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Originally Posted by August
Which might be called eliminating the competition I suppose but not "blackmail". Blackmail is threatening to do something if the victim doesn't pay or do something else you want them to do. [...]
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Well i'd say the US tried to blackmail and when bubble Olaf (tm by Skybird) did not comply, they created facts.
So they just did it when blackmail did not work. You might call it
peaceful hegemony 
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Not really, as the Russians never shut off the pipeline as a Punitive Action for Germany's assistance to Ukraine (what little there was of it),
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But Putin did
exactly that.
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[...] but rather they claimed that equipment failures were the cause of the disruption, reasons which were soon debunked.
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Of course they als tried to blackmail, and when i look at Olaf Scholz it worked, probably due to his good relations to Russia
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This provides them a solid justification for the long term shutdown and casts aspersions upon their enemy.
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Yes but since everyone knows what is going on why should they destroy their only instrument of applying pressure to Europe?
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Sounds like something they would do, don't you think so?
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No i do not.
There is nothing to gain for Russia by destroying Nordstream when they can just cut it off by closing the taps.
It was announced, the US has the most advantage of it, and with or without Occam's razor it looks pretty clear.
There is of course one reason for Russia, to sow division in Nato of course, but they are not so dumb to think that any european country will leave Nato because of this US stunt?
Hey i do not even criticize it, US being US after all.