And it could have military roots, just not recent ones.
Not only the US Navy (together with its NATO allies) but also the Russian Navy conduct naval exercises in the Baltic Sea and many believe either the Russians or Americans are clandestinely responsible for the two blasts. Predictably enough, the two sides have blamed each other in loud and emphatic terms – without corroborating or credible evidence.
Unmentioned amid the incendiary speculation is the explosive condition of the Baltic seabed, which is loaded with dumped artillery shells, chemical weapons including Tabun nerve gas and mines. Under an agreement reached at the Potsdam Conference in 1945, Britain and the Soviet Union dumped approximately 69,000 tons of Germany’s chemical weapons stockpile into the Baltic Sea in 1947-48.
A second dumping in the same area took place in 1959. Moreover, during World War I and II, Germany laid some 80,000 sea mines including moored contact mines and constructor mines in the Baltic Sea, including around Bornholm. There are known to be Russian moored contact mines in the same area.
Old munitions have a tendency to blow up rather easily. It's why unexploded ordinance (UXO for short) is such a problem after a conflict. And it's why you never ever ever wander into an impact area on an Army base. Not everything goes off when it lands and the longer it sits there the more likely it is to go off if you trip over it.
Now, I think it's still a possibility that Drooling Joe the Chinese Hand Puppet and his puppet masters blew it up. But there are far more plausible reasons as to why the pipelines blew. Such as this one.
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