Army Bob: So who blew up the Nord Stream pipelines?

Who blew up the Nord Stream pipelines? We maintain that it was the Russians, the Russians maintain it was the United States.

President Joe Biden did say on Feb. 7 that “if Russia invades, that means tanks or troops crossing the border of Ukraine again, there will no longer be a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.”

Indeed, American naval vessels and MH-53 Pave Low (special Operations helicopters) were in the Black Sea at the time the pipeline was bombed. Personally, I hope we did it, but President Biden has proven to be risk-adverse and wanted to avoid this type of operation in the past. 

President Biden’s green light to President Vladimir Putin was instrumental in my opinion in the invasion of a sovereign nation. President Biden said “I think what you’re going to see is that Russia will be held accountable if it invades. And it depends on what it does. It’s one thing if it’s a minor incursion and then we end up having a fight about what to do and not do.” It is hard to get more ambiguous than that.  

The list of suspects is long indeed, with The United States, Russia itself, Ukraine, nations allied with Ukraine, firms that stand to make hundreds of millions repairing the pipelines, nations or firms that produce and sell natural gas or environmental terrorist groups from around the world, to name a few. The who and why of this investigation are extremely complicated; the physical evidence will be hard to gather and evaluate, given that the crime scene is 70 to 90 meters (238 to 303 feet) underwater.

With a coordinated, timed attack, five explosions almost simultaneously severing the pipelines, it leads one to believe that the attack was state sponsored, but we just do not know at this point; perhaps the world will never know the who and why. Any operation that deep takes a good bit of training and equipment; it is possible for a non-state sponsored group to execute an attack like this but unlikely.  

It will cost up to a billion dollars to repair the pipeline, and from many months to over a year to repair. A good question is why the Russian Federation would do this, when they could just turn off the tap? 200 kg of high explosives or approximately 450 pounds each of the three to five charges detonated at the same time miles apart speak to the sophistication of the attack.

One theory is that President Putin, with his approval ratings (which are still extremely high) going down as the war with Ukraine drags on and losses increase, blew up the pipeline to galvanize his support inside of the Russian Federation. Blaming others for an attack on Mother Russia itself gives his nation a common enemy, a throwback to the Cold War. The Nord Stream One pipeline was barely transporting natural gas, and Nord Stream Two was not yet fully operational, so the income loss was minimal, and the existing gas shipments to China and others can make up the difference in lost revenue. It is also a way to punish NATO countries for supporting Ukraine by increasing natural gas prices.  

Will the Russians use tactical low yield nukes in Ukraine, as President Putin has threatened? Not in my opinion. They are not that stupid; if they did, the United States and NATO would use non-nuclear weapons, and destroy their forces in Ukraine with precision munitions and airpower. It would not be cost effective for the Russians to use nukes; the result would be destruction of their forces in Ukraine in very short order, weeks not months, and an economic disaster inside Russia. The Russians are having trouble fighting Ukraine; add in other nations’ direct and indirect fire support and the Russians lose.   

Russia has proven its conventional military deficiencies, and is threating to use nukes more and more as the Russian bear is proving to be a koala bear and not a grizzly bear. The Russians would be destroyed militarily and economically, and they know it. President Putin is trying to intimidate President Biden; it has worked in the past, so let’s hope history does not repeat.

Who blew up the Nord Stream pipeline? We and the world will never know the facts. 

My opinion.