The sabotage of gas pipelines were a 'warning shot' from Putin to the West, and should brace for more subterfuge, Russia experts warn

There's been a lot of finger pointing in the wake of the gas leaks that happened last week.

Western leaders, including President Joe Biden and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, have suggested that sabotage was to blame for the break downs. Scientists said that the leaks were likely caused by underwater explosions so large that they were detected on the scale of a small earthquake. The Biden administration quickly rejected the allegations that the US was behind the leaks.

Russia watchers and intelligence experts say the ruptures were probably a product of Russian operations and designed to send a message to the West about Russia's still worrisome capabilities.

John Brennan, the former CIA Director, told CNN last Wednesday that Russia is the most likely culprit and that the apparent sabotage was meant to signal to Europe that Russia could reach beyond the borders of Ukraine.

Brennan said that this might be a sign that Russia is intent on doing whatever it wants to do to weaken a European resolve.

The former US senior intelligence officer who led strategic analysis on Russia for the National Intelligence Council believes the leaks were the result of sabotage by Russia.

The Russian state-controlled energy company, Gazprom, is the majority owner of the pipes that were not operational at the time of the leaks. Since the beginning of the Ukrainian war, Russia's influence over Europe's energy supply has been a point of concern. As it moves to curb its dependence on Russian energy, the EU has been trying to find gas supplies. A number of environmental concerns were raised because of the high gas prices that were caused by the pipe breaks.

There are a number of motives for Russia to carry out sabotage like this, with Moscow looking for an immediate way to increase the pain on Europe.

Russia is signaling to the West that it has a whole suite of non-conventional tools that it can use to be disruptive and to increase the pain so long as the support for Ukraine continues, according to a new report.

It was a cheap way to convey a message to the west. We should expect these things to continue. It's absolutely true that Russia's struggles on the battlefield in Ukraine are tied to this.

Danish Defence Command

The more degraded Russia is, the more it will double down and rely on non-conventional tools, including cyberwarfare, chemical weapons, biological weapons, and even tactical nuclear weapons.

They don't have a lot of other options. The threat is likely to grow in that area.

With Russia struggling with manpower and equipment issues, and Russian forces losing ground in the face of Ukrainian counteroffensives, there's an evolving debate over whether Putin would get desperate enough to use tactical nuclear weapons. The risks of Russia using such a weapon are low, while the recent decision of Putin to annex Ukrainian territory increased those risks.

During Putin's speech announcing the annexations last week, he claimed that "Anglo Saxons" were responsible for the leaking of theNord Stream. "This argument is part of a very well orchestrated international propaganda campaign, but designed to fuel anti-Western, anti-US rhetoric inside Russia and in other regions more suspicious of US agency in the world like India and Africa."

Russia's use of covert forms of escalation, which authorities can deny responsibility for and try to blame on Western or specifically US/Ukrainian actors, and an increasingly high level of coordination between military/espionage are two trends that I think we will see in the future.