All Global Energy Infrastructure At Risk After This “Most Dangerous Precedent”: Putin

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin addressed a Moscow energy forum on Wednesday and issued a grim forecast following last month’s sabotage attack on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines under the Baltic Sea on September 26. 

Putin in the fresh comments warned that this “most dangerous precedent” means any and all energy infrastructure in the world is now at risk. Describing acts of state-sponsored terror and sabotage, the Russian leader explained, “It shows that any critically important object of transport, energy or utilities infrastructure is under threat irrespective of where it is located or by whom it is managed.”

Danish Defense Ministry/AFP

He pointed the finger at “beneficiaries of the blasts” – which Putin named specifically as the United States, Poland, and Ukraine, though which entity or entities were behind it remains a mystery, and with little in the way of conclusive known evidence at this point.

The Wednesday remarks by Putin follow his assessment in the days after the sabotage incident which grabbed the world’s attention and shook global energy. He said at that time, “It’s obvious to everyone who benefits from it… Those who benefit are the ones who have done it.”

But US and Western officials, as well as the media, has blamed Russia for sabotaging its own pipelines in a bit of ‘conspiracy tit-for-tat’ speculation. An American military news outlet reviews, “The culprit behind the attacks on Nord Stream 2 has been widely speculated, with Western sources near unanimously blaming Russia while others have highlighted that the U.S. and possibly Britain or Poland are likely culprits.”

But then US Secretary of State Antony Blinken raised eyebrows when he called the sabotage attacks “a tremendous opportunity”…

According to @SecBlinken, the Nord Stream pipeline bombing “offers tremendous strategic opportunity for the years to come.” Too bad that this tremendous opportunity for DC bureaucrats will come at the expense of everyone else, especially this coming winter. pic.twitter.com/T2eacQUuBF

— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) October 1, 2022

He said in the surprisingly blunt Sept.30 press briefing while alongside Canada’s foreign minister that “ultimately this is also a tremendous opportunity. It’s a tremendous opportunity to once and for all remove the dependence on Russian energy and thus to take away from Vladimir Putin the weaponization of energy as a means of advancing his imperial designs.”

He at the same time touted that the Untied States has now become “the leading supplier of LNG [liquefied natural gas] to Europe,” stressing too that the Biden administration is helping to enable European leaders to “decrease demand” and “speed up the transition to renewables.”

Many pundits have said this shows who most stands to benefit by the Nord Stream pipelines’ destruction and disruption; however, again there’s as yet no clear “smoking gun” evidence as to who was behind it.