Neither the Danes nor Nato have made a direct attribution for yesterday’s pipeline damage. But the fingers are pointing at Russia. The thinking goes that Putin was trying to trigger panic in the energy markets by showing that there’ll be no rapid resumption of gas supplies to Europe and by demonstrating how vulnerable this energy infrastructure is.

Now, given that Russia has turned off Nord Stream 1 for maintenance, the damage to the pipeline will have little immediate impact. But if it is the beginning of a covert sabotage campaign against European energy infrastructure then that is a very different matter.

The UK would struggle to get through this winter without energy rationing if, for example, the interconnectors and gas pipeline from Norway were disrupted. Tellingly, both Denmark and Norway have stepped up security around their energy infrastructure. The UK would be well advised to quickly move to protect both its energy and digital connections with the Continent. These have been long-standing vulnerabilities.

So, will there be more of these attacks? There are reasons to think so and reasons to think otherwise. The reason to think there will be is that the invasion of Ukraine is becoming increasingly existential for Putin and so he might be prepared to take this risk in an attempt to break western support for Kyiv. The case against is that attacks against currently functioning energy infrastructure would be a major escalation. In these circumstances, the West’s offensive cyber-capabilities could be deployed and as the US demonstrated after Russian-linked hackers shut down the Colonial gas pipeline, Moscow will come off worse in any such exchange.