zlacker

>>hungle+(OP)
Gazprom, Russian gas monopoly, has on Kremlin’s orders first threatened to, and then suspended gas supplies to Europe in an attempt to blackmail it to stop supporting Ukraine under a threat of, as they put it, “freezing Europe”. In the process unilaterally breaking existing delivery contracts. There were no Western sanctions targeting Russian gas - it was entirely a political operation initiated by Russian government, “weaponizing energy supplies” as it often referred to, in the course of hybrid war.

Kremlin has miscalculated - Europe was able to largely avoid the intended crisis, while simultaneously Gazprom lost its largest market. The pivot from Russian supplies did come at a significant cost though.

Now that the Western sanctions are strangling Russian economy - if Gazprom wanted to come back to European market - they would be first greeted by billions of dollars of contract charges in arbitration courts.

It has long became obvious that Gazprom will likely attempt to use claims of force majeure to try to avoid financial penalties. And as it became customary for Russia - start preparing fertile ground in the courts of public opinion by planting various stories misdirecting the blame and muddying the waters.

>>Vincen+lA1
Russia is a brutal dictatorship engaging in a war of aggression against the Ukraine and using natural gas as weapon in it's war.

But is that a reason to not to address or even mention the topic of the post, the destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline? I mean, are implicitly saying that covert act was justified? If people believe that, they should say it.

One of the worst effects of war is an attitude of "not only is everything our side does automatically justified, we're going to stomp on any investigation of what our side does".

>>joe_th+2Z1
> are implicitly saying that covert act was justified?

This is still taking the OP at face value. If we're being honest, the destruction of the pipeline doesn't really make geopolitical sense for either the US or Russia, given the information we have. If we must assume that one of them did it, then in the absence of evidence we should prefer to assume that it was the action of an irrational actor, and Putin is clearly the more irrational of the two here (as evidence, allow me to gesture towards the war in Ukraine).