wimsey wrote:
It changes the nature of the bargaining chip. It certainly seems to reduce their options. But that may be useful to them somehow (if it's sabotage, and done by the Russians). Sort of a double down, "the only way out is to go deeper into the crisis" kind of thinking. I don't know. It does seem like it would be counterproductive to the Russians. But maybe they don't want to get into a negotiation against the rest of the Western world. Maybe Putin likes to try to present stark options of (1) threaten to use nukes, and/or (2) freezing Western Europe with fewer available options to remedy that cold winter, as a way of trying to raise the stakes and bluff his way out of this.
If it's Russia, there's also the implied threat to western undersea assets -- pipelines, communication cables, etc.
"100% of the people who confuse correlation and causation end up dying."