Three weeks after explosions ripped apart both Nord Stream pipelines under the Baltic Sea, a Norwegian underwater drone company has released video of a disintegrated pipe section that is entirely consistent with Russian sabotage.
Trond Larsen, a Blueye Robotics drone operator, told the Danish newspaper Expressen that "it is only an extreme force that can bend metal that thick in the way we are seeing," and that "a very large impact on the seabed around the pipe" was visible during the examination of the blast site.
In the video above, Larsen points to a sonar picture of the crater left by the powerful internal explosion. A total of four bombs detonated moments apart, two in each pipeline and two each in the boundary waters of Sweden and Poland.
Rejecting a Europe that has rejected his hydrocarbon extortion, Vladimir Putin’s Russia has waved the proverbial finger on its way out the door. Of course, official Russian sources have denied all responsibility for this act of self-sabotage. Because of course they have.
The Kremlin said on Tuesday that the international investigation into the explosions was set up with the intention of blaming Russia.
Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin's spokesman, said "elementary logic" showed that damage to the pipeline was a blow to Russia's interests.
He said the investigation was being conducted "secretively" and without Moscow's involvement.
Nice pipeline we had there, such a pity something happened to it. What I find most offensive about all this is the oxygen and electrons wasted arguing about events that cannot possibly be made mysterious. No evidence of a viable alternative explanation to Russian sabotage exists. No one even bothered to prepare other explanations, as though the order to destroy the pipelines was impulsive, and reactionary, and self-defeating, just like the decision to invade Ukraine.