Gazprom, the St Petersburg-headquartered energy giant, while Nord Stream 2 is owned by a Swiss subsidiary of the same company. None of those assets would, by this thinking, demand any kind of Nato or other western military response.
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/27/whether-or-not-russia-was-behind-the-nord-stream-blasts-little-was-at-stake