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- cross-posted to:
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MOSCOW, Aug 16 (Reuters) - Russia’s ambassador to Washington said on Friday that he did not believe Ukraine would have attacked the Nord Stream gas pipelines without the tacit approval of the United States, and that Russia would identify and punish those behind the attack.
Nordstream 2 never went into operation. It was tested and held pressure, but Germany never certified an operator, stopped the procedure to do so two days before the 2022 invasion, and never picked it up again. The pipeline is wholly owned by the Russians.
When the pipeline blew up plenty of gas terminals were already under construction. Russia was playing games with what came through Nordstream 1. They were caught red-handed trying to drain gas reserves before the invasion. There was absolutely no fucking way Germany would in any sense have continued to rely on Russian gas with or without the pipeline blowing up.
Relying on Russia in the face of all the fuck fuck Games the Russians play is exactly what they did and expanded on for over a decade. Also if Germany wasn’t buying, others on the gas network where. So I don’t know if I would agree with your closing statement.
One pipeline was open and gas was flowing, so it was a major source of income for Russia. If only NS1 would stop operation NS2 would have been certified and have taken over in days.
Russia wasn’t sending any gas through NS1 at that point. Or at least thereabouts, remember those shenanigans around compressor turbines which were in repair and whatnot.
If you seriously, seriously think that Germany would risk an economic crash over pivoting away from Russia then I can’t help you either. There might’ve been some unease over “will Germany actually side with Russia over fears about the economy” but that a) makes no economic sense and b) nope we don’t just fuck over allies.
As to Handel durch Wandel: The whole thing cut both ways. The idea was to make war prohibitively costly by enmeshing economies – and, indeed, Russia’s economy is in the gutter. Ideally it would have made them not attack at all but a ruined Russian economy is a proper consolidation price. They e.g. can’t produce ball bearings necessary for their trains, just as a random example of many: They became reliant on German products, a thing that non-enmeshment could never have achieved. The Soviet Union was self-sufficient in those areas, and Russia would still be had Germany not gone in and wiped key strategic Russian companies off the market.
And the other direction? The gas? Figures that that wasn’t a dependency, at all. Maybe, maybe, after shit went down and we were able to see the actual impacts it would be prudent to re-evaluate past narratives, but, well, I can’t force you.