(10-01-2022, 07:52 AM)Goose Wrote: I am a bit surprised nobody has stated the obvious. The country that "benefits" the most from this pipeline destruction is Ukraine. If things get bad this winter, Europe could be tempted to throw in the towel, buy Russian gas, and dump Ukraine. With no pipelines, they can't do that even if they wanted to. That doesn't mean I think Ukraine did it, but normally that is where one would start to look.
One does need to consider this could also be a commercially motivated action. States (and companies) involved in the LNG business might look at this as a way to ensure their customers have to buy LNG. Having a potential alternative creates uncertainty, and we know how business hates uncertainty :-). Some LNG exporter state may have figured it would be possible to do this and everybody would blame Russia, not them.
It does not take a nation-state to do this. There are many underwater construction companies and oil field support companies with the equipment and expertise to to this kind of thing. The challenges would be to do so covertly and to maintain security subsequently. The covert requirement could be met several ways. The security issues could be the only way we find out who actually did it.
On the other hand, Ukraine has the most to lose if they can be shown to have done this. Russia has the most to gain if Ukraine supporters could be reasonably accused of doing this. Russia has relatively little to lose if they are shown to have done this.
Planting the charges without having an obvious surface support vessel would be the challenge. Navy Seals and their counterparts would be trained in that. I expect all underwater pipelines and communication cables would be destroyed early in any war. I doubt commercial divers ever dive without lots of surface support (but maybe some are former Seals).