The explosions that ruptured the Nord Stream 1 and 2 natural gas pipelines that carried Russia’s most lucrative export commodity from Russia to Germany on Monday, September 26 have posed two big questions: “Who?” and “Why?”
European and US leaders agree on “who” — Russia. European intelligence sources cited by CNN note the presence of Russian Navy support ships in the vicinity of the ruptures around the time the gas leaks began. Of course, an account pitched by the Kremlin (and parroted by its useful idiots in Western conservative media) claims that the US blew up the pipelines in an act of state sponsored terrorism.
Either attribution of responsibility for the sabotage is complicated by the more confounding questions of ’Why’?
While both pipelines carried residual gas at the time of their destruction, neither was actively in use. Russia’s Gazprom had halted deliveries through Nord Stream 1 in September, claiming that a turbine malfunction at a compressor station near St. Petersburg could not be repaired until embargoed parts could be replaced (Siemens Energy, contracted to maintain the turbine, calls the Russian claim nonsense). The newer Nord Stream 2, completed but never put into service, was decertified by German Prime Minister Olaf Scholz in February 2022 as a protest against Russia’s recognition of its puppet insurgencies in Donetsk and Luhansk.
The fact that neither of the sabotaged undersea pipelines were actually in service complicates the question of what was to gain—and by who—through the permanent destruction of Russia’s European gas delivery infrastructure.
The move makes little strategic sense for Russia as a punitive strike against Europe, since it eliminated any leverage Putin might have used to change EU behavior: the “carrot” of potential energy deliveries to reward reduced military or economic support of Ukraine disappeared in the blast. Also eradicated were the potential Russian profits for gas sales: a crucial resource in paying for Putin’s war of imperial expansion.
However, by approaching the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines as a gambit in a Russian domestic dispute, Putin emerges as the prime beneficiary.
To understand how, first consider the fatal misfortunes that have trailed Gazprom executives over the course of the year. At this point, eight prominent businessmen from the energy sector have met with untimely deaths in about as many months. In January, Gazprom investor Leonid Schulman was found dead in the bathroom of his St. Petersburg area residence, suicide note by his side. In February, Gazprom executive Alexander Tyulakov was discovered dead in his St. Petersburg garage, again with suicide note nearby. In April, a suicide note accompanied the dead bodies of former Gazprombank vice president Vadislav Avayev and his wife and 13-year-old daughter in their luxurious Moscow apartment. In May, Alexander Subbotin, a board member of Lukoil, reportedly died of a heart attack while visiting a shaman near Moscow for hangover treatments. In July, Yuri Voronov, the CEO of Gazprom’s shipping contractor, was found beside his St. Petersburg home’s swimming pool with a gunshot wound to the head and a pistol at hand. In September, Ravil Maganov, the chairman of Lukoil (and a strident Putin critic) took a plunge from a Moscow hospital window. Lukoil, as it turns out, had the temerity to call for an “immediate cessation of the armed conflict” in Ukraine back in March.
Russia’s oil and gas industry oligarchs had much to gain from calling it quits in Ukraine. An end to Russia’s invasion and Western sanctions might have resumed the lucrative European gas trade that lined their pockets, but which Putin had interrupted with his imperial delusions. Energy profits (of $41 billion in the first half of 2022 alone) and their immanent loss could be powerfully alluring as a rationale for undermining Putin’s leadership. But with the demolition of the Nord Stream pipelines, the incentive for sedition among energy sector oligarchs suddenly vanished. And with simpler logistics than the monthly planning and staging of one executive suicide after another….