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Depends if they ever really planned on providing gas to Germany again.
Russia had made some rather large agreements with China on oil & gas prior to the Ukraine invasion. Russia has been ramping up construction of pipelines east.
If Russia had planned on cutting off these pipelines all along, it'd make no sense to cut off the flow on day 1. That would give a bit of pain to Germany (and the EU), but it would lead to an actual solution in short order, with spring/summer giving a decent buffer to prepare for winter. Also, if Russia cut gas day 1, then the EU (and particularly Germany) would have likely gone all in behind Ukraine. Maybe even boots on the ground. There surely wouldn't have been hemming and hawing about whether to send weapons, which ones, how many, etc.
A big sticking point for me is that I do not believe there was an actual issue with the turbines. I believe the particular compression station has 4 to 6 turbines typically installed, with 4 needed for operating easily at full capacity. There's another ~4 turbines that were spares, iirc. One was off for maintenance in Canada.
So how does Russia go from a full set of turbines, pumping at full capacity (I think they were actually pumping over capacity for much of the past few years), down to just 1 that's barely useable? It seems like a story they are telling. If the turbines were an issue, and they actually wanted them back up and running, Germany was willing to give them full support. But Russia refused, adding obstacles to it. And Russia was really only asking for a pretty narrow exception to the sanctions, not lifting of all sanctions. And from what I understand, Germany was happy to provide them.
So there's obviously more going on. Maybe Russia was leveraging the flow in order to prevent arms transfers? If Germany (or other EU states) were sending weapons, Russia throttles it. So Germany delays sending lethal/military aid to Ukraine.
But I think Russia is simply taking these turbines and tossing them on their eastern pipelines to accelerate construction, which is why they denied all offers to fix the things. Now this incident gives Russia the opportunity to begin peeling down the NS2 pipeline, and probably ripping whatever else they can get from NS1.
This will be the end (for awhile, at least) of cheap energy for the EU. But it will bring a ton of cheap energy to China.
I think Russia's actions are largely done at the behest of China. This is China's moment to make the multipolar world they've been talking about. Though I believe the multipolar world is simply a transition to a unipolar world with China at the top. And somehow we in the west continue to sit on our hands, and I fear we'll respond far too late.
China has collapsing demographics, little naval power, and an economy that's still poor and not growing... as well as the worst geographic vulnerabilities to its see trade and an entire ring of enemies around it...
China becoming an equal power in a multipolar world is optimistic, them winning the 21st century is laughable.
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Many years until those pipelines to China are built.
At the moment, the gas fields that were supplying EU are thousands of km away from nearest China pipeline connection. The pipelines to China are from much smaller eastern fields.
All the gas that went to EU has nowhere to go. Unless they start with selling LNG, too.
They have very little capacity to compress it. And are unlikely to be able to expand that much while under sanction.
Yes. Chinese are completely unable to build gas liquefaction machinery. It requires high tech industry such a backward country cannot possibly manage to build.
Lmfao.
I get tons of downvotes when I point out 'sanctions' are no such a big deal when the country with half of the world's industry and the world's most rampant IP theft program refuses to sanction Russia on account of it being its biggest ally.
Cope & seethe, cope & seethe. Keep the downvotes coming.
Whining about downvoting is never productive.
"Cope and seethe" is just being obnoxiously antagonistic in a petty and immature way. This is not the playground and you aren't "winning" with the best neener-neener. Don't do this.
Okay.
I find it hilarious, this assumption that Chinese are traitorous idiots who are going to backstab Russia and can't even get high tech working.
Wishful thinking by yanks all the way, obviously.
Huge market out there for China related cope material. That they're going to betray Russia and snag some territory is about the most common talking point I see though.
I suppose China turning its back on Russia would be far-fetched, but I can imagine that if the two states were to ally, they would not even come close to being equivalent to 1.5 Americas. The Chinese readiness for war is still such that they might be capable of something, but the West has proven that China is very welcome to fuck around and find out--and maybe China won't, since the political costs of being smacked on your pizza hands over Taiwan are probably too dire to imagine.
Words fail, really.
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