Who would benefit from this?
Germany and several other countries have made plans to shut down parts of heavy industry to save gas for heating. This is more than likely to put increasing pressure on governments to give in to Russia's demands. Now they can't, even if they want to, so that pressure is gone.
It is not far away. There's Germany, then Poland and then war. We have refugees here and feel the impact on our day to day life.
Western ukraine is not "hardly affected", it is affected. There are many refugees, probably everyone knows someone fighting in the east. You might look to fight in the east as well if you're in the right age bracket! Economy is shit and people are training to rotate to the front. Putin is waging a brutal war, killing and torturing ukrainians. There are air raid warning in kyiv, kyiv pride happened underground! Yes the government is corrupt, but we have to help them fight this monster.
It's also not an odd war, industrial societies maintain industrial capabilities to wage industrial war. WW1 was fought on the west in mostly static battles. Neither Berlin or Paris were affected by bombs, less than easter ukraine for sure! And they fought for years. Even in WW2 society largely functioned until the end in germany (if it was not bombed to shit!). It's interesting to see the logistics of everyday life near the end of WW2 in germany, you expect everything to end up in total chaos but everyone with a job just continued doing their job. Why not? dairy farmers still produced milk and shipped it off, and quite a lot of the railways worked.
We see ukrainian flags here in a small town in germany, recently they celebrated something in public (maybe their independence?) and we got into a converstantion, we have refugees starting to study here etc. Heating prices are through the roof and I can't really afford to heat my room, al because of this stupid fu*ing war. War affects you even if you don't have bombs falling onto your head! In whole WW2 only like two or three bombs were thrown onto the small city (~80k) I am currently living in. War doesn't mean everything is blowing up all the time.
Edit: And stuff has been shipped, too.
well, wait for the winter ... Germans aren't used to hardship and many more are critical for compromising comfort for Ukraine than Tagesschau and heute journal would like to make you believe.
No. These aren’t disabling attacks.
It could be a warning from the Kremlin; a false flag operation; internecine warfare; interference by the U.S., Gulf or private actors in Norway; or a pipeline built by the same corruption that shipped cardboard armour [1] doing what Russian-involved infrastructure does.
[1] https://mobile.twitter.com/nazk_gov/status/15019605885950156...
https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/491788609276608574/...
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/51936534258_91f5217324_b...
Egg cartons in place of tank reactive armour may be on a schematic. That makes it no less useless. To say the Russian military is operating with top kit denies the battlefield reality.
- what do you know about russian tank armor ?
> To say the Russian military is operating with top kit denies the battlefield reality.
Yes, but where did I say the opposite ? There are dozens of reports showing it's running on fumes, there is no need to ridicule ourselves by propagating factually wrong infos
Saying "X fact" about russia is wrong doesn't mean someone supports their action. We all know their army is shit and any semblance of proper troops they had died in the first few weeks of the invasion
Nothing. Don’t need to. Whether designers put useless armour on the tank or a factory worker messed with a well-designed tank is irrelevant. The tanks were kitted with worthless armour.
That's how you sound right now
Ceramic armour resists bullets. Cardboard doesn’t block or deflect threats to tanks in any form. (It’s not even suitable for collision mitigation.)
Why do my plates shatter when I drop them then ?! if they can't withstand my floor how could they possibly deflect bullets ?!
> Cardboard doesn’t block or deflect threats to tanks in any form
Well then good thing there is no cardboard in their tanks. You really take a random pic from twitter as the absolute truth even though you were presented alternatives ?
Maybe another twitter post might help you then: https://twitter.com/russian_defence/status/91989519933319168...
It might be outdated, it might be shitty compared to western version, it's not cardboard and it is supposed to be like that.
But ok let's all dial down our IQ to 56 and pretend Oligarchs sold egg cartons to their army to pay their yacht, that's a nicer story to tell on TV news. "aha look at them funny corrupt russians and their egg cartons, russia dumb"
I’ve seen claims that this is for structural reinforcement of sandbags, which makes no sense on multiple levels. (Even if the tank armour can’t resist bullets, a premise which raises its own host of questions, there is better light armour. And even if one insists on sand, a requirement which raises its own host of questions, civil engineering has better solved the problem of immobilising sand.) Those claims also have zero history before photos of the egg cartons emerged, which isn’t unexpected for military kit, but suspect given Moscow’s tendency for ham-fisted retconning.
The broader point is, whether designed that way or not, it’s evidence of incompetence. If the people doing that built a pipe part, I wouldn’t be surprised to see it fail. (Though based on German comments, there is reason to suspect foul play.)
Yet you went for the "aha funny egg cartons how can they be so dumb" narrative instead of the "look they have a shitty army"
> Those claims also have zero history before photos of the egg cartons emerged,
Besides the literal tank specs and the tweets/websites I linked to from 2017 which was like 5 years before the picture emerged.
It's free to admit you were wrong and propagating false information, I'm not attacking you personally you don't have to be so triggered: they have a decrepit army: yes, they have egg carton tanks: no, as simple as that
My favorite story of Russians and armor plates was the dead Russian soldier who was found with his armor vest plate replaced by a stolen MacBook.
[Citation needed]
The garbage Australian report that only looked at two hashtags (who even uses hashtags anymore?) doesn't count.
Really ? How naive can you be ? It's a communication war as much as a regular war
It's never all black or all white, if you can't understand that I feel sorry for you. The reality is bad enough, we don't need to swallow every bit of info coming out of Ukraine.
If you believe Russian tanks are filled with egg cartons because you saw a blurry pic on twitter I don't even know what to tell you. Once again, russia's army is rotten enough that you don't have to make up lies to make it look bad, there are dozens of reports that are _true_ and equally bad
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/ukraine-propaganda-war
https://www.nzz.ch/international/ukraine-die-kunst-der-propa...
https://theconversation.com/how-ukraine-is-adapting-the-anci...
I'm not even saying it's bad, it just is, I have a hard time understanding how people can't see it. Is it because "propaganda" as a bad connotation and nothing bad can be linked to Ukraine ?
Not the person you replied to, but let's test the theory this way: Can you list out some of the US/Ukraine propaganda? If not, do you think it's because the US/Ukraine isn't using propaganda or because they're better at it and you don't realize it's propaganda?
This "accident" allows Russia to turn up the pressure on Germany without formally exiting it's contract. It creates plausible deniability for when they pressure Germany to pressure Ukraine to accept a ceasefire.
This could range from a small group staging a false flag to push Putin further (he is a surprise moderate of the extremely hawkish Russsian elements) to a different small group staging some form of protest by sabotage .. to any other ridiculous scenario imaginable.
With this, even if they negotiate, there won't be any gas soon.
So, it's bad for russia, bad for eu, and the only one being better of is USA... who was threathened to do exactly this more than once.
Realistically.. even if they found an american submarine with "pipecutters" still connected to the pipeline, they'd say they'll do everything in their power(!!!)... and then send an angry letter to USA and replace an ambassador or two somewhere.
Wow Just wow. Ready to place responsibility at everyone but Russia's feet right? Such a blameless third party victim in all of this /s.
The pipeline itself was in good part Merkel's olive branch to connect Putin economically to the rest of the EU. The hope was that giving Russia more to lose would prevent these conflicts. Sure the US, among others, we're wary of this kind of interdependence.
Well, now we know how things shook out and we're all dealing with it. Germany from the back foot this round.
Now I'm not attributing any great foresight to naysayers (US among them), it was a nobel bid for peace on Germany's part and there's always a chance we'd be talking about the brilliance of deepening those connections with Russia.
But we can't.
Russia drove its tanks into Ukraine, nobody made them. They weren't under any great duress. Even the most unjustifiably charitable take of Russian justification accounts for what, just Luhansk and Donetsk? But they tried to take Kiev. Tried to take every bit of Ukrainian's coastline with the Black Sea through Odessa. Russia good out of it's way to poison their reputation here with conquest.
So what.. just a meaningless war in a meaningless country, a for the same reasons nato bombed yugoslavia in 1999 and noone cared.
Americans drove tanks to afghanistan, syria, libya, a bunch of eu countries helped them, nato forces are still in syria, and again... noone cares. Yes, some individuals maybe do... especially people living there... but not the EU as a whole.
But now, suddenly, while still having our soldiers station in eg. syria (i live in a small eu country, so we're not eg. france, that we'd had our soldiers occupying a bunch of african states), the media told us to sacrifice our standard of living, work, so the government can take money and send it to ukraine, to be cold, to not shower as much as we wanted, for what? A country that was just a few years ago was the most corrupt country in europe, full of nazis [0], and all the provocations were instigated by the US [1]? We should forget all this, fuck our livelihoods for some geopolitical shitshow?
Thank you, but no.
[0] https://i.imgur.com/mRAaOo0.jpg
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/13/ukrain...
It seems quite clear to me that in the short and medium term this ideological stance isn't going to hurt "evil Russian empire" a whole lot, while being extremely disruptive and harmful to everyone in the EU.
I don't know why people keep repeating this lie, do they want to support Russia so badly?
The real risk for Europe is a recession due to gas prices for industrial use - but that would mostly impact extremely rich places, like Germany.
Even with subsides and a social support net, we're still kicking the can down the road. The bill WILL come due and it's going to hit those who are poor and "lower middle class" the hardest, as always.
People are increasingly in need of food donations and financial support with skyrocketing energy prices. Similarly, donations have decreased and every charity in my country is running thin on resources. Elderly and other vulnerable populations are especially at risk here as they might not have the resources to even reach out for help and follow through any bureaucracy.
I don't support Russia, I hope they lose and dissolve into irrelevance, but I take a serious issue with the often-repeated viewpoint that brushes all of this suffering aside like it's not a big deal, only to claim that we are all too happy to lower the thermostat by 3 degrees and take some kind of collective stance that will meaningfully contribute to destruction of Russia.
The suffering is greater than most people are willing to admit, meanwhile its effectiveness is questionable at best. I simply don't believe that energy imports from Russia are what's keeping the war going in any meaningful fashion, something that we could easily change if we just stopped importing their gas.
I'd love to be proven wrong on this, but so far I've only seen handwavy explanations that don't amount to anything more than "every little bit probably helps".
But I'm pretty sure both US and various EE countries would not want to do that, leading to fracture and instability in EU and NATO in pretty critical time. For example people of Poland, which hosts literally millions of Ukrainian refugees would probably freak out if what they see as "rich west people" start complaining about money and ask for support for Ukraine to stop because gas is now expensive.
To summarise, we can't buy the Russian gas because they would ask us to do unacceptable things for it, and it would probably destroy EU from within. That's my take at least.
Also seems that someone is taking that choice away now, with blowing up Nord Stream.
As for the impact of sanctions and the energy war, I'm not an expert but I find Perun's videos pretty insightful - but I admit "hour long powerpoint presentation by military analyst on youtube" is pretty strange genre. This video touches on sanctions, economy and the energy war: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ce5TR-qWCk4
You're right I was pretty blasé about the suffering of people, and partially it's because I live pretty close to Ukraine, but still I shouldn't have.
No transit fees necessary for Nord Stream.
Under these circumstances, I'd much rather avoid being dependant on Ukrainian gas and would prefer Russian one every day of the week.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia%E2%80%93Ukraine_gas_dis... (definitely worth the read, gives some background information about why we see what we see in this russoukrainian war today)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JW_Formoza
Not that I believe that would be orchestrated by the Polish gov.
China are another answer. If they can't get the gas, there is less incentive for peace so more chance of the conflict rolling on and distracting from their activities. Plus, more gas for them to buy more cheaply etc.
Chunks of the middle east as well, they want to replace Russian gas in European markets despite their higher prices.
The list really is quite long.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_submarine_incidents#Af...
Though I doubt there is any foul play here at all...
The USA has long wanted to interfere in Germanys' relations with Russia and has done so, over and over, to ensure they are never true allies.
So, it wouldn't be unreasonable to assume the US is behind these attacks.
> Biden: “If Russia invades -- that means tanks or troops crossing the border of Ukraine, again, then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2,”
> Journalist: “But how will you do that exactly, since the project and control of the project is within Germany’s control?”
> Biden: “We will, I promise you, we’ll be able to do it,” Biden replied.
I don't want to play conspiracy guy, but the statement stuck in my mind since he said it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy
It is a conspiracy.
Did you not read the quote?
Besides which, the US unilaterally gives itself the right to do these sorts of things at its own discretion on a regular basis.
I have no strong opinions yet in the argument over whether or not the USA conspired to sabotage the NS pipelines. I'm just here to point out that secrecy is not a required part of a conspiracy. The literal translation of "conspire" from Latin would be something like "to breathe together", insinuating a synchronization of movements, a plotting together.
But, in our world today, all conspiracies (both confirmed and theoretical conspiracies) seem to get bucketed together. And so in common parlance, as soon as a thing is publicly confirmed as actually happening, in most people's minds it moves out of the "Conspiracy" bucket into the "History" bucket. But that's just a loss of language on our part. As always, my go-to resource in recovering the meanings of English words is Webster's 1828.
How naive...
https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/news/as-imports-of-u...
There are no political alignments that would reverse that given that other options, such as allowing fracking again in Germany, are not even contemplated.
Did you not read the news in the time leading up to the war in Ukraine? US government and media was complaining more about Nord Stream than they were talking about Ukraine.
Indirectly anyone who is interested in causing mistrust among western countries.
My gut tells me this is the most likely answer. It would be a very Russian thing to do.
In that order.
However the current German government is highly atlanticist and was nowhere near reopening Nordstream 2.
So it would make little sense for such an extreme move.
It probably wasn't them.
EU gets cold, and the only way to heat up is to sit down with putin and make some sort of an agreement.
Now, someone destroyed the pipeline, and there's no incentive for EU and putin to make any negotiations, since the pipeline won't be fixed before the winter is over.
But the USA will get to sell overpriced gas to EU
*Important Note*: I absolutely don't believe this, just an amusing thought.
So allowing the reserves to fill to 90% does not lose Putin the game, it gives him increased time to keep the citizens in suspense, thus creating doubt and confusion.
And it gives him money. War is expensive.
Yes, but this way Putin can plausibly deny that it was a policy decision. Same with novichok poisonings: everyone knows Putin's pulling the strings, nobody can prove he did.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/putin-blames-germany...
Putin wants the pipelines open, because europe knows that the minute they sit down and reach a deal with russia, the valves get open, europe gets the gas.
Now europe is fucked, and even if local people protest due to cold, sitting down with putin won't bring back enough gas, so there is less incentive to actually make a deal.
But I'm sure USA will profit by selling overpriced gas to europe.
I've been hoping from the start that someone would sabotage the pipelines to remove the temptation. Guess I got my wish.
you must be an american, since they're the only ones who profit from all this.
So basically Europe will still continue to receive a huge fraction of Russian gas, but it would all run essentially through a war zone.
I encourage you to drop the definite article "the" when referring to Ukraine.
https://theconversation.com/its-ukraine-not-the-ukraine-here...
> Like it or not, and intentionally or not, the language a person uses reflects their political positions, including their position on Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty.
As a citizen of the United States, this whole issue seems ridiculous. It's remarkable though how a media and PR campaign, combined with social pressure, can change our lexicon practically overnight.
> There are exceptions, but these are the general principles that bind speakers of Russian and English.
These exceptions include collections of states (eg. the UAE, the US) and country names derived from regions (the Netherlands, the Congo, the Ukraine).
Let's take these one by one:
>the Netherlands This is plural: the Low Countries. You are referring to a group, same as the United Arab Emirates and the United States.
>the Congo Which one? ... Exactly.
>the Ukraine Already discussed, referring to it as a region denies its sovereignty.
> Which one? ... Exactly
What can I say, English is weird. The Gambia does the same, in both cases referring to the region around a particular river.
To sustain industry.
Pick your favorite search engine with those words for a source of your choice, it's in the press.
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_19_...