Says the person promoting Ivermectin as COVID cure in their post history. What is the odds someone would believe in two cases of Russian misinformation, I wonder.
To be honest, in the case of the explosions, this is what most of the world believes. It doesn't make sense that russia sabotages its own infrastructure.
It does make sense for russia (or at least Gazprom). They've cut deliveries through the gas pipelines anyway. Now they might have needed a reason not to pay penalties for contract violation. By blaming random terrorists or the US they can claim technical issues beyond their control.
I think most people assume Putin blew up the pipeline to limit the possibility of his would-be successors being able to sell gas/oil to the West. And Putin has probably rigged the other pipelines with explosives. Otherwise the incentive is too strong: someone in the FSB or the military could kill Putin and start selling unlimited amounts of oil/gas to the West. Putin is well aware how easy life is going to be for his successor, unless he takes steps to limit their options.
From a succession perspective I can see the argument. That said, he has limited his own options. For this whole time, Putin has tried to negotiate, the gas with sanctions lifting and stopping ukraine help from europe. He has lost his only leverage. It would make more sense that the US or ukraine did it, in order to corner russia.
Not really, it could even be the Chinese if you want to get really conspiratorial.
However, looking at the behaviour of Russia recently with their non-linear war, $300m spent on information warfare, invasion of Ukraine, support of dictatorship abroad etc. who is the more likely to have bombed this infrastructure is highly debatable at least.
It shows that he is willing to cross (another) border we didn't think he would cross. The motivation is to cause fear, uncertainty, and doubt in western countries, lowering support for Ukraine. Here in Norway we are definitely more worried than we were before, so that part of it is working. Will it help him split the west? Will more and more people speak out against supporting Ukraine? Fear can be a powerful motivator. Time will tell.
Ivermectin was never Russian misinformation. There were a huge number of studies showing that giving people Ivermectin improved their COVID outcomes. It just turned out that the important variable was whether their area had high background rates of parasite infection. There are large swathes of the world where giving someone Ivermectin on first COVID symptoms is a good strategy for giving them a better chance with the disease, and that isn't really open to question.
It just happens that Ivermectin doesn't do anything directly, and the people who were promoting it were evidence-based rather than correct. If Russia's "misinformation" is providing large amounts of true evidence then we need more of that.
do you honestly believe that Russia would shoot itself in the foot? you may want to inject some sense of skepticism in what you read in the CIA-driven news outlets
Here's a CSPAN video from 8 months ago of Biden telling a reporter that if Russia invades Ukraine the US will "put and end to" the nord stream pipeline.
