Russia invades Ukraine

[Sm5]

They had the potential to rapidly be put back into use transporting gas, as Russia repeatedly reminded the EU; that is no longer the case, so it’s a huge brake on any country ‘tempted’ to lift sanctions on Russia to get them out of a short term problem. I can think of lots of countries with an interest in such a brake being applied.

You need to think like a Russian…

if you arent buying it, if your acting up, then two fingers to you, you want it later, you pay more.

its a triple message… 1. I dont care.. and 2. I can act closer to European shores without fear. (Think Litvinenko, Salisisbury, MH17 etc), its nothing new and Europes tolerated this behaviour for years.

The third message is a diplomatic one.. this happened lets talk (Russia requested yet another Emergency meeting of the UN, but so far each time the US has not reacted to it).

Much of Eastern Europe has a take or leave it, I dont care I will do what I want attitude, it gets worse the further east you go. Before this war most people wouldnt trust Ukrainians either, and its an undocumented feature of this war that some of this western kit is being black marketed.

Remember, Russia are sending anything upto a million people to dissapear in Ukraine, they might be shot in the back, just as much as they get shot in the front… why would they care about an underground pipe, that in the big scheme of things can be replaced out of pocket change.

There is probably a large element of Russians whom thinks if this war ends tomorrow, everything will be forgiven and forgotten and everything will be back to normal by weekend… ie back to Litvinenko, Salisbury etc… and cheap fuel.

More to the point, Russia thinks that it is at war with NATO, a view which is not held reciprocally by NATO.

On the streets maybe, and by popular propoganda, but the interior ministry knows it isnt… otherwise they would be arming to the teeth all along their western front… not cannabalising it to send to Ukraine.

NATO could take Kalingrad overnight if it wanted right now, and probably using just the local Eastern European police forces… you dont leave that place so exposed, when your enemy is surrounding you unless you know they are not interested, but propoganda can be the inverse message.

My opinion is Russia just thinks NATO is a gnat, in their way, of getting Ukraine and still have no respect for Ukrainian forces. Russia is pushing for western negotiations (US) to end the war, the west is pushing Russia to negotiate with Ukraine to end this war.

if there is an off ramp in this war, separating the Chechen support from Russia is the way to do it, psychology goes both ways… Moscow knows too well what they were capable of.

 

[Giugiaro]

Four leaks already:

 

[Cdd89]

You need to think like a Russian…

if you arent buying it, if your acting up, then two fingers to you, you want it later, you pay more.

its a triple message… 1. I dont care.. and 2. I can act closer to European shores without fear. (Think Litvinenko, Salisisbury, MH17 etc), its nothing new and Europes tolerated this behaviour for years.

The third message is a diplomatic one.. this happened lets talk (Russia requested yet another Emergency meeting of the UN, but so far each time the US has not reacted to it)

You make a compelling argument! The only thing that doesn’t fit, is that Russia is being very direct in denying it (Lavrov said, paraphrased, “how would this make sense? This causes us more problems than anyone” - a statement which makes sense). I value the word of the Kremlin at approximately zero, but if they wanted to send a message, I would expect them to be a little more coy in their denial. It’s certainly an expensive way to send a mixed message, let’s put it that way!

Four leaks already

Is this now across all four pipelines? As one of the arguments that I felt was in favour of Russia having done it, was that one pipeline was left operational.

 

[43096]

You make a compelling argument! The only thing that doesn’t fit, is that Russia is being very direct in denying it (Lavrov said, paraphrased, “how would this make sense? This causes us more problems than anyone” - a statement which makes sense). I value the word of the Kremlin at approximately zero, but if they wanted to send a message, I would expect them to be a little more coy in their denial. It’s certainly an expensive way to send a mixed message, let’s put it that way!

It does make sense for them to deny it and in the absence of any proof, the Kremlin then have a “legitimate” excuse not to supply Western Europe with gas. In their minds that removes the accusation of them weaponising energy supply. Until such time as the truth on who has damaged the pipelines emerges, of course.

 

[Annetts key]

The pipeline was largely shut down though, so there wouldn't have been much in the way of pressure to drop. Also, does Gazprom not control both ends of the pipeline?

I’ll quote what was posted on YouTube:

You mention in your video the posibility of sending a device through the pipe from either end (or possibly from a sub-station?) to where the explosion took place. For the better part of my life I have build, repaired, operated and deisgned equipment that does exactly this. They call these device 'pigs', and the process is called 'pigging'. They are used very often and have a multiple purposes. They can be used to clean the pipe, to dry the pipe, to separate 2 different products inside one pipe or they are fitted with a computer and used to do an inspection of the pipeline from the inside of the pipeline, which is what I did myself most of the time.

Let me start by saying that in theory I think what you suggest is possible. However, I would like to explain why this seems to be an extremely unlikely scenario.

- When sending a pig through a pipeline, this is typically done by using a pressure difference between the beginning and the end of the pipeline. The pig is designed such that it seals inside th epipeline. This means that when a pressure is applied on one side of the pig, that pig will start to move through the pipe with the flow of the product inside that pipeline. Since both pipelines were pressurized, but not in operation (i.e. there was no gas flow inside the pipeline) the pig would never even start moving. So this is not an option. Once the explosives have detonated, there is a flow of gas as can be seen in the viodeos, but now it is obviously too late to send a pig through the pipeline.

- Once an explosion took place you do not want to leave behind any evidence. It seems highly unlikely that an explosion has such a force that nothing of the pig will be left on teh seabed. Remember you are moving explosives through a pipe that is already under high pressure. And the gas itself is also explosive and is only safe because of the teh absence of Oxygen.

- In theory it would be possible to use a pig that can 'walk' through the pipeline. I have worked with these kind of pigs in the past as well. Those are either thethered or battery operated. Thethered woudl not be really be an option because you would need a really long cable and pull this back out again after the explosion in order to remove any evidence. A cable of this size is HUGE, costly and not easy to hide. In additon, over long distance this is not really an option because of the drag of the cable on the pipe bottom.

- Alternatively the pig could be battery operated. So now you will have a pig that weighs more than a ton and has to travel several 100 miles through a pipeline and be completely destroyed in order to not leave any evidence. This is the only option to do this from within the pipeline, but it seems to me very unlikely that they have done that. Just building a pig that can autonomously travel the distance would be a huge undertaking.I would personally not hesitate to try it, but it is not going to be an easy task I think. But to than not leave a trace is just not going to happen I think.

- And then there is an othe rproblem with pigs. In theory it's all easy, but in practice they are simply not that easy to make and even harder to make them work reliably under the conditions they have to operate under.

- Also, there is (I did not build the pipeline, but I am 100% sure about this) monitoring equipment installed on the pipeline and with this they could identify such activity inside the pipeline. If not at the time itself than at least after analysis of the data once they found out about the explosion. A perpetrator would not want that to happen.

In the first sentence I also bring up the use of a potential substation. Not sure if they have any sub-stations, but if they do, than they too are monitored from both ends of the pipeline. In addition, the actual sub-station would be a serious obstacle for the pig if it were to pass through there. Again, possible, but unlikely without detection.

The one things that leaves little to not trace is the actual explosives themselves. My best guess is that they have placed explosives on the outisde of the pipeline with either divers, an ROV or a mini sub. I am sure they did not use a sub because the chance of the Swedes detecting this is too great. Also a minisub seems unlikely in this respect. Divers? Maybe. ROV? Maybe. And just trying to think out of the box here now; maybe they went over it with a fishing boat and the dragged the explosives behind them and they simply 'hooked' onto the pipeline when they were being 'pulled' over the pipeline.

Interesting to see what actually happened. Lets wait and see in the coming days/weeks.

Joey

It was a comment on this YouTube video.

As I understand it, just because gas was not being transferred, does not mean that the gas in the pipe was not under pressure. A certain level of pressure is probably required, just as once the pipeline is completed, it has to be filled with gas. Remember, Nord stream 2 has never transported gas, but is still full of gas. And due to the long length of these pipelines, it will be a while before all the gas escapes…

There are some more helpful posts in the comments section of that video if you want to read through.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 29 Sep 2022 ==

Hasn't Ukraine already been attacking Crimea though in recent months?

Yes. And in parts of Russia near the northern border of Ukraine. Often targeting and hitting supply points.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 29 Sep 2022 ==

Is this now across all four pipelines? As one of the arguments that I felt was in favour of Russia having done it, was that one pipeline was left operational.

As I understand it, two lots of damage to each of two pipelines (Nord stream 1 and Nord stream 2).

 

[Sm5]

You make a compelling argument! The only thing that doesn’t fit, is that Russia is being very direct in denying it (Lavrov said, paraphrased, “how would this make sense? This causes us more problems than anyone” - a statement which makes sense). I value the word of the Kremlin at approximately zero, but if they wanted to send a message, I would expect them to be a little more coy in their denial. It’s certainly an expensive way to send a mixed message, let’s put it that way!


Is this now across all four pipelines? As one of the arguments that I felt was in favour of Russia having done it, was that one pipeline was left operational.

When has Russia ever admitted to anything…
its kremlin policy to deny deny deny.
in the future you can bet this war never happened.

Thats their only way of moving forward is to pretend / erase the inconvenient so that it wasnt there.

You have to wonder, why the overland pipelines havent really been affected in this war… its politics afterall, the reason for Nordstream was specifically to bypass some countries, but to whoms advantage.. would that be, Russia as supplier or Germany as recipient..

Germanys supply is now at mercy of Ukraine, Belarus and Poland, one is hostile, the other two are going to have winter shortages and temptations to tap the pipe for their needs.

This puts pressure on Germany, as whilst Nordstream wasnt being used, its no longer a straight forward return.. those pipes are filling with sea water and are no longer pressurized.. depending if theres cut off points, and if they are closed, if not the whole thing may end up needing replacing.

 

[TheEdge]

As I understand it, two lots of damage to each of two pipelines (Nord stream 1 and Nord stream 2).

Nord Stream 1 and 2 is actually 4 pipelines. Unless this new leak is on the fourth pipeline the reported damage is both Nord Stream 1 pipelines and one of the Nord Stream 2 pipelines have been damaged.

 

[43096]

When has Russia ever admitted to anything…
its kremlin policy to deny deny deny.
in the future you can bet this war never happened.

It isn’t a war, it’s a special military operation……

 

[Loppylugs]

Now Russia is formally annexing four more regions, I must admit to being a little nervous of the crunch moment as Ukraine attacks areas that are “Russian” (albeit not internationally recognised as such), and Putin’s bluff is tested.

What? The regions voted to have the Russian boot in their land instead of a decent life? Whatever next. Just because there was a gun pointing at your head and you were only allowed a verbal vote is no excuse. Now Ukrainians will be forced to fight Ukrainians.
The age limit for the new "fighting force" is 18-72. Hang on, a Putin V fits into that category. Get your helmet on Puts, (that's if you have any left) or do a runner to Georgia, that's if you can get through the traffic! Glory to Ukraine.

 

[kristiang85]

The age limit for the new "fighting force" is 18-72.

I've got an idea for a comedy series called Vlad's Army...

 

[dgl]

I've got an idea for a comedy series called Vlad's Army...

Bit like Dads Army, but then again Mainwaring's platoon were at least somewhat competent and could suprise you with their ability to get things right, Vlad's Army would be more like Blackadder goes forth!

 

[GusB]

Bit like Dads Army, but then again Mainwaring's platoon were at least somewhat competent and could suprise you with their ability to get things right, Vlad's Army would be more like Blackadder goes forth!

Minus the cunning plan.

Don't panic!

 

[Gloster]

I've got an idea for a comedy series called Vlad's Army...

With Private Frazerski saying, “We’re doomed!”

 

[Trackman]

I've got an idea for a comedy series called Vlad's Army...

Viz have already run a strip called 'Vlad's Army'

 

[gingerheid]

One thing that I think should be recognised is that attacking it's own pipelines is a way for Russia to create uncertainty and economic problems AND send a warning as to what it's capable of, but without (yet) directly causing the retaliation that directly attacking a Western asset would cause.

And we've known for some time that threats to subsea assets are real and potentially problematic... https://www.lawfareblog.com/evaluating-russian-threat-undersea-cables

Is vital internet infrastructure at risk from new Russian naval capabilities? NATO’s military leadership has warned in recent months that the Russian navy is aggressively probing undersea communications cable networks. These cables form a global infrastructure system that transmits 99 percent of the international data sent over the internet. Should we be concerned? Despite the ominous warnings, defense officials have not provided much specific information about the actual substance of the Russian threat.

 

[duncanp]

I've got an idea for a comedy series called Vlad's Army...

All together now...

(cue Dad's army theme tune)

Who do you think you are kidding Mr Putin
If you think we're on the run
We are the country who will stop your little game
We are the country who will make you think again
Who do you think you are kidding Mr Putin
If you think that Ukraine's done.

 

[Class 33]

Just a short posting from me for now.

News articles now saying "Gangster Putin could wipe out West's INTERNET after attack on gas pipeline.". Now although that isn't as bad as a nuclear attack on Britain, can you imagine the effects this will have. Although we managed without any internet until the late 90's or even the very early 00's, the world is a very different place now. If no internet, thousands of businesses who operate online will collapse, amongst many other issues this would cause for the population. I wouldn't be atall surprised if Putin does this next. Very worrying.

 

[Sm5]

Just a short posting from me for now.

News articles now saying "Gangster Putin could wipe out West's INTERNET after attack on gas pipeline.". Now although that isn't as bad as a nuclear attack on Britain, can you imagine the effects this will have. Although we managed without any internet until the late 90's or even the very early 00's, the world is a very different place now. If no internet, thousands of businesses who operate online will collapse, amongst many other issues this would cause for the population. I wouldn't be atall surprised if Putin does this next. Very worrying.

I once worked in a certain underground bunker, which had a huge 1980’s style bank of tv screens, 2 floors high in a command centre showing a map of the world, and its core trunk telco cables, together with traffic loads.

Within minutes if an issue on one route, another could be used as a divert.

This was 20 years ago and out of date then.
Since that time literally hundreds of thousands of miles of cables have been strung around the world, several multi-satelite networks exist.
Software driven networks and multi-packet technology (old hat today) still ensures data gets around the network in a guarenteed delivery way, via multiple routes.

All created for resilience and capacity… I’m not worried and dont think anyone else really need be. I doubt any nation has that capacity for physical damage in such a short time.. South America had its internet to 1 trunk which terminated in a disguised car park in Miami and was a single point of failure until the mid 2000’s but even today it has several, as does South Africa, which until 2010 had none (iirc Its first one actually terminated at the Greenpoint stadium in Cape Town for the World Cup), I doubt these locations would be attracting Putins ire. Best case would be temporary slowing long distance traffic.

far easier would be using various destructive software to damage the traffic using it… (Hijacking hosts, viral loads, DoS, Encryption etc), Russia knows this too, and they do have huge teams and experience to do it, as does China, UK, US and Israel. Russia cutting access to Glonass might be a minor issue too for some software, as most western mobile phones use it in addition to GPS.

More of an issue is the UKs own national infrastructure, my 30 years experience ive seen scary cost cutting here that imo an attempt on just 7 locations in the UK would render much government civilian IT technology pretty much useless…but again at that point we’d have much bigger things to worry about.

IT and Gas traffic are very different animals.

 

[LowLevel]

Just a short posting from me for now.

News articles now saying "Gangster Putin could wipe out West's INTERNET after attack on gas pipeline.". Now although that isn't as bad as a nuclear attack on Britain, can you imagine the effects this will have. Although we managed without any internet until the late 90's or even the very early 00's, the world is a very different place now. If no internet, thousands of businesses who operate online will collapse, amongst many other issues this would cause for the population. I wouldn't be atall surprised if Putin does this next. Very worrying.

The articles are written to make you worry. Then you'll worry more and look for more. It sells papers or clicks.

I mean this in a friendly, cheery fashion - if you're familiar with South Park, your postings since the dark days of COVID have always reminded me of the character Tweek. Brimming with good nature and terrified of the slightest possibility of bad vibes and a bad outcome. Be reassured that you're still here and bumping along, and in all probability it won't happen

 

[dgl]

I HIGHLY doubt putin could wipe out the internet or even try to really slow it down, in reality we could probably heavily restrict their access to the net if we really wanted too. They might have tried to hack our systems over the years which might make it look like they are a threat but anything they can do we can retaliate much harder because we easily have better technology and minds at our disposal (including the people who designed/coded a lot of the stuff their internet will rely on).

 

[adc82140]

Perhaps busting the Internet back to the dial up days would be a good thing for society.

 

[Annetts key]

Perhaps busting the Internet back to the dial up days would be a good thing for society.

Not going to happen if just undersea cables and/or remote infrastructure attacks are used.

As it’s unlikely that enough damage will be done to kill all the data centres local to users. There are many and they operate on the distributed redundancy principles. Take out one, or it’s multiple network connections and the system automatically routes around the disabled section. They even have online UPS systems backed up by diesel generators.

At worse, some on demand video services will have to drop frame rates and image quality, some web sites will respond slower, or have limited functionality. Some may even go off line. But it it’s highly unlikely to be a game changer.

Critical infrastructure is normally routed via private networks that are not part of the internet or World Wide Web. So is even less likely to be affected. Although customer services may be affected.

 

[Cloud Strife]

Now Russia is formally annexing four more regions, I must admit to being a little nervous of the crunch moment as Ukraine attacks areas that are “Russian” (albeit not internationally recognised as such), and Putin’s bluff is tested.

The truth is, Russia is in a very difficult situation now. They don't have trained troops to fight on the front line, and sending in randoms with no will to fight is just going to make things even more difficult for them. If they send them in with equipment, then it means they'll lose even more supplies to the Ukrainians.

I was thinking about the nuclear bomb situation, and I would be absolutely shocked if Ukraine didn't have cars full of explosives just waiting to be driven into the centre of major cities. Any nuclear attack is likely to result in the Ukrainians launching all out war, which would be the worst possible nightmare for Putin in response. Imagine what happens if he uses a nuclear bomb against Kyiv, only to see Moscow blown sky high in response? Even a civilian car loaded with serious amounts of explosives would cause large amounts of damage, and I don't think it would be hard for Ukraine to find volunteers for such a mission.

My feeling right now is that this annexation is simply for domestic purposes. They're losing the war, and annexation is needed for Putin to present a victory to the 'common people'.

On the Lyman topic (thank you very much @Annetts key for that YouTube link!) - it looks like the Lyman pocket is rapidly closing in on the Russian forces there. The only question now is whether the Russian command will order the Russian forces out within the next 12 hours or so, or they're simply going to end up trapped there. Apparently the corridor for escape is now down to 3-4km at the most, which makes any escape rather unlikely to me. There's also a strong argument that if substantial amounts of Russian forces can be captured, then this is a powerful negotiating tool.

The same seems to be happening around Borova to the north, and I think we can see now that Russia is simply falling to vastly superior tactics and warfare. It's obvious, of course, that the West is supplying Ukraine with huge amounts of intelligence.

 

[dgl]

There was a Microsoft Azure article on Music Tribe (Behringer) where they remarked that they don't have any if their own servers anymore, but when that was questioned in the comments they remarked that everything is duplicated something like 36 times, as has been said you would need to take out a LOT of datacentres to do any real damage or have any real effect, Russia simply won't have the capacity to do so, at most it would be a few websites that get taken temporarily offline.

 

[Sm5]

Critical infrastructure is normally routed via private networks that are not part of the internal or World Wide Web. So is even less likely to be affected. Although customer services may be affected.

funny anecdote, but Iirc a delay to HS2 was due to a “telephone cable” under Old Oak, that was found to be a little bit more critical than your usual phone line and couldn't just be cut off and re-routed.

 

[takno]

There was a Microsoft Azure article on Music Tribe (Behringer) where they remarked that they don't have any if their own servers anymore, but when that was questioned in the comments they remarked that everything is duplicated something like 36 times, as has been said you would need to take out a LOT of datacentres to do any real damage or have any real effect, Russia simply won't have the capacity to do so, at most it would be a few websites that get taken temporarily offline.

I've been running internet services for millions of users for 15 years, and we've never run any of our own servers. It's just not the done thing anymore

 

[Bletchleyite]

Just a short posting from me for now.

News articles now saying "Gangster Putin could wipe out West's INTERNET after attack on gas pipeline.". Now although that isn't as bad as a nuclear attack on Britain, can you imagine the effects this will have. Although we managed without any internet until the late 90's or even the very early 00's, the world is a very different place now. If no internet, thousands of businesses who operate online will collapse, amongst many other issues this would cause for the population. I wouldn't be atall surprised if Putin does this next. Very worrying.

The Internet and its protocols derive from ARPANET*, a US military network which was designed to be resilient to, er, nuclear war.

So there may be bandwidth issues if he did that, but it wouldn't stop entirely.

* ARPA, the Advanced Research Projects Agency, was the US's version of our DERA, Defence Evaluation and Research Agency, now I think semi-privatised and known as Qinetiq.

 

[Sm5]

I've been running internet services for millions of users for 15 years, and we've never run any of our own servers. It's just not the done thing anymore

Its all cyclical…
Watch any good 1970’s film that includes a technology aspect… Mainframes, Dumb Terminals, client-server computing…. The mainframe was in a data centre.

Then everything went local with servers in the Data centre.

Now were heading back to “serverless” in cloud… cloud being..yes a Data Centre.

When edge computing fully takes off, it’ll be a reinvention of your local phone exchange.

The whole point being, as Bletchleyite pointed towards… the develop of a communications system that would be fully robust to attack. The internet is exactly that, with so much inbuilt redundancy it is in many ways like our 1940’s railway network, with many options to re-route and divert.

As we know the secret to shutting down the railway network is to hit the signalling, not the track or the stations. The same would apply to the internet, cutting cables would be found out in seconds, and ships move slower than fighter planes.

Taking out the network management would have a bigger impact, than breaking a cable, but that requires software not military hardware… Maersk‘s recovery was a good example of how unrobust the system is to a 99.99% hacking of their IT.. 50k pieces of IT equipment in 130 countries affected, it turned an automated global shipping line back to paper and a pencil in one day.

iirc just 1 server in a remote location was unaffected and used to rebuild their architecture.. and guess what, it started as a Russian hack of Ukrainian IT 5 years ago.

Ransomware: The key lesson Maersk learned from battling the NotPetya attack

Protection is important - but it's equally as important to ensure your recovery process is strong, says head of cybersecurity compliance at the shipping giant.

www.zdnet.com

if your in IT, indepth detail here, including the 1 remaining domain controller they had access to, in Ghana, that allowed them to rebuild..

Throwback Attack: How NotPetya Ransomware Took Down Maersk - Control Engineering

The NotPetya ransomware attack took down shipping giant Maersk in 2017. What lessons can organizations take away to protect themselves?

www.industrialcybersecuritypulse.com

 

[brad465]

Various reports that Lyman is more or less surrounded and could be liberated very soon.

https://twitter.com/ThreshedThought/status/1575621779632300032

Pocket now closed. Potential wider repercussions for that sector of the front when Lyman collapses (because it will free up loads of Ukrainian forces).

 

[Cloud Strife]

If Lyman has indeed been surrounded, then it means that the Russian defences were even weaker than most could imagine.

There are estimates of between 2500-3500 RF in Lyman, and I suspect the vast majority are well aware that they're now in the Azovstal situation.