I would think that, right now, the #1 customer for black-market tank parts would be… the Russian military.
While I certainly wouldn’t put a false-flag operation past Russia, I don’t think it makes sense right now. They’re already at war with Ukraine, and Ukraine really would be doing things like this if they can.
But some of the marks apparently think they’re false-flag operations. They’re shouting pro-Ukraine slogans as they attack, even while thinking that they’re actually helping Russia. The fact that Russia really would do things like false-flag operations, and everyone knows it, probably makes the scammers’ jobs easier.
Fire at Crimea fuel depot extinguished after drone attack, governor says
A drone strike caused a fire at a fuel storage facility in the Crimean port of Sevastopol, sending a vast column of black smoke into the sky before it was extinguished, the city’s Moscow-installed governor said on Saturday.
A Ukrainian military intelligence official said more than 10 tanks of oil products with a capacity of about 40,000 tonnes intended for use by Russia’s Black Sea Fleet were destroyed, RBC Ukraine reported.
With what motive? Russia was the party with the least to gain and most to lose from destruction of the pipeline.
I suppose he’s got about as good a chance at it as anyone. Though probably the best he could do would be to work with the other Patriarchs to censure the Patriarch of Moscow, and maybe thereby decrease the impact of the Patriarch of Moscow’s propaganda.
I don’t think it’s an action the US or an EU country would have taken. I don’t think Ukraine has the naval capability to mount such a distant operation, or that they would think it would look good blowing up gas lines just off the coast of Poland, Germany, Denmark and Sweden. The theory that it was pro-Ukrainian non-state actors, as floated a few weeks ago, felt a bit unrealistic to me. As the prosecutor leading Sweden’s investigation into the sabotage said: “Our primary assumption is that a state is behind it.”
And halberds are a lot more effective than shovels, as weapons go.
Except that the pipeline explosion had the opposite effect. Before, it was “Stop helping Ukraine, so you can get your gas back”. After, it was “Stop helping Ukraine, and… um… I guess you still won’t have gas, because the pipeline done blowed up”. If Europe can’t get Russia’s gas anyway, then Russia loses that bargaining chip. That’s why everyone was assuming it was done by someone pro-Ukraine.
This.
We will probably never know for sure who sabotaged the pipeline, but I’m gonna need some serious evidence to believe it was the Russians, who had nothing to gain and everything to lose from that action.
