XJO - Bear Posts only (Factors which might cause the markets to fall), page-4813

There is no obvious country which would gain from blowing up the pipelines. I think that there being no obvious beneficiary means exactly that. There is no beneficiary. And nobody has really lost anything because of the damage, because the west was going to wean itself off Russian gas anyway, nomatter what, so the pipelines had no real future.

Therefore the riddle can probably only be solved by looking for a completely different type of reason other than an economic benefit. Here are two similar theories that fit with all the facts.

One possible reason would be to test the quality of surveillance of the movements of submarines. This would be of particular interest to Russia because Russia keeps threatening to widen its war. Hitting undersea cables and pipelines to damage and disrupt western economies would be an almost effortless and riskless way to widen the conflict if it can plausibly be denied. If Russia now widens its submarine war but gets caught out, then it will be open season for NATO and others to hunt and kill all Russian submarines. So, if Russia damaged the pipelines then the purpose would be to observe what evidence against Russia is produced by western countries. Western countries will produce no evidence because to do so would tell Russia exactly what it wants to know. Therefore, nobody is making any accusations backed up with evidence. Which is exactly the situation.

A second similar theory is if Russia is planning to escalate to using nukes, which it keeps threatening to do, then it needs to know for sure that its nuke-armed submarines are undetectable, because in the event that escalation extends beyond the use of tactical nukes the existence of big nukes in submarines is a deterrent to NATO. Even a madman needs to know how detectable his submarines are before he presses the button.

As far as the XJO is concerned, these theories point to Russia intending to widen or escalate its war if it thinks it can get away with it, which would be bearish. On the other hand, if Russia thinks that escalation will be disastrous then it may start to consider ways of ending the war, which would be bullish.