The European Union said on Wednesday that the two gas pipelines connecting Russia and Germany had come under attack and vowed to respond. “Any intentional disruption of Europe’s energy infrastructure will meet with a unified and robust response,” said the bloc’s chief diplomat Josep Borrell.
The Kremlin has criticized suspicions, expressed by Western officials, none publicly, that the Russians were behind the explosions at the Nord Stream 1 and 2 twin gas pipelines off the Danish coast.
“This is stupid and predictable,” said spokesman Dmitry Peskov. Her counterpart at the State Department, Maria Zakharova, hinted that the United States could be behind the action when she posted a preUkrainian war video on Telegram of an interview with President Joe Biden.
In it, the American says that if the Russians invade their neighbor, “there will be no Nord Stream 2.” The reporter insists it’s not a US project, and Biden replies, “I promise we can do it.” Zakharova then asks if the president will now explain whether or not he attacked the pipelines .
It’s rhetorical, as Biden was likely talking about the economic pressure he might put on Germany through sanctions, as his predecessor Donald Trump had already done to try to derail the energy project that was the Angela Merkel government’s darling. But it shows the tension level of the situation.
Borrell also did not specify who was behind the two underwater explosions in the Baltic Sea that affected the branches. Nord Stream 1 was operating at low capacity, which the Kremlin said was a technical problem and Europeans exerted political pressure because of the war sanctions, and its brother was never used commercially but was loaded with gas to keep the system used.
The governments of Sweden, Denmark and Germany say they are working on the sabotage hypothesis but are wary of assigning blame just yet. Stockholm went further and reiterated that it does not view the attack as an act against their country to defuse tensions the Swedes are in the process of joining NATO (a USled military alliance) alongside the Finns over the conflict in Ukraine.
“We will support all investigations to obtain full clarity as to what happened and why, and we will take additional steps to increase our energy security resilience,” Borrell said in a statement.
The actual damage to the system is now being assessed. In Germany, the Tagesspiegel said the government’s unofficial assessment was that the damage could be permanent.
The Nord Stream system was put into operation in 2011 in the form of a multinational consortium led by the Russian stateowned company Gazprom. For Germany, it was a way to secure cheaper Russian gas through the longest undersea pipelines ever manmade, 1,200 km long.
For Putin, it was an opportunity to seal the strategic partnership with a Europe dependent on its product and gradually remove its electricity through the two Soviet gas pipelines that run through Ukraine, which are still operational despite the war. They had an ace up their sleeve for Kyiv, plus about $3 billion a year in tolls.
The episode reinforces European fears of a difficult winter ahead. The continent is trying to gain access to alternative sources of gas, but this is a longterm process. Prices are already up to ten times higher than the decade average, and governments fear popular discontent as homes could be left without heat and industries without electricity.
The US and the European Union are therefore accusing Putin of weaponizing gas as he pushes to reduce continental support for Ukrainians at war.