You cannot be serious. Why would Russia blow up their own pipeline instead of just saying "no"?
Did you even listen to the US in the weeks leading up to the invasion of Ukraine? They were agitating more about Nord Stream and their own Energy Dominance agenda than actually talking about Ukraine, and to top it off Biden literally said right in front of the cameras that we want to stop the EU from buying Russian gas, and in fact we have a way of doing that.
> You cannot be serious. Why would Russia blow up their own pipeline instead of just saying "no"?
because it denies the non hardline faction inside the russian political sphere the option of negotiating with the west. This further solidifies putin's position.
Blowing up the pipeline made sure the war in ukraine had to continue, because stoppping the war will not result in the resumption of gas trade with the west.
Because it is part of Russia's strategy to drive European energy prices higher and by forcing a hard winter to bully their way to negotiations in Ukraine.
Europe already made it clear it won't go back to Russian energy so the pipelines aren't needed anymore. This also explains why nobody started with any repairs.
For your insinuation that the US did it, there doesn't seem to be any evidence or motive. And if anybody wanted to really disrupt any Gas flow they would have needed to blow up all 4 pipes. Yet only 3 were destroyed.
Also it would have been much too dangerous for any NATO member to engage with a military action against Russian property.
It is most likely that Russia had already installed bombs during construction and just had to pull a trigger.
