Ukraine: a period of great danger

By Richard North - October 1, 2022

Simply to make sense of things, it is often necessary to deal separately with different issues as they arise, neglecting or ignoring complicated linkages. But there are times when the story doesn’t make sense unless various bits are pulled together – but even then, the sense might not be fully evident.

All eyes (well, some eyes), for instance are on Moscow for Putin’s ceremonial welcoming of four Ukrainian districts back (in his terms) to the Russian Federation fold, which leaves the evolving Nord Stream explosions story relegated to the back pages – for the time being, at any rate.

However, in terms of timing, a case can be made that Nord Stream and the annexation of the Ukrainian districts are very much part of the same story – an intricate “play” that is being unfolded in Putin’s back yard, that could soon come together to take the Ukrainian war to the next stage.

Key to the current developments is yesterday’s charge by Putin that the United States and its allies were responsible for blowing up the pipelines.

Putin offered no evidence to support his accusation, simply relying on the assertion that the United States stands to gain the greatest benefit from the destruction of the “pan-European energy infrastructure”.

The Anglo-Saxons, he said, believe sanctions are no longer enough and now they have turned to subversion. “It seems incredible”, he continued, “but it is a fact – by causing explosions on Nord Stream’s international gas pipelines passing along the bottom of the Baltic Sea, they have actually embarked on the destruction of Europe’s entire energy infrastructure. It is clear to everyone who stands to gain. Those who benefit are responsible, of course”.

If he had been so minded, Putin could have referred to a comment made by Biden on 7 February at a joint news conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

There, the US president said, “If Russia invades… again, then there will be longer Nord Stream 2 (sic). We will bring an end to it.” When asked how he would do that, he responded, “I promise you we will be able to do it”.

This, if nothing else, is an ample stick with which to beat the United States but, for the moment, Biden’s administration is dismissing Putin’s claims as “outlandish”. “We’re not going to let Russia’s disinformation distract us or the world from its transparently fraudulent attempt to annex sovereign Ukrainian territory”, White House National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said yesterday.

While full site investigations have yet to get underway, Russian vessels have been observed in the vicinity of the explosions and Sergei Naryshkin, director of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) is making the unlikely claim that: “We have materials that point to a Western trace in the organisation and implementation of these terrorist acts”. “The West is doing everything to hide the true perpetrators and organizers of this international terrorist act”, he adds.

That aside, we are getting some details from the seismic data, with a report that the explosions recorded were caused by the TNT equivalent of about 700 Kg.

That is roughly equivalent to about 500 Kg of high-grade military explosives, which tends to rule out shaped charges placed directly on the pipelines, which would only amount to about 10-20 Kg for each charge. It also rules out the use of the “superheavy” the UDM-2 sea-bottom mine with a 1,350 Kg charge.

On the other hand, the charge size calculations are compatible with the use of highly sophisticated self-transporting mines, which can be launched by submarine or aircraft up to 30 miles from the intended target, in a torpedo-like carrier.

This is an eminently plausible delivery mechanism as a Danish official readily acknowledges that, “Russian activities in the Baltic Sea have increased in recent years. They’re quite often testing our awareness – both at sea and in the air”.

The use of advanced mines, equipped with sensitive sensors, would be flexible and discrete. They can be programmed to find and position themselves against selected targets and can remain active for about a year before being detonated by remote signals.

While the UN environment programme and others obsess about the climate-changing potential of the large-scale methane release, the sabotage has much more immediate consequences.

Essentially, once the narrative of Western culpability has been fully established, this leaves the way open for Moscow to justify – to itself – appropriate retaliatory action aimed at hastening ongoing collapse of Western hegemony, a culture so degenerate that its schools impose on our children, from their earliest days in school, “perversions that lead to degradation and extinction”. “Do we want to drum into [our own children’s] heads the ideas”, Putin asks, “that certain other genders exist along with women and men and to offer them gender reassignment surgery?”

Now that the four Ukrainian regions have returned to the fold, the retaliatory action can also be cast as self-defence, and one of the most obvious targets must surely be the Ukrainian gas infrastructure.

For a long time, there has been bad blood between Russia and Ukraine over the flow of so-called “transit gas” from the Russian fields to the west, with Moscow contractually committed under a 2019 transit agreement to pay for 40 billion cubic metres of gas passing through Ukrainian pipelines this year – whether it actually sends the gas or not. In total, we are told, Ukraine expects to earn $7 billion from the deal that runs to 2024.

Problematically, though, the Russian state gas operator, Gazprom, is currently only sending about 4o million cubic metres per day through the system, – about 17 percent of the line’s capacity. In response, therefore, the Ukrainian state company, Naftogaz, sued for arbitration, claiming the latest transit payment had not been paid by Gazprom, “neither on time nor in full”.

The dispute has now escalated to the point where Gazprom has snapped back at its Ukrainian counterpart that: “Services that have not been provided by the Ukrainian party should not and will not be paid for”, condemning the referral to arbitration as “an unfriendly step”.

The plot thickened in early May when Ukrainian gas grid operator GTSOU complained that Russian gas destined for European customers was being illegally siphoned off as it passed through Russian-occupied Luhansk, a territory which now been absorbed into the Russian Federation.

GTSOU has already retaliated by refusing gas transit through that route, leaving Naftogaz to transfer volume destined for the West to a second transit line not passing through occupied territory.

Relations have now deteriorated to such an extent that each side is accusing the other of breaching the terms of the initial agreement, while also disagreeing of the location of any arbitration hearing, the Russians complaining that venues in Sweden and Switzerland are now out of the question because both “have moved into the category of countries unfriendly to the Russian Federation”.

Following the Nord Stream explosions and the new-found status of the occupied regions, it takes little to imagine that the acrimony of the jaw-jaw could so easily turn to war-war, with the Russians launching what they would describe as a “retaliatory action” on Ukraine pipelines and storage reservoirs.

Discussed in my earlier piece, the prospect of a nuclear strike on such facilities cannot be ruled out and, with the bellicose tone of Putin’s speech yesterday, this might be considered to have come that bit closer.

Continued military incursions by Ukrainian forces into what Putin has now classified as Russian sovereign territory can only strengthen Moscow’s determination to extract its “revenge”.

With Ukraine’s renewed application to join Nato, this will also focus minds, while Nato’s pledge to assist Ukraine to recover its annexed territory can hardly be calculated to calm an already tense situation.

It is hard not to speculate that, in the next few days, we are collectively entering a period of great danger, where actions by parties could change the world as we know it forever.