We all know what Russia and Putin are capable of. It must be some Russian separatist groups in Ukraine pretending to be pro-Ukraine had sabotaged the pipelines. We are in the midst of another disinformation campaign by Russia.
So I doubt that Russia could pull such sort of attack.
2) If thinking Russia did it, it's irrational to blow up one's own money-making infrastructure.
3) If thinking it's a separatist group, it's not a reasonable idea. The technology, tactics, and scale of committing that with a Russian separatist budget without anyone finding out is hard to imagine. It'd be far easier, I imagine, to try to just shoot/grenade Putin than do that.
> It must be some Russian separatist groups in Ukraine pretending to be pro-Ukraine had sabotaged the pipelines. We are in the midst of another disinformation campaign by Russia.
Then there's the question of capability. We're supposed to believe they do extremely stupid things, but also do it with such superhuman competence that we don't have a clue afterwards.
A threat directed at Baltic Pipe. Which makes sense if you think their basis is that leverage with gas supplies through Nordstream had failed and it had lost its value for that purpose (and it wasn't making money, for the same reason), and that they were desirous enough for any (even low probability of success) leverage on European action to take an action which would remove that theoretical long-term asset whose utility had diminished for an (also low probability) additional swing at intimidation.
Just as a pro-Ukrainian attack makes sense if you think that their basis was that Russian leverage with gas supplies, though at the time not producing, was only transitionally failing and was likely to recover soon enough to be strategically relevant, or at least probable enough to make an action which, if traced back, could boomerang badly on image of their cause to eliminate the possibility.
I think a lot of people narrow possibilities of who could have done a thing because they ascribe their own assessment of the strategic situation to all participants, when, in fact, parties to the conflict often have very different views of the strategic situation than each other, much less random outside observers.