Two years after a series of explosions tore apart Russia’s controversial Nord Stream pipelines, the investigation has largely remained a mystery full of accusations that have exposed political fault lines across Europe.Stretching from northwestern Russia under the Baltic Sea to Germany’s coast, the pipelines completed before Russia’s full-scale invasion are a long-standing project that aimed to boost Russian gas flow into Western Europe, symbolic of the old energy pact between Moscow and Berlin that now seems like a mistake.The multifaceted investigation that followed the detonation and subsequent effective destruction of three out of four pipelines in September 2022 has essentially run on two separate tracks: the hard police work of determining who was responsible and the larger rethinking of the strategy to integrate Russia into the West via energy trade.In practice, the two have become intertwined as competing camps have latched on to the continuing mystery of the explosion to pursue their own political agendas.Why Russia still rakes in cash transporting gas through Ukraine: 4 key chartsWhile Russia’s deadly war rages on Ukraine’s soil, one unexpected aspect of the invasion is that natural gas continues to flow through Ukraine from Russia, with both sides profiting from the deal and – to an extent – financing each other’s war machines.