Germany

[Mortblanc]

The shutdown of the pipeline was more than maintenance as you suspect SS.

The Russians had farmed out the tech and maintenance of those lines to Haliburton and Shell. When the Ukraine invasion began all those techs were pulled out of Russia and they were left to run their own pipeline and they were not up to the job.

The international companies were not dummies and they had refused to train the Russian techs to the skill level they needed to run without them.

A pipeline is a complex transmission system even when automated, and once one is closed down, especially if done out of sequence, it generally must be opened by hand at each valve and pump station in the proper order.

When a line is shut down from the well head to the final deliver point it can take up to two years to open it for use again. You don't just turn it on like a water hose.

Has no one noted that Putin waited until his girl Angela Merkil retired before he pulled this stunt? Or he warned her and she retired to avoid taking the fall.

Most folks don't seem to realize that she was one of his trainees on the east side of the wall for decades. It was her administration that set her nation up for this misery, shutting down their own power output, trying to put a country nearly on the artic circle on green power and import their survival resources from Russia.

There could be no outcome other than extreme hardship or submit to blackmail. Apparently no one in Germany remembers what the Russians did to them on their last visit.