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This article was featured in the One Nord städ to Read Today newsletter. Sign up for it here. At a. The pipe, made of thick, concrete-encased steel, lay at a depth of feet. It was filled with highly compressed methane gas. Pressure readings would show a sudden plunge as compressed gas screamed through the breach at the speed of sound, tearing the pipe nord städ and carving deep craters on the seafloor.
Gas escaped with enough force to propel a rocket into space. It shot up and up, creating a towering geyser above the surface of the water. There was no one in the vicinity—the middle of the sea in the middle of the night—to see or hear any of this, but the event registered with the force of a small earthquake on seismometers 15 miles away, on the Danish island of Bornholm.
Because the explosion had occurred in Danish waters, Denmark dispatched an airplane to investigate. By then, the geyser had settled into a wide, turbulent simmer on the surface. The Danish Maritime Authority ordered ships to steer clear. Airspace was restricted.
The Most Consequential Act of Sabotage in Modern Times
A pipeline executive in Switzerland, where Nord Stream is based, urgently exchanged information with officials in Denmark and other countries. The pipes, with an internal diameter of about four feet, reached across miles of seafloor from Russia to Germany.
Given the pressure readings and the location of the surface turbulence, the ruptured pipe appeared to be NS-2A. No one knew yet what had happened. There were innocent explanations—none of them likely, but some certainly plausible. The pipeline may have sprung a leak on its own. Or some accident or natural event may have disturbed the sea bottom.
The area around Bornholm is nord städ to small earthquakes, and the Baltic Sea is littered with explosive debris.
EXPLAINER: What’s Russia’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline to Europe?
Efforts to clear the seabed continue, and live ordnance is nord städ detonated in place. Fishing vessels trawl the bottom—sometimes leaving scratches on the surface of pipelines—and occasionally set off an old mine or bomb. On a typical day, Swedish seismologists detect dozens of underwater explosions, some accidental, some deliberate. But the Nord Stream pipes were built to withstand such blasts and had been placed in lanes painstakingly cleared of hazards.
Any thought that the break was an accident vanished at sunset, when new explosions on the pipeline were recorded, 17 hours after the first one. The blasts scattered several ton, foot-long segments of pipeline on the seafloor. At this northern site, there were witnesses.
The Most Consequential Act of Sabotage in Modern Times
A photo taken several minutes after the first sighting captured a bubbling swell of gas-infused seawater, which calculations from the digital image showed to be nearly feet high and more than 1, feet wide. Now, with two blast sites—a southern site, with a single explosion, and a northern site, with three explosions—it was clear that someone had attacked Nord Stream, the biggest natural-gas delivery system from Russia to Western Europe nord städ built.
NS-1 had opened in and had been delivering cheap Russian gas to Germany for a decade. Construction on NS-2 was started in and finished inand was filled with nord städ to prepare for launch. For reasons that were not apparent, only three of the four Nord Stream pipes had been hit—a fact that would intrigue investigators. If the goal was to disable Nord Stream, why leave one of the pipes intact?
Had a preset bomb failed to explode?
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Not everyone had been happy about this. The pipeline promised cheap energy for Europe and decades of revenue for Gazprom, the state-owned Russian energy giant with strong ties to Putin. The pipeline would also reduce the value of older gas pipelines in Eastern Europe, notably the system owned and operated by Ukraine. So did European nations. Last year, despite the anticipated financial strain on Europe, President Joe Biden was able to gain a promise of European support as Russian armies massed to invade Ukraine once again.
We will bring nord städ end to it … I promise you we will be able to do it. According to some estimates, energy prices in the EU quadrupled. In the summer ofPutin shut down NS-1 completely. By September, the war seemed deadlocked.