Five reasons why Russia is likely behind the Nord Stream industrial sabotage

Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov on Thursday dismissed Ukraine’s accusations that Russia was behind the Nord Stream gas leak, calling it an act of state-sponsored “terrorism.” After NATO condemned it as a “deliberate and reckless” act of sabotage, Russia’s top intelligence chief, Sergei Naryshkin, said Moscow has evidence the West did it.

Here are five reasons why Russia is most likely the state that orchestrated this dangerous act.

first, Putin has the motivation. Faced with a possible defeat in Ukraine, Putin is desperate to reverse the momentum on the battlefield by resorting to dramatic escalation. This is their way of trying to force the US and Europe to stop providing long-range weapons to Ukraine. The outcome of the conflict in Ukraine is an existential issue for him personally and for Russia. Russia considers Ukraine, along with other former Soviet states, to be part of its strategic security perimeter.

Putin has already declared it a “red line” to add Ukraine to NATO and integrate with the West. Moscow sees this as its version of the Monroe Doctrine.

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The risk for Putin of Ukraine joining NATO is greater than that of being condemned by NATO as a sponsor of industrial terrorism. Frustrated that he is not being taken seriously, Putin is desperate to send what he believes is a clear message.

second, damaging or destroying critical infrastructure is consistent with Russia’s fighting concept called Strategic Operation to Defeat the Adversary’s Critical Infrastructure (SOPKVOP, in Russian). Russian strategists spent decades conceptualizing ways to circumvent US and NATO conventional superiority in a conflict they had concluded was inevitable because Moscow and Washington have been fighting over control of the post-Soviet space since the collapse of the USSR in 1991.

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Intended for wartime, SOPKVOP operations can also be deployed in peacetime to “destabilize the opponent’s social and political situation” and displace the adversary psychologically to persuade him to abandon the fight. Russia’s targeting strategy prioritizes critical infrastructure. He has been studying Western vulnerabilities for years. SOPKVOP envisages pursuing quasi-military campaigns using cyber operations and other non-kinetic methods.

third, Russian military strategists have pondered a scenario in which Russia would target its adversaries’ civilian infrastructure during a conflict. Defeating a “small number of key interconnected targets” that are vital to the functioning of the state would cause “the whole system to collapse,” they hypothesized.

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In 2012, Russian strategists analyzed a 2001 accident in the United States involving a train carrying hazardous chemical materials that derailed in a tunnel in Baltimore. The crash ruptured a water main, causing a three-foot flood that disrupted Baltimore’s mail and telecommunications systems. There was a disruption of rail and automobile transportation along the entire Baltimore to New York corridor.

“Taking part of an adversary’s civilian infrastructure out of service,” Russian strategists argued, will produce destructive cascading effects, “harming the economy, health, defense, and security of the entire state.”

fourth, Russia is one of the few countries that has the exact capability needed to cut off the Nord Stream pipelines that carry Russian gas to Europe, and to do so covertly. Moscow has invested in underwater warfare capabilities through its GUGI program, a top-secret program with the innocuous cover name of “Deep Sea Research” that includes work on underwater communications and sensor networks, hydrocarbon exploitation, underwater rescue and remains investigation.

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Moscow has suffered territorial incursions of war in the Baltic Sea and the North Atlantic, as well as the disruption of submarine cables that carry communications. It is the only country, according to the US Naval Institute, that has a fleet of special mission submarines for seabed warfare and espionage and is expanding that capability, while anti-submarine warfare capabilities of the US and Europe have atrophied since the end of the Cold War.

fifth, Putin is of no use to Nord Stream in the short term, as neither Pipeline 1 nor Pipeline 2 generate revenue. Moscow shut down Nord Stream 1 at the end of August, claiming that European and US economic sanctions had made maintenance impossible. Nord Stream 2 never went into operation, as Germany declined its certification. On the contrary, taking Nord Stream out of service serves Putin’s goal of freezing Europeans in the winter, a standard Putin move to use energy as a weapon.

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Russia is replacing this lost revenue with export revenue from non-Western countries, such as China, India and even the Taliban. The joint $55 billion Russia-China “Power of Siberia” pipeline, which has been partially operational since 2019 and is scheduled to come online in 2025, is part of Putin’s long-term plan to pivot to Asia, given Moscow’s conclusion that relations with the US are irreparable.

The Kremlin has the motive, the means and a doctrine of war that lays the sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipeline squarely at its feet.

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