Who wins from demolishing the EU’s gas lifelines?

PAST COVERT OPS AND SABOTAGE PROVIDE CLUES TO THE APPARENTLY DELIBERATE DESTRUCTION OF NORD STREAM PIPELINES its last sails. It’s clear that europe itself wouldn’t benefit from that. Nor does it benefit at all from any of its own anti-Russian sanctions. But who gave Brussels that idea, to harm its own economy in the first place? rachElmarsdEn.com rachEl MarsdEn let’s start with the end result and work backwards. The outcome ultimately means that europe’s economic impetus for ever seeking peace with Russia has been seriously undermined, if not literally destroyed. Someone has taken it upon themselves to demolish the remaining bridges between the two. Until now, there was always a chance of reconciliation.

SPeCUlATIoN abounds since both Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, designed to carry cheap Russian gas to europe, were damaged this week in what officials widely describe as deliberate acts of sabotage. Who could be responsible? Incidents buried in the past may provide a clue.

Speculation abounds, and typically in a direction colored by the preexisting biases of the person speculating – which is hardly helpful.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said himself recently that all the eU needed to do to pull itself out of its self-imposed energy crisis was to push the button on its gas supply from Russia and drop the anti-Russian sanctions that prevent it from doing so.

People in the streets of German cities protesting against Berlin’s blind following of Brussels’ anti-Russia sanctions also knew that was the answer. But now that option has been taken off the table. The eU is now adrift amid a deepening energy crisis and someone burned

At the onset of the Ukrainian conflict, it was Washington that egged on the eU to mirror measures that Washington itself had adopted in an effort to deprive Moscow of revenues to fuel its interests and objectives in Ukraine. The problem is that the eU’s economy was far more entwined with Russia’s than America’s. Any sense that US President Joe Biden and his administration may have given eU leaders, that they’d be there to help the bloc soften the blow of its self-sacrificial sanctions, has since been replaced by a harsh, pragmatic reality. US shale executives have explained to Western media that they simply lack the capacity to ramp up production for europe’s winter crunch, even amid the growing rationing, deindustrialization, and risk of blackouts.

So, pressure has recently been increasing on eU member states to achieve a rapid diplomatic, peaceful resolution. But any reconnection of Nord Stream gas would have been a blow to US economic ambitions, which eventually include turning the eU into a dependent liquefied natural gas client. To that end, US officials have even tried to market their natural gas in the past as “freedom molecules,” in contrast to the “authoritarian” Russian gas.

Biden himself said of Nord Stream 2 during a press conference on February 7, before the Ukraine conflict had even popped off, that “we will bring an end to it,” despite it being out of American control. But even long before that, the US was sanctioning and bullying european companies into halting construction on Nord Stream 2 under the pretext of saving europe from Russia. It’s worth noting that europe didn’t really have problems with Russia this century until the US decided to make Ukraine an outpost for the State Department. Not only did Gazprom, Russia’s stateowned operator of the pipeline, persist against all odds to finish it, but it’s really the only leverage that Moscow has in europe. Attributing to Moscow the recent sabotage of their own grow. This discontent is compounded by a mixture – often present at the same time in the minds of Russians – of opposition to the war itself and fury at the incompetence of its conduct by Putin and his entourage.

If this continues, then a coup against Putin will become a real possibility. This would not necessarily be violent, and might indeed not appear publicly at all. Instead, a delegation of establishment figures would go to Putin and tell him that, to preserve the regime itself, it is necessary for him (and a few other top figures implicated in military failure, such as the defence minister, Sergei Shoigu) to step down, in return for guarantees of immunity from prosecution and security of property. Something not unlike this happened when Yeltsin handed over power to Putin in 1999.

Members of the Russian establishment who took such a step would be running grave risks: for themselves personally if the move failed, but also for the Russian establishment and Russia itself, if a change of leadership led to a split in the elite, political chaos and a radical weakening of the central state.

They would therefore most probably need some assurance that if Putin could be

HOME, IT’S TIME THE WEST TRIED TO NEGOTIATE A WAY BACK FROM THE BRINK removed, the west would be prepared to offer his successor a deal that would allow the new government to claim some measure of Russian success. otherwise, ruling over a weakened state and military, and faced with what Russians would view as western demands for unconditional surrender, the new government would assume the catastrophic burden of Weimar German democracy after the first world war, permanently branded as the regime of surrender and national humiliation. looking at this prospect, a successor to Putin would very likely blame him personally for everything that has gone wrong in Ukraine, while answering growing calls by Russian hardliners to declare complete national mobilisation and greatly intensify the war. This could spread the war beyond Ukraine’s borders. If we wish to avoid this prospect, there is still time for the west to take up Putin’s implicit offer of talks; but not much time.

Anatol Lieven is director of the Eurasia programme at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

Supreme court’s landmark judgment on abortions

economic interests in europe seems absurd. The damage done to the pipelines now means that to prevent them from being completely filled with sea water and destroyed, Russia is forced to keep pumping gas through them and into the sea at their own expense. What exactly does Moscow gain from any of this? Conversely, what does Washington gain? Nothing less than Brussels’ full dependence, which proved elusive when europe could split its interests between the east and west.

As for who possesses the technical ability to execute underwater pipeline sabotage, both Russia and the US do. Much has been made in the past of the potential for cutting undersea cables – defined as an act of war by UK defense chief Admiral Sir Tony Radakin. The US actually has a history in such operations, having tapped into undersea cables to spy on the Soviet Union in the 1970s operation Ivy Bells, according to public records about operation Ivy Bells. Washington also has sabotaged Soviet gas pipelines before, albeit indirectly – according to Thomas C. Reed, a former Air Force secretary who served on the National Security Council in 1982, when then-US President Ronald Reagan allegedly approved a plan for the CIA to sabotage components of a pipeline operated by the Soviet Union. The objective was to prevent Western europe from importing natural gas from the Soviets. Sound familiar?

Time and inquiry will uncover the culprit eventually – if we’re lucky. eU officials are vowing to get to the bottom of it. “All available information indicates leaks are the result of a deliberate act. Deliberate disruption of european energy infrastructure is utterly unacceptable and will be met with a robust and united response,” Tweeted the bloc’s chief diplomat, Josep Borrell. Perhaps investigators could pay a visit to Radoslaw Sikorski, european Parliament member and former Polish foreign minister, who tweeted a photo of the disaster aftermath along with the note, “Thank you, USA.”

But if it indeed turns out that Washington committed what some consider to be an act of war against europe’s economy, will Brussels have the heart to really confront it? or will Brussels continue to find justifications to remain complicit in its own demise?

Rachel Marsden is a columnist, political strategist, and host of independently produced talk-shows in French and English.

NOTABLY, THE SC JUDGMENT TALKS OF FAMILIAL AND CONJUGAL VIOLENCE, INCLUDING WOMEN WHO CONCEIVE OUT OF MARITAL RAPE AMONG THOSE WHO CAN SEEK TERMINATION OF PREGNANCY WITHIN THE SPECIFIED PERIOD

IN RECOGNISING EVERY WOMAN, MARRIED AND SINGLE, AS ARBITER OF HER OWN BODY, SC’S ABORTION JUDGMENT IS MOMENTOUS

IndIan ExprEss Editorial

The Supreme Court has delivered a seminal judgment that could have a significant impact in enlarging and expanding women’s reproductive rights in the country. The apex court bench comprising Justices DY Chandrachud, Surya Kant and AS Bopanna said that all women — whether married or in consensual relationships, and including “persons other than cis-gender women” — are entitled to seek an abortion within 20-24 weeks of the pregnancy. The bench was hearing the case of a 25-year-old unmarried woman, whose plea for termination of her pregnancy in the 24th week was turned down by a division bench of the Delhi high Court on the ground that the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Rules, 2003, did not extend to unmarried women in consensual relationships.

In a country where the woman’s body has, more often than not, been a site of the patriarchy index, the Supreme Court’s recognition of her right to equality and, equally significantly, to her agency and choice, is momentous. In recent times, in comparison to many other countries, including the US — where the landmark Roe vs Wade judgment granting constitutional validity to the right to abort was recently overturned — abortion laws in India have moved in a more progressive direction, but much more needs to be done. Under Section 312 of the Indian

Penal Code, 1860, abortion remains a criminal offence, to which the MTP Act provides exceptions, and, even within the wider ambit of the much-needed recent amendments to the law, it continues to adhere to hetero-patriarchal structures that make the approval of others integral to abortion-related services and do not recognise a broader gender spectrum. Five decades after the Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) Act was passed in 1971, the MTP (Amendment) Act, 2021, introduced crucial and welcome changes, including the right to terminate unwanted pregnancies caused by contraceptive failure. Now, in calling for a less restrictive and more “purposive interpretation” of the amendments and seeking to further free them from social conservatism, the Supreme Court on Thursday has opened up valuable room for greater freedom. The support of the law is only the first step in what is, in reality, a harrowing fight for reproductive and bodily autonomy on the ground, but it is crucial.

Notably, the SC judgment talks of familial and conjugal violence, including women who conceive out of marital rape among those who can seek termination of pregnancy within the specified period. While the judgment specifies its validity only within the purview of the MTP (Amendment) Act, it remains to be seen how this will be implemented, given that marital rape is still not a criminal offence in India. Yet, in its recognition of every woman as the arbiter of her own body and in respecting her right to choose, Thursday’s judgment is important and laudable.