October 2023 there was similar incident where Chinese cargo ship cut Balticonnector cable and EE-S1 cable. Chip named 'Newnew Polar Bear' under Chinese flag and Chinese company Hainan Xin Xin Yang Shipping Co, Ltd. (aka Torgmoll) with CEO named Yelena V. Maksimova, drags anchor in the seabed cutting cables. Chinese investigation claims storm was the reason, but there was no storm, just normal windy autumn weather. The ship just lowered one anchor and dragged it with engines running long time across the seabed until the anchor broke.
These things happen sometimes, ship anchors sometimes damage cables, but not this often and without serious problems in the ship. Russians are attempting plausible deniability.
The Danish defense forces now confirms their presence but they are not providing any other information right now: https://x.com/forsvaretdk/status/1859195509866381402
(This is also a rare English-language tweet from an account that usually only tweets in Danish)
And 4 days ago a Russian spy ship was escorted out of Irish waters:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/16/russian-spy-sh...
So definitely seems like a coordinated attempt to destabilise Europe ahead of anticipated peace talks early next year.
Same in Portugal
https://www.theportugalnews.com/news/2024-11-18/russian-ship...
"Russian mission installs more ‘spy’ antennas in Geneva, Swiss TV report claims" https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/foreign-affairs/russian-mission...
Why would destabilising europe before peace talks be beneficial? Seems like they would lose a lot of leverage.
So how long ago were US long-range missiles used to attack Russia?
Because that's what seems to be claimed here, that Russia are retaliating for that.
How long does it take a ship to travel to a 'suspicious' site like this?
versus, how long does it take to intercept the nearest Russian ship, and escort it away as a spy ship and 'potential saboteur'?
The info that the Biden administration would greenlight this, should have been known in Moscow for weeks now. I assume the news arrive later only for us - the public.
So you're saying the spy-saboteur ships have been hanging around, or en route to sensitive areas for weeks, waiting for this to drop?
But only now are they being very publicly outed and moved on?
Title could be a lot more descriptive. Your average reader might scroll on by because that title makes no sense without context.
Yeah, it took reading a few of the comments for me to understand that this is about a Chinese ship having crossed two undersea fibre cables around the time that those cables broke.
At first I thought it may have been about bad USB cables with crossed-over/miswired pairs or something
(you are here)
Much more information here: https://gcaptain.com/details-of-baltic-sea-cable-incident-re...
and some here https://www.newsweek.com/baltic-cable-sabotage-nato-1988689
including
> Social media reports said that the vessel had a Russian captain, although this has not been independently confirmed.
Yi Peng 3 has been stopped in the Kattegat with Danish navy ships around it for about 11 hours now. Currently HDMS Søløven is anchored right next to it. HDMS Hvidbjørnen was also not too far away before its signal went dark.
Also, Russia is sabotaging European satellites:
https://nltimes.nl/2024/11/15/dutch-childrens-channel-outage...
To be less ambiguous in word choice, they jammed a satellite from the ground. Russians used a ground based dish to spoof a TV station signal to a repeater satellite, causing TV stations near Ukraine to go down and show an interference error. I'm just clarifying because "sabotage" could mean any number of more costly and damaging things, like a spy loosening a bolt before launch or something. https://nos.nl/nieuwsuur/artikel/2544558-verantwoording-en-b...
>Last ports: Murmansk - Port Said - Luga Bay (never docked, Ust-Luga, Russia)
All the way to Luga and decided to not dock. Large cargo ship pleasure wandering the sea like a yacht.
What I don’t understand - if the yi peng was intentionally trying to damage the FO cables, why would they not spoof or disable their AIS data/broadcast (ship tracking transponder which is the source of this positioning data we see). Anyone have some insight on that?
AIS is required for large ships in many if not most jurisdictions, to have it turned off is suspicious in itself. If you turn it off then re-appear later on somewhere else having had to traverse the area where the cables where at the time they got damaged, that's suspicious. You could turn it off in port, head out, cut the cables then return and turn it on again, but the window of time you had it off would straddle the cable damage time, and there's a high chance you would have been documented (video, radio traffic) leaving port in that time, and depending on the departure port it may be hard to leave without AIS on as the authorities may notice.
fishing boats and military often have it off btw.
fishing boats turn it off when they're in places they're not supposed to fish
Spanish also. And probably many other, seems a common trick.
Yeah, I have experienced this as a sailor.
This is the 2nd time China did this in that Baltic isn't it? Both times look intentional.. maybe don't allow Chinese ships in the Baltic?
No it isn't.
Both of the two Chinese registries are open, pretty much anyone can register ships there. It's a bit like the .tv domain — if you see something.tv you can't assume that it's a company in the country Tuvalu.
Look at the nationality of the captain and the beneficial owner instead.
And as a result .tv domains are not exactly trusted and can't be used for all the things reputable domains can be used for.
IIRC abuse correlates closely with the price of registration for the first year, and poorly or not at all with how open the registration policy is.
Right. So they might need some motivation to change that.
what are you implying?
how do you intend to "motivate" a sovereign country?
Imperialist behaviour won't get you anywhere with a country as large as China.
That would not swing.
Denmark controls the waters of the seaway to Sct. Petersburg and Kaliningrad that are some of the strategically most important ports of Russia.
Blocking of traffic to these would be a severe escalation.
Regularly Russian subs pass through Danish waters - controlled and allowed.
I'd consider the serious escalation of offensive (cowardly) acts were carried out by Russia many many years ago repeatedly, increasingly, throughout Europe (elsewhere too), with mild consequences. Got seriously unabashed escalating further. Being cautious with the nazi Germany blew into the face of the World, will definitely not work with the imperialist Russia either. China acts on behalf of Russia here - Russia being coward for open confrontation with anyone (believed by them) able hitting back hard. China has secondary benefits for self as well.
Was it Shakespeare who wrote “Discretion is the better part of valor”? That level of cynicism might be appropriate here. The cowardice is on the European side, surely?
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Damaging infrastructure is already a severe escalation. Should not have done that.
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Not American - I'm Polish. I've got friends who got drafted already (if only for training) so it's entirely possible I'll join them eventually.
My take is that Russia's plan is to continue sabotaging and a weak (or lack of) response to that only emboldens them.
Also nuclear war with what? Their recent Satan II ICBM test demonstrated that they don't necessarily have the technical chops to launch anything sufficiently capable and it must have come as a surprise to them as well.
On the contrary, chilling would endanger everyone living the in the free world even further.
Nuclear war is not a realistic concern, luckily. If it was, it would have happened after the first "red line" Russia claimed the west had crossed.
We were chill since 2014 if not earlier. It brought nothing but pain both to Ukrainians and to us in the West. It doesn’t work.
It's high time for the West to man up and solve the Russian problem once and for all.
How severe an escalation would it be?
As severe as... say starting the largest war in Europe since WW2 right at our doorstep? Or as damaging our critical infrastructure? Or manipulating our democratic processes?
It's time the West pulls its head out of its ass. We're already at war, whether we want it or not.
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I could be anyone except you. I don't see the relevance in speculating about that.
The US have no qualms appeasing Netanyahu. Biden and his party was even fine arguably losing the election over it. I don't see any contradiction there.
Russia and the US from time to time more or less arbitrarily bombs or invades some other country. I guess Russia's Holywood need to make better movies depicting their own soldiers as victims of their own wars. Still glorying though. There is work to be done there for sure. The two I've seen depicted soldiers as pathetic losers.
I mean, trying to economically, socially and culturally isolate the US would probably make it wreck even more mayhem over the world than trying to have cultural exchange, be nice, and what not. And when this fails not throwing yourself on a spike might be preferable.
> Regularly Russian subs pass through Danish waters - controlled and allowed.
I've always wondered how subs handle tidal flows there, and how challenging the tidal flows are.
YESS!! Finally a bsky link instead of X. Hope this is how it is from now on.
Looks suspicious, but there were 4 vessels in the area whose transponder signal was lost by public trackers during that night.
It has also been pointed out that this is a location with lively traffic. So if it turns out that is was an anchor (as in the New New Polar Bear case) that's extra suspicious because anchoring in such location is not normal. On the other hand if it were explosives like in the Nord Stream case, they could have been applied also weeks before.
YI PENG 3 (IMO: 9224984) is a Bulk Carrier and is sailing under the flag of China. Her length overall (LOA) is 225 meters and her width is 32.3 meters. Source: https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/shipid:21...
It looks like that the pilot ship Styrbjoern [1] came along side the Yi Peng 3 today. It traveled from the harbor of Grenaa to the ship and back. It possible that they took some people in for questioning or put a pilot and/or guards on the ship.
On November 21, 2024, 6:35 UTC: It looks like the pilot ship Styrbjoern is traveling in the direction of the Yi Peng 3 bulk carrier again.
C-Lion -> Sea Lion, but not the IDE from JetBrains.
Going from fishing illegally in south american waters to damaging internet cables in Europe.
Should be very easy to verify if this was the cause.
All you have to do at this point is go look at the cable near the crossings.
If there is evidence of an anchor hitting the cables in both of these locations then you've got pretty clear proof.
Someone should obviously be checking into this right now. No point speculating until it's confirmed really.
I guess you might still want to board just to find out weather there is any evidence of intent rather than negligence in the case that this is confirmed to be the cause...
At best fall guy captain will claim ignorance, malfunction, or negligence. Retire or move to some cushy job.
No one will want to implicate China in something that would support Russia's war and would all be afraid of the economic fallout.
This is not how ship registration works. A useful model is to think of a ship's flag like a tld, just because a site is .cn doesn't mean the company is based out of China. Ships usually fly one flag or another based on tax and legislative reasons, and it's often unrelated to the country of origin.
The ship suspected of breaking the cables has been apprehended and it turns out it was currently sailing from Russia with a Russian captain [0].
> The speed of cargo ship Yi Peng 3 was affected negatively as she passed the 2 Baltic Sea cable breaks C-Lion 1 and BSC.
> Before the incidents she held normal speeds. After stopping and drifting for 70 minutes she again held normal speeds. By this time the two cables were broken.
> No. I checked the 5 most close ships heading the same way. They did not slow down similarly in the same wind. The ship most closely resembling Yi Peng 3 actually sped up. The Lady Hanneke.
- Putin calls the region "NATO Lake"
- German Defense Minister has called the line failure sabotage
- Danish Naval ships are now shadowing Yi Peng
The other part is that explicit accusations create a lot of political tensions. Obviously so does the actual act of sabotage. But definitive proof is quite difficult to actually reach. Unless there is literally a letter on that captain's desk from a military leader ordering the action (a "smoking gun") then it is easy to just blame the captain and/or crew, as Hank mentions. After all, a country should not be blamed for the actions of individual citizens not made with the direction of that country, though it is also important that countries hold their citizens accountable. Accusations will more depend on how hawkish the leaders are. Obviously all countries play games like this, but certainly some are more aggressive than others. One major country loves to play the victim card while creating "red lines" which violate international laws. So take it as you will
Crowdsourced military intelligence offers some hope for the future.
Do we need to get James Cameron and associates to design a DitchWitch that can operate at 2 miles down? How deep can ship anchors go?
They already use such a thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_layer
> Cable ships also use “plows” that are suspended under the vessel. These plows use jets of high-pressure water to bury cable three feet (0.91 m) under the sea floor, which prevents fishing vessels from snagging cables as thrall their nets.
So when did they start using these and why are we still having issues?
We still have issues for the same reasons buried power, water, gas etc. lines still do. It isn’t a perfect fix.
Botswana is well in the top half of least-corrupt countries. I suspect you know nothing about Ukraine or Botswana.
If a cable goes down, isn't the traffic just re-routed? Don't see the point of intentional damage here.
Dunno what the real reason is, but it's easy to see possible a intentional reason: Testing to see how it well it works and how other nations respond.
Cost of new anchor = X
Cost of fixing cable = >>X
Damage = done
I guess WWIV has been on a slow burn for going on three years now.
Did I miss WWIII?
Cold War.
More like since Deng Xiaoping initiated the modern Chinese economic strategy in the '80s to control the West through trade.
The West did a fine job of this themselves. Outsourcing to poorer countries is what has made the West so wealthy for so long - goods whose price is subsidized by cheap labor. Now that China and other countries have caught up, the West doesn't get the same discount, but they also don't have their own manufacturing because they all outsourced. We did this to ourselves.
Very much this. We could have also used that time to advance and perfect on-demand production like 3D-printing, enhance our society by promoting more robust and prone to repair products, but instead we clinched on mass-consumption and profit. Our whole economic system needs recheck.
Sorry best we can do is an incompetent admin full of 3rd rate celebrities who explicitly want to dismantle everything our ancestors built with a side of outright grift. The department of education is for losers. What do you mean half the country can't read at a high school level?
It was crossing right on time for the interruptions, a Russian officer was on board, it slowed down while crossing, no other ships were slowing down in that area during that time (rulingnout headwinds) - it cannot get much clearer. China is now participating in hybrid warfare against Europe (unless they present stronger evidence against this assumption)
> China is now participating in hybrid warfare against Europe
Geez, I'm glad you're not war minister. It's a Chinese registered ship with a Russian captain.
If a terrorist crashes a truck with Portuguese plates into the US embassy in Berlin, would that mean Portugal's declared war against the USA?
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Well, yes, Flag of Convenience is a thing.
But there is a "but", which is that in the articles of war, the flag of a ship does have quite a few implications. E.g. when two nations are at war, stopping ships flagged as belonging to the opposition gives certain rights of stopping and searching them, blockading their passage, seizing the vessels and cargo, etc.
And the relevant characteristic in that case is the flag, not the captain's nationality: > Art. 51. Enemy character. The enemy or neutral character of a vessel is determined by the flag which it is entitled to fly.
Yes, but there is the huge other "but" that in modern use, a formal declaration of war is no longer necessary, committing acts of war is sufficient for a state of war to exist. (However, committing acts of war without a preceding declaration is of course a war crime.)
Of course this isn't really automatic and triggered by the smallest thing, both sides kind of have to "agree" to be at war, e.g. by a counter-attack, a declaration following the attack or something like that. And nobody really wants to take that bait, due to the huge consequences involved.
Yet, it is China playing with fire here, we all can be happy that none of the affected nations took them up on their "offer" of war.
Yes, good points. It's not a wild stretch of the imagination that Mr P and gang are actively trying to drag China into the Ukraine conflict and I'd imagine Beijing is pretty pissed off today about being (ostensibly) implicated in this sabotage. So the usual underhand scheming from the Kremlin imho, don't fall for it. China and Russia's relationship is very complicated of course and there's many a convincingly analysis out there that predicts conflict between them in the near future (an example flashpoint being Siberia).
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Yes, this is what I'm saying, but with less words.
But look around (even in these comments) and look at how many people are thinking "Chinese act of war!!!11!!"
As far as I can tell, you're both saying the same thing: that registering a ship in China does not mean China is responsible for that ship's actions. If you've got a different point to make, please make it clear.
Then, elaborate please, Jochen, what's the important difference?
Yes… A lot of them really need have it spelt out, twice, in large clear type.
So the Russians who are at this point highly dependant on Daddy Xi to keep their economy and military afloat are gonna false flag the West to suck China into a quagmire of a war a few months before the most unpredictable and venomously anti-china president (who has thin skin, a hair trigger, and no qualms about conducting airstrikes on high-ranking Iranian generals unilaterally on a whim) in modern US history is about to take office at the head of a country with the largest functioning stockpile of nuclear weapons and a massive military? You think Chinese intelligence is asleep at the wheel and wouldn't notice given the stakes and absurd levels of geopolitical risk the entire planet is at?
China may back Russia to try to shift perception of the west's military might/will or to drain resources or just to buy Russia by making them dependant to get those juicy Russian natural resources but they aren't going to start world war iii to help Putin with his fetishistic "yet another European dictator" fantasy.
The Chinese know how to play the game same as the Russians and the US. All these little games are just calibrated psyops, why destroy, very publicly, comms lines when tapping it would be far more beneficial to a war effort and much quieter? Maybe to make the West look weak and unable to defend their borders which affects consequences domestically like say channeling political support to isolationist politicians who want to retreat from supporting Ukraine? Cause those politicians didn't make gains in the last European elections or nothing.
Well said.
> If a terrorist crashes a truck with Portuguese plates into the US embassy in Berlin, would that mean Portugal's declared war against the USA?
At the very least, the cooperation of Portugal's authorities would be expected to determine how the truck ended up being used for the attack, and if anyone knew about how the vehicle was to be used.
I expect the same amount of cooperation from China as the flag state.
By this logic, United and American Airlines were complicit in 9/11 as well.
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They're not asking for Russia to get the benefit of the doubt, they're asking (reasonably IMO) for China.
A well-earned result of decades of their hard work, although this is about china-registered vessel
It was the second Chinese registered ship with Russian crew within a short period of time. A year ago this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newnew_Polar_Bear cut the gas pipe and another communications line.
I am sure if the cowardly Russians ever did this to USA, it would cause a much bigger drama and retaliation wave, and China would take the hit as well.
True but China can support or not support investigations and prosecution. After all they are the ones who can exercise their sovereign rights on ships sailing under their flag. I‘m really curious and open minded how this plays out but sadly would be surprised if China would support the EU in this case.
> war minister
Due to an earlier generation's newspeak, that's "defense," not "war."
Are you sure about that?
I happened to notice that at least in some cases, the change of terminology happened roughly when it became clear that offensive war was a losing proposition in terms of money and resources. I suspect that as invading the neighbours became financially irrational, the cool heads that tend to survive in management shifted their stand from mixed offense/defense to just defense.
Germany's a good example. In 1914 the ministry was called Kriegsministerium, and an invasion wasn't seen as a necessarily bad idea. I think it already was, but at the time, you could argue in Berlin that a country that started a war could benefit from that war, if executed well. That kind of argument wouldn't make people doubt your judgment yet.
A few years later it was clear that offense was necessarily a resource loss. Someone who wanted to build a career as a civil servant might then see a defense ministry as a viable option, but not any sort of offensive war. Offense was clearly not viable, and therefore not a good basis for budget allocations, and therefore the good career move for the civil servants was to focus the ministries entirely on defense.
I don't know if the evidence is conclusive, but I do think we can say China is supplying Russia with military hardware and supporting them in other ways. So.. it's possible.
China trades with pretty much everybody, don't read too much into that.
China is not allied with Russia and China is unlikely to engage in sabotage like this because they stand nothing to gain from it.
They do have an alliance: https://www.cfr.org/article/china-russia-and-ukraine-october...
What the words are worth in a time of need remains to be seen. Neither side is exactly trustworthy :)
From what I understood, China was completely blindsided by the invasion (given that it happened so soon after the announcement of the alliance), and actually somewhat pissed. Russia basically used their alliance as insurance against a fully global sanctions regime, and China had to stick around to save face.
Blessedly we're citizens of good and noble western countries that are supremely trustworthy and that would never ever renege on a deal or fight unjust wars.
> China is not allied with Russia
They don't have a mutual defense treaty, sure, but they describe themselves as having a “friendship without limits”. I would agree that China has no interest in getting involved in Putin's idiot war in Ukraine though, and there's zero benefit to China in antagonizing Europe.
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I'm no fan of the CCP either but really what do they stand to gain here? Getting dragged into Russia's conflicts and the sanctions that would ensue would be devastating to the Chinese economy and security of the CCP's control.
The CCP are aware of this fact and they're planning for it, but they're not ready yet.
What they have falls short of a defense pact. The "Treaty of Good-Neighborliness" contains language that the countries shall immediately discuss military options when under attack, but an agreement to talk is not an agreement to join a war.
This is what article 9 says: "When a situation arises in which one of the contracting parties deems that peace is being threatened and undermined or its security interests are involved or when it is confronted with the threat of aggression, the contracting parties shall immediately hold contacts and consultations in order to eliminate such threats."
Russia desperately needs allies. Russia wants China to be their unconditional ally. Unfortunately for Putin, and fortunately for the rest of us, China cares primarily about China.
Reading that thread it sounds like it was a Russian ship that was sold to China last month (perhaps as a pretext to mask this) so ownership is unclear.
I strongly doubt that this is an official military act of the Chinese government. It will most likely turn out that this is not an official military act of any government as the intent was to do this in secret.
Just because the intent was to be secret does not negate an official act of any country. To assume that any military does nothing in secret is naivety at its finest.
So if Trump is against China, and China aligns with Russia, will Trump then support Ukraine? Interesting (and choppy) times ahead.
Even if China doesn't explicitly align with Russia, I believe there are strategic reasons why the US would want a favourable outcome for Ukraine. I outlined a few points in a post a couple of weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42059787
I'm no international relations hawk though, so I'm keen to hear opposing viewpoints.
I used to support Ukraine winning the war at any cost (them losing and that result being recognized implies that warmongering is acceptable). However, that war is now in its third year with no end in sight.
Our (the west's) response to warmongering has been to trickle just enough resources and monies to keep Ukraine from losing but not so much that they win. The "donated" resources of course need to be replenished, the military industrial complex is quite literally making a killing.
At this point the question of declaring a firm stand against warmongering is lost. It's three years and going, warmongering as it turns out is fine. I hate that. My tax dollars are going towards endlessly and needlessly extending human suffering for the benefit of the military industrial complex. I hate that.
So I say, enough of this bullshit. Unless we suddenly send in so much support that Ukraine decisively wins very quickly, I don't want to see a single cent more of my tax dollars going towards this. My taxes are not blood money and the military industrial complex can go fuck themselves.
>instead the donations was more like getting rid of older stockpiles, and for some systems moving the modernization schedule up.
That is precisely the benefitting of the military industrial complex that I am fed up with.
>"its pointless to try and keep helping against the Russians, people have suffered from them for so long anyway"
That is not what I'm angry about. I am angry that this war is dragging on far longer than there is any reasonable reason to be. If we hadn't trickled in support Ukraine would have lost already, if we had placed our full weight behind Ukraine they would have won already; either way the war would have ended long ago.
With the question of warmongering settled at this point (it's okay to warmonger, whether any of us like it or not), the only thing I care about is people not dying. I sincerely don't care how the war ends anymore, all I care about at this point is that it stops ASAP, that people stop dying.
>if anyone should get to decide how long it is worth it to fight for their country, it should be them.
If they want to continue fighting that's totally within their right, but I as an American taxpayer am not obliged to foot their bill much less in the manner we've been doing it.
> if anyone should get to decide how long it is worth it to fight for their country, it should be them.
Looks like the popular sentiment over there is shifting towards a negotiated peace with territorial concessions. https://www.newsweek.com/ukrainians-changing-their-minds-war...
I think you're not understanding the whole argument: We're not helping Ukraine defend themselves, we're not containing the "imperialistic expansionist nuclear-armed empire". If we were then this war would have ended long ago and we wouldn't be having this conversation and Trump probably wouldn't have been elected.
No, I am angry because our response has been halfassed and lukewarm. We are keeping the war going with no end in sight, my tax dollars are being used explicitly to extend human suffering rather than end it. Sincerely fuck that noise. Either we go all in or do nothing at all, the current timeline is the worst one we could have possibly chosen.
>on the cheap
Human lives are not "cheap". Sincerely what the fuck, my dude.
I would be ashamed if my tax dollars were funding what is happening to Gaza.
> them losing and that result being recognized implies that warmongering is acceptable
You do realise that the US has more or less constently been at war for the past fifty years. "The west" - whatever that means - can't take a stand against warmongering when they are themselves warmongering all the time. War and the threat of force is part of diplomacy like it or not.
Support to Ukraine is a part of global geo-strategical calculus of which taking a stand against tyranny and defending the sanctity of borders is but a minor part of.
You seem to be worried because of _just enough_ of part of somehow your money is given to Ukraine. Come on. They are fighting for all of us. And all we need to do is to give support. And you are getting tired. I am also disappointed that the west have not acted as a single front. In EU it seems we cannot even put puppets like Viktor Orbán in control. Yes, whole west needs to step up. Russia doesn't listen anything else than force. Period.
I agree with both of you, but also want to point out that it's easier to make these criticisms in retrospect.
I think the West was making the best calculus it could as the situation developed. Sure, you can say we should have known Putin was bluffing about redlines. But the downside of all out war is high enough that, when multiplied by the probability, you still get a bad number. I think it's reasonable that Western governments played it cautiously and hoped for a different resolution (like a successful internal coup).
But yes, now we are where we are and it sucks for Ukraine.
I agree with what you have said here, but I don't know if the US is in a position to turn the war around in 2024 without a huge escalation. It remains to be seen if there is any possible way to do that without "boots on the ground" (formally starting WW III) or the use of nuclear weapons (again, formally starting WW III).
There were plenty of options to pressure Ukraine into preventing Russia from having a causus belli in early 2022 (too bad the Biden admin didn't do any of those), but those are gone now and Russia currently controls much of the territory they had as military objectives.
I'm not sure Ukraine wins a war of attrition in any meaningful way. Russia is also shockingly good at wars of attrition, and the entire Russian economy has been built around war with the West. Ukraine is a small state in comparison, and they are running out of men, money, and munitions so fast that even tipping the scales by 10x will sink Ukraine before Russia retreats from the territory they now own. In 2022, the goal would be to make it costly to acquire territory so ideas about attrition would have worked a lot better, but it's 2024 and Russia has already grabbed the land. Someone needs to go take it back.
Here's a memo for you on Russia's causus belli. You can claim that they didn't have a legitimate one (I don't think they did), but they had one that got them enough local and international support to work in both 2014 and 2022: https://www.ponarseurasia.org/vladimir-putins-casus-belli-fo...
> if there is any possible way to do that without "boots on the ground"
Of course there is but the Western allies are slow to arm Ukraine because they fear the Russian nuclear retaliation.
To recap, Ukraine received very few , around a hundred ATACMS missiles with severe restrictions on targets. They got less than two dozen F-16 jets. This is just nothing compared what the US might be able to send if they wanted to, they have over 300 Falcons at Davis-Monthan AFB (aka Boneyard) to begin with. There are near four thousand ATACMS missiles manufactured so far. And so on, with tanks etc.
If the "tap" were to open full stream instead of dripping, the war would be over very fast. The question is, which end would we get.
Trump is pro Trump-looking-strong, and that's about it. Interesting times ahead for sure, but trying to predict Trump's future positions is a mug's game. I suspect regarding Ukraine, someone will give him a plan that they tell him is fair ($10 says Russia keeps Crimea but virtually nowhere else and Ukraine agrees not to join NATO), and he'll manage to get both sides to sign it by threatening them.
I will be absolutely flabbergasted if he manages that deal. I think Ukraine will have to give up significantly more than Crimea unfortunately:-/
Perhaps. His key leverage here is that he’s chaotic, a lunatic, and will be the CiC, and who the fuck knows what he’ll do if he doesn’t get his way? Enforce a no-fly zone? Flood the country with weaponary? Abandon Ukraine for Russian oil? Leave NATO? Provide explicit nuclear umbrella to the Poles and tell them to have at the erbfeind if they want to?
About the only thing you can rely on is that he’ll do whatever he and his equally loony and chaotic advisors think will make him look good in the short term, based on feels, backed by the might of the American military.
Given all that, is Putin really going to defy him when presented with a deal that Putin has any chance at of spinning as a win at home? Putin's singular leverage is threatening nuclear war, but that only works if you can convince your opponent you're more unhinged than they are, and Putin loses that particular metric to Trump every time.
The whole Trump/Russia conspiracy theory was all fake anyway - the Steele dossier which is the basis of the whole thing was fabricated and is unsourced. I expect him to be relatively hawkish on Ukraine because losing in Ukraine makes the US look weak, although Ukraine is currently losing the war relatively badly so I expect some territory to be ceded to Russia.
This. The amount of downvoting on these comments is proof of the amount of influence propaganda can have on the population. A large number of people here appear to still be convinced that Trump and Russia are working together.
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This line of reasoning keeps popping up and something about it bothers me - why go to war when you can get what you want in other, cheaper ways? It seems likely the correlation is real but so far no one has adduced any reasons to assume the causation actually goes the way they assume.
Why do you think Russia wants territory? Why did they suddenly develop an appetite for territory in 2014?
Whoever was POTUS played no role in the timing of 2014. Putin invaded Donbas in 2014 in response to a revolution in Ukraine that ousted the unpopular Russia-aligned Yanukovych. Not because Obama was POTUS or because Trump wasn't POTUS.
> Shouldn't he have done it when he had a stooge in the white house?
If you think said stooge is likely to get reelected (which, except for COVID coming out of the blue, was highly likely) and that stooge is already making noise about isolationism, why interrupt?
2022 looks a lot like an "oh shit, plan B" scenario.
> Okay, and why did Putin wait until 2022 to (re)invade Ukraine
Because that's when he had intelligence leading him to believe the Ukrainian regime would crumble quickly or capitulate in the face of a large-scale invasion, and possibly also the NATO would fail to unite and respond, in part due to the success of Russian influence operations, which were not only directed at the US.
Conversely, why not invade to destabilize the incumbency of the non-stooge so that the stooge wins re-election and then use the stooge to negotiate a favorable frozen conflict? Or why even attribute it to POTUS at all? Why not attribute it to the fact that Ukraine's military power was growing due to the Western training that they were receiving over the previous 10 years, and Putin was effectively on a clock to invade? Eastern European conflicts have never revolved around who is POTUS.
Trump didn’t do anything with regards to China the first time around. I think there’s reason to doubt he is opposed to China in any significant way.
In his first administration he engaged directly with North Korea which has been widely regarded as a Chinese puppet state. The last thing China wants, in my opinion, is a united and free Korea.
Considering a significant bunch of Korean companies have production facilities in China, I'd say the relationship is more amiable than say the Japan-China one. Both were aligned in protesting the release of Fukushima water into the ocean for example.
He engaged with North Korea almost as an admirer and their leadership is close to China / Russia.
I'm not sure that means much as far as China goes....
He did impose tariffs on imports from China.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93United_States_tr...
China–United States trade war
An economic conflict between China and the United States has been ongoing since January 2018, when U.S. President Donald Trump began setting tariffs and other trade barriers on China with the goal of forcing it to make changes to what the U.S. says are longstanding unfair trade practices and intellectual property theft.
Let's not forget pulling out of the TPP, which likely empowered China.
https://www.cato.org/blog/5-years-later-united-states-still-...
By late 2019, the United States had imposed approximately US$350 billion in tariffs on Chinese imports, while China had imposed approximately US$100 billion on US exports.
Then the Biden admin happened.
The Joe Biden administration kept the tariffs in place and added additional levies on Chinese goods such as electric vehicles and solar panels. In 2024, the Trump presidential campaign proposed a 60 percent tariff on Chinese goods.
It will be interesting to see what happens. 60% all at once would be too disruptive, I think.
Why did they leave AIS on?
Having AIS on is mandatory. I'm sure turning it off would raise even higher warning flags than just leaving it on while doing your shady stuff.
Regardless, there are satellites covering the area, so you wouldn't get rid of being tracked anyways, would just be a bit slower.
Having AIS on is mandatory, but in practice a lot of ships turn it off regardless. From shadow oil fleets laundering sanctioned oil to fishermen, fake or disabled AIS systems are hardly an exception.
I don't think Russia is trying to hide their sabotage, though. Even with AIS disabled, there's no way European intelligence agencies didn't know what ships were floating above these cables at the time they went down.
This was a warning, not a secret operation.
Having AIS on is mandatory, and in many places taken quite seriously. Last night we sailed from Fuerteventura to Gran Canaria. There was a cargo ship with broken AIS in the area, and the VTS broadcasted their position over VHF every half hour (with DSC all ships alarms and everything)
Every recreational sailor knows that AIS is "mandatory." It's completely routine to see commercial ships running without it.
No I meant what I said. I've never seen a like supertanker without AIS but I've seen smaller cargo ships, ferries, and specifically in northern europe energy company tenders running without it.
Yes. I spent a pandemic summer sailing the north sea, denmark, sweden with a friend. We sailed much less in the baltic and I admittedly kind of mix the north & baltic in my memory but they are very similar regulatory environments re boats so it would surprise me if it was common in one but not the other.
recent statistic : Global Fishing Watch’s study published in Science Advances on November 2, 2022, revealed that:
Over 55,000 suspected intentional disabling events of AIS signals were identified between 2017 and 2019, obscuring nearly 5 million hours of fishing vessel activity. This phenomenon accounts for up to 6% of global fishing vessel activity.
Time to start sailing the south china sea.
https://news.usni.org/category/fleet-tracker
The US has two carrier groups there now, and has maintained a presence there for the last few years:
https://news.usni.org/2017/05/29/brief-history-us-freedom-na...
Coincidentally (or not) a couple lines were down a few hours ago in this south china sea degrading connectivity
So what would China's motivation be here?
China likely has nothing to do with this. It is unlikely they have any participation or even knowledge of this. Twice now some Russians in a China flagged ship caused trouble, and the China-flagging seems very intentional.
Russia is desperately trying to make the China-Russia thing a reality, and is probably trying to drag them in against their great resistance. China has zero credible reason to be dragged into Russia's nonsense, and a billion reasons why they want nothing to do with it.
The ideal outcome of this is that China realizes that Russia is outright trying to drag them into conflict, and that they repudiate that country entirely.
China has already been involved quietly, funneling weapons and intel to the Russians, essentially playing the opposite role to the US. Make no mistake - this war has a component of the US and China probing each others' capabilities.
The Russians could have done this with a fishing trawler (they cut cables accidentally all the time), so like you I doubt we can infer some nefarious Chinese plot from the flag on the vessel.
I'd say another reasonable view is that China is happy to put morality aside and make money off weapons sales so long as they can get away with it.
Might be just a crew paid off by Russians to do it.
In my country saboteurs largely weren't Russian - it's easier to pay off a local than have ano5 Russian cross the border, when his predecessor gets caught.
China has a lot of interest in the war not ending one way or the other. Their peer competitors are spending resources on it and a potentially problematic regional competitor is becoming more irrelevant the longer it runs.
In the superpower listings they're Number 2 with a bullet.
Finding out how far they can go without consequences / test the will of another nation to do something?
Article indicates this isn’t the first time.
Helping Russia
So what's the strategic importance of this move? inb4 "they're just acting like hoodlums to show off their strength".
Keeping Europe on edge and cowed, so that they spend less time and effort on Ukraine. This allows Russia to capture more of the historic Russian Empire in the east, which makes them more powerful and embarrasses the Western countries, pushing more unaligned countries into BRICS.
The endgame here is to build a new world order with Russia and China calling the shots (actually, China calling the shots, but we're not supposed to say that yet).
Yes, and that's half the problem. The only ones taking this seriously are the Latvians, Estonians, and Lithuanians (although the Finns and Poles finally woke up to it last year - also why Poland upped its military spending to 5%). The Estonian military reports are particularly enlightening, and Timothy Snyder offers background into the why.
Dude, Chinese state TV still calls Russia a "gas station with nukes." Of course they make money off of it and uphold their agreements but so far China has avoided any direct involvement with Russia's bs.
Also to the point, Burkina Faso with nukes.
"Chinese-flagged" does not equal "Chinese operated"
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So, when do we know it's not just another operation Northwoods?
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How much did Putin pay Xi Jinping for it?
They'll obviously point the finger at another country
Completely aside from the cable discussion, I'm glad this was on bsky. I could finally follow the comments in the link again. I hope this trend continues.
BlueSky has attained critical mass and it is the next generation of microblogging. We’re witnessing the long awaited dethroning of twitter and it will end up ceding the space like Reddit did.
Not sure if you're being serious, but Reddit gets FAR more traffic than Twitter. Twitter is #43 out of all the sites on the internet in terms of traffic. Reddit is #10. Bluesky is not even on the map yet.
Until users get disenchanted with it and move to the next thing....
I never got disenchanted with Twitter. It got boring. If it had stayed the same I’d still be on there complaining about it.
That would be true if Twitter hadn't changed, but it really has. More bots, more commercial accounts (or nakedly commercial accounts) and far fewer people getting into deep discussions of Nix and Haskell with dumb jokes.
… which is the way it should be. Users vote with their fingers and eyeballs.
That’s the whole point. These next gen protocols make it easy enough to move on to the next thing.
It doesn't have a polished export UI yet but it is absolutely possible: https://github.com/bluesky-social/pds/blob/main/ACCOUNT_MIGR...
Actually that bit I care less about.
Yeah dude. There will be a next thing.
“Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves.
Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”
- Bruce Lee
What happened to Reddit? AFAIK, they're bigger than ever now.
Astroturfing and moderator controlled subreddits have ruined Reddit for me. /r/worldnews is one example of the latter.
Someone analysed a popular post and found that 19 of the top 20 comments were bots.
The Dead Internet theory is all too true.
Reddit's become a propaganda factory, and it's disturbing. Heavily astroturfed subs are creating an echo chamber effect that's clearly damaging users' mental health. The platform's lax security makes it an easy mark for foreign misinformation campaigns. You can still sign up without even an email address!
In any of the larger subreddits, the posts are heavily repost bots and the top comments stolen from the last time it was posted.
It's also astroturfed to death, including moderation.
I think some of the community will also move to substack
As an outsider, I've always associated Bluesky/Twitter with "volitile but potentially cutting-edge reporting" and followed it but with a grain of salt.
When I see an article on Substack I always assume the worst. The signal-to-noise ratio is lower on Medium and Substack than any other social platform I browse, which is a tragic indictment of where long-form blogging has gone.
As with all social media, it's about who you follow. I've found it particularly attractive for international reporting, albeit typically with some clear bent or polemic.
I mean, it's still a very small niche website of again, mostly tech related westerners. Twitter is much more diverse
> very small niche website of again, mostly tech related westerners
That's what they want. A social club with an overton window they like.
It's designed for mass userbase so it can feel like a big party that "everybody" is at. But once "everybody" includes their parents then the party is over.
Diverse is probably a stretch.
More like an echo chamber for the choir preachers.
No it is just a lot more diverse. For example there's a big presence on twitter of Arab politics/politicians or for french rap, or even local Quebec politics. On bluesky it's mostly white dudes talking about tech or about twitter
Nope. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It still seems to require JavaScript be enabled to render anything.
Here's an alternative frontend you can use that doesn't require javascript: https://blueviewer.pages.dev/view?actor=auonsson.bsky.social...
I read somewhere that the captain is Russian. What a surprise.
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The ship is owned and operated by russians.
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China will do more and more of this as the USA withdraws from policing the world.
China didn't do it and the USA hasn't withdrawn from anything.
That would be the Chinese in Chinese ship.
It wasn't a Chinese ship. It was flagged in China, which is like buying a .US domain name when you don't live in the US. It's simple to do. The captain is Russian and the company who owns/operates the ship is headed by a Russian CEO. The crew was not Chinese either.
I think it's time for a special navy operation which captures a Russian or Chinese cargo ship every time a cable gets damaged. The ships and their cargo could be then sold to the highest bidder.
It that really a precedent we would want to set? It sounds like it would be bad for global trade that state actors could arbitrarily seize privately owned property.
Wrong time getting cuastic (except if you are supporting China and Russia in their bully and troublemaker sabotaging efforts).
Am I hearing this right? You're volunteering to be on the front lines?
If it comes to a war I'm going to be on the front lines anyway, because I happen to live in a country next to Russia. Capturing a cargo ship guilty of sabotage wouldn't make much of a difference in whether a war comes or not.
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... And profits are given to Ukraine.
Ahem... Cui prodest/cui bono?
What kind of interest Chinese could have to damage such cables? IMVHO ZERO. Also I doubt Russians have interests to do so.
Who could be interested?
- some private company for makes and insurance/the public pay to fix something who need money from the owner for other reasons (like I break on purpose my car to get it repaired for free or at least less money than what it would costing me avoiding the self-sabotage);
- some countries wanting war at all costs trying to create a casus belli to justify the push toward WWIII
- some countries experimenting the resilience of their infra
I fails to see any other potentially interested party.
So Two Minutes Of Hate towards Russia is over in this aspect? Very Orwellish.
What are you even talking about? Are you suggesting that "the West" has a too negative public opinion of Russia or China?
I would argue that interactions/treatment specifically toward Russia, especially by European nations in the last 20 years, was actually too positive and naive-- specifically because unlike Europe, Russia definitely did not leave its imperialistic ambitions behind, and treating/trading with it as a friendly somewhat flawed democracy during those years might have done more harm than good in hindsight.
I'm curious how you think about this?
Just yesterday on the front page there was a topic largely consisting of accusations of Russia breaking these cables. Now I see a sudden switch of the "criminal" and a possible start of a new 2-minute of Hate. It's very Orwellish indeed.
People are speculating about whether this was intentional, and, if so, who is to blame.
How is that "Orwellian"?
Russia has quite the recent history of poisoning civilians both native and foreign (do you dispute that?). Those acts are already a significant step above simple sabotage, so why would it be Orwellian to consider them a possible perpetrator?
In my view, common current western view of Russia is everything but:
Orwellian would be a strong, emotional public expressions of hate (with frequently switching target).
Current western view (can only really talk about central Europe) is more of a muted mix of disappointment, sadness and disgust about what Russia did/does in the Ukraine...
Did you even read the thread? It was captained by a Russian, and CN is a Russian ally.
The Kremlin may very well be behind this.
Wow
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It could be false flag operation to create pretext for NATO/EU to block shipping to Russian ports in Baltic Sea.
Similar to Nordstream destruction in 2022 it could have been either Ukrainians or CIA/NSA. This could be last attempt by current US administration elements to create leverage for the Ukraine before negotiations start.
what possible reason would nato need to blockade russian ports that doesnt already exist?
Blockade is legal act of war. RU at war with UKR, not NATO, and vice versa. Hence NATO would need casus belli of RU attacking NATO or NATO owned infra to declare blockade (read: declare war on RU).
Russia isn't at war with Ukraine, it's a special military operation. Declaring a little exclusion zone outside all their ports for live-fire naval exercises isn't an act of war either. It'll be temporary, they'll be over by 2028, honest.
RU's permenant representative notified UN on day of "special military operation" that actions were in accordance with art51 (UN Doc. S/2022/154), i.e. regardless of however media is labelling war at propaganda level, RU specificly using art51 for justification.
Russia is already assassinating and sabotaging in NATO countries, which are legal acts of war too.
Why is a state killing someone located on foreign lands for political reasons not defined as an act of war?
think of being kura-murza or yashin, both in jail for being political dissidents, only to find our you are being exchanged evil people you are fighting against.
After the Nordstream pipeline attacked and destroyed, its reasonable to expect shortened lifetimes for undersea cables and sattelites.
I think Nordstream is more of a special case. It was clandestine, but definitely not terrorism. It was an attack on enemy infrastructure in pursuit of an actual, real-life shooting war. One can argue that it was a bad (or good) idea, or that it was/wasn't effetive, or even that its externalities were beneficial in the long term, etc...
But it's not really in the same category as casually cutting internet lines to your peacetime competitors out of pique or whatever.
Nordstream is also special because its destruction was not aligned with Russia interests. It limited Europe capacity to import Russian gaz lifting one of the reason which might have made the EU reluctent to fully support Ukraine (and causing a major economic crisis in Europe as a side effect).
Between this and the coyness of most European countries governments at the time to comment on investigation, it's not too far fetch to think that Ukraine might be involved.
Wasn't the nordstream incident mostly elucidated ?
I believe they are only wondering about details now and trying to hear the guys.
https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/nord-stream-pipeline-explos...
https://www.intelligenceonline.com/government-intelligence/2...
https://www.france24.com/fr/europe/20240814-sabotage-de-nord...
The sabotage happened after a simple political decision had been made to turn it off (more accurately to "suspend its certification", as it had yet to actually enter service). So there was never any "need" for sabotage. In any case the sabotage as such had no effect on gas imports.
Who did benefit most from the north stream sabotage?
At the end of the day -- nobody of course, as the whole idea that the sabotage could bring any significant strategic benefit (even in terms of the "psychological" front) was pretty much braindead from the start. Meanwhile all it seems to have brought to the table was added instability, more paranoid thinking all around (in addition to the quite substantial methane release).
But it's definitely easy to see why (at least some of) the Ukrainians thought their side could gain something from of it; or they may not have been thinking in terms of any specific strategic advantage, but rather simply spite.
Either way -- the decision was made, and the job was done.
Pointing that Ukraine benefited most from the sabotage is not a conspiracy theory. It would be if there was another significantly more likely explanation but there isn’t.
Russian involvement is a bit far fetched to me. It severely limited their ability to export at a good price when gaz sell is how they finance the war in the first place, and removed their main pressure point on Europe therefore making the war considerably harder to win.
A third party would be more likely (there is a long list: could be the USA, a European country which wants the block to align strongly with the USA, or another power benefiting).
Undersea satellites? You know, like after a launch failure.
It's not a launch failure It's just an underwater satellite. :)
Marinesat?
> Undersea satellites?
Yes. Saltellites.
Unless it's on Europa, then it's an extremely successful launch.
it sounds like you've probably never seen this - tanker Minerva Julie (belonging to Putin's friends) traveling through the Baltic Sea suddenly decided to hang around for a week right at the same place where couple weeks later Nord Stream exploded:
https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2023/03/16/23/68797949-11868975...
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/14/world/europe/nord-stream-...
I think it's pretty clear that the NordStream explosion was a joint US-Russia-Ukraine operation.
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Yes, of course Putin decided to sabotage the largest infrastructure investment in his country's history, that he worked for a decade to get built.
It's probable the US and possibly Norway did it under cover of BALTOPS 22.
https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/how-america-took-out-the...
Snopes only offers FUD but not a single contradiction or refutation of any of Sy Hersh's reporting or claims other than it boils down to "it relies on a single source". Sometimes, in secret operations, that's the reality. There exist genuine anonymous sources who cannot be revealed themselves. Part of the principle of benefit-of-the-doubt is trusting that Sy Hersh isn't merely looking for a quick payday to sellout his journalistic integrity for a few dollars and that he isn't an easily-fooled novice when it comes to doing due-diligence on sources and facts. It's mostly a disrespectful hit-piece lacking in evidence. With all likelihood, like the identity of Deep Throat, the truth will come out once the source retires and write a book about it.
https://www.snopes.com/news/2023/02/10/hersh-nord-stream-sab...
> Putin sabotaged the 3 centuries of Russia’s progress.
What a farcical depiction of the world. There is more to Russia than Putin's opposition to the west.
They have done this twice before. Russia weaponizes its energy. That has been the pattern.
Russia Georgia Energy Crisis (2006)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Russia%E2%80%93Georgia_...
Turkmenistan (2009)
https://www.rferl.org/a/Pipeline_Explosion_Stokes_Tensions_B...
Yes, this is why having a prompt satellite launch capability to replace attrition losses is now a strategic imperative. We need to be able to put up new ones in a matter of hours, not months.
Why is that? Undersea cables makes way more sense - the issue is we have maritime law that allows any nation state to freely roam over important cables. During wartimes this is a complete different story - ships won't be allowed near the lines, and if they do get close they will be destoryed without prior warning. No more anchoring "accidents".
This assumes people are very stupid, no? Like, as if they wouldn't know what was happening and just had to let it happen?
I realize US politics may suggest otherwise but I can't imagine the military is just gonna stand by and entertain such a farce..
It isn't either/or. Satellites and undersea cables serve different use cases. Cables are great for high bandwidth communications between fixed points but they aren't very useful to mobile military forces and they can't be used for anything beyond communications. We don't have enough ships and patrol aircraft to realistically defend undersea cables outside the littorals.
Satellites can serve multiple purposes including communications, navigation, overhead imagery, signals intelligence, weather, etc. They are also vulnerable, but it's possible to launch replacements faster than repairing damaged cables.
Europe is not at war with another nuclear power, no. Ukraine is at war and Europe is giving support to Ukraine as that's aligned with its interest. This support is neither unconditional nor total and doesn't include going to war with Russia.
No we're not. Nobody in the EU has transitioned to a wartime economy. We are helping out a strategic ally. If Ukraine falls tomorrow an cedes add territory to Russia, the EU is not going to continue fighting, because the war will be over.
That of course assumes that Putin stops at Ukraine. The point is that this isn't our war.
Looks like you can get between Costa Rica and El Salvador without crossing any cables.
I think you'll find the ATACMS missile guided itself, based on inertial navigation and satellite positioning data. If your argument is that the United States guided the missile because the US provides GPS, that's a pretty flimsy argument.
Why do folks like your self make such foolish analogies? If the US had invaded Mexico like Russia invaded Ukraine then yes, it would be completely fine for Mexico to fire missiles into the US.
Imagine the absurdity of if China put missiles on the Mexican border ...
Imagine the US engaging in an invasion of Mexico as equally stupid and unprovoked as Putin's invasion of Ukraine. Then not only would Mexico have a perfect right to seek whatever help it needed to resist the aggression directed at it, we would -- unless we were damned fools -- fully expect Mexico to seek and obtain that help.
As far as we know Ukraine both put them there and guided the missiles. Please provide proof otherwise.
If someone starts blowing up satellites it’s pretty much game over for space based communications.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome
GEO is safe for now. But... https://spacenews.com/intelsat-33e-loses-power-in-geostation...
The most likely explanation for the unexplained disassembly is that Boeing made it. Second, most likely, is a collision with a hunk of something invisible.
The latency on GEO orbits exclude them from many use cases.
GEO is very cramped. It's just a circle, not a sphere.
Edit: I guess I was assuming geostationary. There's a whole sphere of geosynchronous orbits to play with.
Edit2: I was right the first time, GEO (geosynchronous equatoral orbit) / GSO (geosynchronous orbit), apparently. Now my head hurts.
LEO is where starlink is stationed. Really, there is no good scenario where LEO is unusable due to some dumb reason, like blowing up junk in space. I'm not sure our "world leaders" appreciate this.
They shoot down their own redundant satellites, and it was in 2007 in 2010.
Really? Thats wild. How is this not seen as a military provocation?
That "quickly" is on the order of years (as opposed to decades, centuries, etc). If the Starlink constellation goes boom, you can't start launching new ones for several years -- and then the build-up would take years, from there.
Space is too big, and the field of even the world's strongest electromagnets are too small for this to be practical. And even if it did work, you'd only collect ferromagnetic material.
A large enough electromagnet could actually increase effective drag in conductive materials, which may help. All the non-conductive materials would still be there, and paint chips can be brutal at orbital speeds.
You can have the ability to launch 100 satellites in 10 days, but that doesn't really help if you don't have 100 satellites
I think it'd be more apropos to compare them to fighter jets/tanks vs bullets
"we" are not doing anything AFAICT. Various privately owned corporations might be, and that's very different.
Yes, I know the undersea cables are privately owned too.
Not clear how the world's richest man sees this situation. He certainly appeared to feel free to make his own decisions in Ukraine.
weren't those cut exactly because they are the starlink backbone when over Ukraine?
> After the Nordstream pipeline attacked and destroyed
This happend a very, very long time ago. Destroing things years after the fact is not logical and is not longer a defensive response. Using this as justification is just trying to escalate.
> its reasonable to expect shortened lifetimes for undersea cables and sattelites
Why is this reasonable? It seems like a pointless attack that achieves little other than reminding the world that horrible, oppessive governments are dangerous to everyone. Oppression is incredibly expensive for humanity, and only benefits the few that are the oppressors.
> This happend a very, very long time ago.
It happened on 26. September 2022. That is not a long time ago.
> It seems like a pointless attack that achieves little other than reminding the world that horrible, oppessive governments are dangerous to everyone
It sends a message, as sabotaging communications is frequently done before an attack. Also it damages morale and is a show of power.
"very, very long time ago", it was two years ago.
Yeah and this time they won't let them get away. According to Finnish Minister of Defence: "The authorities in the Baltic Sea region have learned from the mistakes of the Baltic Connector investigation and are prepared, if necessary, to stop a ship in the Baltic Sea if it is suspected of being involved in damaging communications cables."[1]
And it looks like according to marinetraffic.com that the Yi Peng 3 is indeed at full stop surrounded by at least 3 Danish navy vessels.
1. article in Finnish https://www.hs.fi/politiikka/art-2000010845324.html
Boarded according to: https://x.com/visegrad24/status/1859132263746744367
Not confirmed by any mainstream newspaper. The danish forces only confirm, that they are there, but nothing more.
20 hours later they are cited that they cannot board without China's approval. Legally uncharted grounds whether they could or could not. Looks they take the cautious side for the time being.
worth noting that twitter account is not the most trustworthy or independent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visegr%C3%A1d_24#Content details a number of cases.
So according to the Bluesky thread, the ship was captained by a Russian citizen. One has to wonder whether this was done with the approval of the Chinese government, or whether the ship was just chosen by opportunity (which seems possible given that China is the second most common merchant flag). Or whether implicating China was even an explicit goal.
For an analogy, it seems like a scrappy preteen throwing around his big brother's name, knowing that if he gets into trouble, big brother will intervene...
(i.e. the European countries might be more wary about boarding a Chinese ship compared to a Russian ship, because escalating against China is scarier...).
Indeed. The best way to understand Russia's approach to foreign policy is that it's an extension of its mafia state-derived domestic policy, where there are no true allies and anyone brought into the circle is tainted through compromising actions to ensure they stay loyal to you.
It's not dissimilar to the way criminal gangs will ensure that they have dirt on anyone joining or intentionally implicate others in order to ensure compliance.
I think China stands to gain from escalation of the war so its possible they approved. It makes Russia weaker and more dependant on them, distracts the US from the Pacific, and weakens Europe in many ways.
Similar to both Russia and China gaining from war and disruption in the Middle East.
There are many possibilities here.
Russian captain, how does the ownership history of the ship look? Could be some sanction evading ship that was owned by Russian interests anyhow.
It was a Russian ship until a month ago
Do you have a source for that? According to https://www.vesselfinder.com/vessels/details/9224984 it's been registered as Chinese since 2016.
Doesn't mean its current Russian captain is serving Chinese interests, of course, but at least it seems to be Chinese owned.
China did not want the war in Ukraine, which has created serious problems for them including for Belt and Road. So behing closed doors China must be passed off but Russia is important to them and they can't let them collapse.
Of course Putin knows this hence him somewhat taking the p.
I doubt China will be happy, if Russia staged chinese support. But rumors have it, that the North Korean troop support for the war in Ukraine also came out of the blue for China, so Putin might make a risky gamble here, but I doubt he dares it. If China would seriously drop support for Russia, they would be srewed.
What are some concrete reasons why someone would want to damage these cables? Who benefits?
Assuming it was intentional, just trying the waters. Testing what the response is, who actually responds versus who's willing to sweep the incident under the carpet, how hard any response is and how quickly it happens, how much of the internet infrastructure is affected for how long, etc... etc... that's a lot of useful information as preparation for an actual attack.
This is really interesting how you’ve explained it.
In many professional fights the competitors start matches with light, quick jabs to probe their opponents defense.
This feels just like that now that you put it this way. I never connected those dots though.
I lived in Taiwan for a while and China does this to Taiwan often. Flying planes into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone, sailing warships through the strait. It’s portrayed in (US, TW) media as war preparations, but some locals assume it’s all bark with no bite. How are those Russian actions portrayed in Swedish media?
Not just Russian. Even NATO aircraft were rejected frequently, though not anymore for obvious reasons.
https://youtu.be/Z_EnkvE6LZA
The situation escalated beyond probing, this is tit for tat response for Ukraine getting and launching US tactical missiles. Russia seems to be now aggressively monitoring and raiding the submarine pipes and cables. Blowing up of Nord Stream made Russia go ballistic.
>This feels just like that now that you put it this way. I never connected those dots though.
Boxers learned from the art of war, not the other way around.
"Probing attacks" are a standard doctrine. It's not always a clear signal of intent to increase hostilities because it's also just useful as an intelligence gathering exercise.
That's very similar to how the "accidental" flights over neighbouring territory works as far as I understand. This happens regularly between many countries. Just far enough to get some response, but not enough to get shot down immediately.
Which is the only proper response to unwelcome military aircraft.
> This happens regularly between many countries.
I cannot find any lists (either in English or Swedish) but I remember Russia has been accidentally breaking into Swedish airspace like once a year for as long as I can remember. Submarines also sometimes "accidentally" end up close to Swedish shores.
It'd be interesting to see some total numbers, and compare other countries with how often it happens between Sweden/Russia.
Russia wants to end NATO without going to war with NATO.
NATO's political unity and ability to respond is tested with these attacks. Russia does them one after another gradually escalating. Russia maintains plausible deniability or does so small operations that they can always walk them back.
Eventually, some country invokes Article 4 or 5 consultations. Russia hopes that US, Hungary, or Germany waters down NATO response. The conflict continues, but between individual countries not under NATO. NATOs as a organization may continue, but raison d'être is gone.
Russia and these NATO countries being probed are like the two siblings in the back seat. Mom, he's touching me. Stop touching your brother. Mom, he's holding his finger right next to me. Dad eventually says, don't make me pull this car over and start a global thermonuclear war
> Be careful, Russia invests a lot in disinformation campaigns and spreading (conflicting, but that is part of their doctrine) narratives.
You may also want to be careful (or not):
- all countries engage in these things
- how things are seem like how they seem, but this is very often not the case...and rather than consciousness raising warnings for such situations, it very often does the opposite
As always, I recommend a meta-perspective on geopolitical stories, it is much more fun than being a Normative, poorly constrained imagination actor like the vast majority of people.
These anti disinformation posts are quite peculiar. I'd advise anyone who wants to dig deeper to listen to West Point graduate Mearsheimer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4
It takes one hour to listen. Take notes and verify the facts afterwards. No disinformation there, much less Russian.
Are you actually saying the US has never engaged in propaganda within another country or attempted to influence the outcomes of their elections or influence their populace to rise up against their leaders?
You cannot be serious with that kind of belief
Humorous yet concerning that our governments act like children.
This is strange to me because this is basically forcing drills that better prepare their enemy.
Sound the fire alarm over a birthday cake candle once, and you've got a drill making people get better at evacuating.
Sound the fire alarm over a birthday cake candle several times a week, and people learn the alarm means there's no fire, no need to rush, they've got time to finish that e-mail and grab their coat.
The type of preparations being forced are things the government should be doing regardless as part of their national defense.
Ironically this is what caused the fall of the Soviet Union.
While not directly addressing undersea cable sabotage this is a comprehensive open access article with case studies on 'hybrid warfare' which provides context to these types of actions. 'Shadows of power beneath the threshold: where covert action, organized crime and irregular warfare converge' - https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02684527.2024.2...
When Trump becomes President next year he is expected to demand that Ukraine settle the war with Russia or risk losing US aid and military support. It is why Russia is throwing everything at re-taking Kursk and US is now allowing long range strikes.
If the EU decides to join the US the war is over and Russia will keep the occupied lands. If the EU decides to support Ukraine then because of the devastating sanctions there is a strong chance Russia loses.
So it's in Russia's interest to make life as difficult as possible for Europe over the coming months in order to convince them that ending the war is in their best interest.
> If the EU decides to join the US the war is over and Russia will keep the occupied lands.
As a European, I'd say there is just about 0 chance of the EU unilaterally supporting Russian taken any occupied areas to themselves and Ukraine surrendering. Not only would it signal to Russia that they can take European land without consequences, but public opinion is very much against any sort of cessation of defenses. In my ~30 years I've never seen as strong NATO support from the common man in countries like Sweden and Spain as there is today.
I don't know if EU would be able to match the current support the US gives to Ukraine (maybe it already does? Or maybe it exceeds? I don't know either way) but what I'm sure off is that Europe won't stop trying even if it wouldn't be enough.
> it's about whether European countries can replace the US support enough that Ukraine can reasonably keep defending themselves.
Your economy is nearly 10 times the size of Russia.
If Russia can continue, then you can almost 10 times more easily.
It's not a "can" issue. It's a "are you willing to do more than absolute minimum?" issue.
> Public opinion is against further weapons shipments to Ukraine
The linked article is about the opinion of Germans about shipments of German weapons. When you don't specify that in the context of this thread, which is about Europe, not Germany, people might mistakenly interpret that as data about Europe.
Okay, now let's see polls for Poland, Finland, or UK.
I know there are some countries where support is less than in other places (Germany being one, as you highlighted).
I still stand by my original statement that unilateral decision in EU of stop supporting Ukraine and letting Russia keep the occupied territories.
Unfortunately, many of my German countrymen are either stupid or complacent for not wanting more weapon deliveries, so a striving democracy can defend itself.
"If the EU decides to support Ukraine then because of the devastating sanctions there is a strong chance Russia loses."
How did that not work then yet?
I think he is asking how well the devastating sanctions have been working so far. Which is a retorical question of course, because obviously they haven't harmed Russia all that much. Actually, they are hurting the EU as well because of the risen energy prices.
look, if someone looks like they are losing a war in the beginning, middle and the end act of it, I wouldn’t have much faith that extending it is the best solution to finally win.
I would say because China and North Korea joined the train of gravy, to the point to NK selling food to Russian Army. Maybe India also helped to sustain the Russian economy for a while.
In any case Russia losing its oil refineries one by one is the real deal here.
> So it's in Russia's interest to make life as difficult as possible for Europe over the coming months
Unsurprisingly this week after Macron speech, "French" farmers decided to organize again on groups directed by leaders and block and destroy Spanish cargo trucks at the frontier, without any policemen to be found at place.
Is obvious that somebody is trying again the old trick to confront and divide in the EU. We had seen the same before in Poland, etc.
But a trick overused can became counterproductive. I'm sure that Macron and other in EU can sum deux and deux and understand that surrender is not an option anymore. Is not just Ukraine but also their own political survival what is at stake. If they let this agents roam free and grow, they will lose gradually the power.
Would be an economical win for Europe if the US drew their aid. The amount of money needed to be spent in military aid across Europe would create markets within the region that would in the longer run create good wealth.
Alone from that reason, USA will not pull their aid. USA cannot afford losing Europe as an arms client
It would be so nice to not be dragged into this war by the aggressor. Russia is playing a very stupid game here.
I wonder if anyone thinks this seems likely:
American Secretary of Defense: "Mr. President, the Chinese just destroyed our Naval base in the Philippines, killing hundreds of US servicemen. As part of a plan to annex the country or something."
American president: "Let's not intervene too much."
Well the result of China's 5d chess has been to install a leader in the US that is likely to escalate a trade war with china when with an impending demographic crisis they most need someone to stop the trade war. Sheer genius!
Sure, but I am commenting from a non-military, non-geopolitics, non-strategy related background: It's a stupid game. Stupid in the sense of: I don't like it, I don't want to play it, thus it's stupid.
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That's beside the point.
It is a very clear escalation in US/European involvement. Ukraine were prohibited from using long-range western weapons to attack targets inside Russia up until now.
I'm not saying if it's right or wrong.
But it's a very clear escalation in western 'participation'. Russia have for a long time been saying that such action would be tantamount to a NATO attack, and so everyone involved surely understands that this is an escalation in the NATO-Russia face-off.
A fair point, but described by who?
And was this just a post-hoc justification, or had the western powers declared that they would retaliate if Russia involved other armies?
In any case, surely the 'punishment' should be directed at North Korea?
North Korean soldiers that mysteriously have yet to materialize in a fashion that isn't blatant propaganda.
No, you are wrong.
Russia are at war with Ukraine, so they are bombing them. Ukraine have every right to reply with their own long range weapons too, and that would indeed not be an escalation in the fighting itself.
But, the west clearly prohibited the use of their donated long range weapons in direct attacks on Russia, in order to limit their liability, responsibility, 'participation' or whatever, until now.
Russia have been very clear that such permission would constitute an escalation OF WESTERN 'PARTICIPATION' in the war, and even be tantamount to a direct NATO attack, and so it is at least an escalation.
Whether it is right or wrong is not the point, it is a clear change in the depth of western involvement.
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Public opinion is being manipulated hard, the U.S. just closed down its embassy in Kyiv:
https://www.newsweek.com/russia-ukraine-war-latest-us-shuts-...
The current U.S. administration wants to make the most out of the remaining 60 days. Perhaps they have a little help:
https://www.wired.com/story/inside-the-77th-brigade-britains...
Russia will not stop taking its land in Kursk back because the Americans tell them to do so, this is just Western delusion, and, as I've said before on this forum, a complete misunderstanding coming from the Westerners on how Russia operates.
> devastating sanctions
Devastating for Europe, you mean.
German here. Yes, it seems pretty obvious these sanctions have harmed Russia more than Europe.
Russia: inflation around 8-9%.
EU: inflation around 2%.
As a European, I can say that the sanctions did harm European economies, which is reflected in various political Eu government crises.
It is hard to know how much Russia has been harmed, because both sides probably exaggerate the figures.
I wonder whether "more harm" is the right question. The question should be whether the sanctions have any impact on Russia's war economy, which they do not. If anything, they make Russia more independent and strengthen Russian ties with China and India.
This is all to the detriment of the EU, the only one here who profits is the U.S. by making the EU more dependent.
These consumer side sanctions are idiotic. When a Russian buys a European beer, he spends money which goes from Russia to Europe, and in addition he damages his health.
On the other side, Europe buys billions of dollars of oil and gas from Russia. That money goes in the opposite direction, from Europe to Russia, and is used toward soldier salaries, Iran drones and North Korean mercenaries.
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Neither will Ukraine try to take their territory back as much as sycophants and dictator-appeasers think Ukraine have no agency
It doesn’t even really stop anything right? Communications just have to route around it and use other cables and satellites. It just seems like Russia wants to be annoying.
Destroying the gas pipeline between Estonia and Finland did take it out for like six months. I think it may have had some negative impact on Estonian electricity prices during that time.
Could this disturb crypto operations in any way?
Not really. If the internet works, sending and using crypto works and it doesn’t use much bandwidth.
The ship was sailing from Russia and the captain is Russian. Using a Chinese ship is a good trick from Putin.
As for the core of your question: there is no benefit, it's just his mentality. "The West" supports Ukraine so let's just do some harm, retaliate in some way. Burn some buildings here and there, plants some inflammable materials on airplanes etc. Pointless for you and me, meaningful for that guy.
Does "Chinese ship" really mean anything here? As far as I understand the ship official registration is a very vague concept https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_convenience
Ursus arctos, the scientific name of the brown bear. The name of that ship can't be more Russian LOL
Hard to say. They will claim this is only Flag of convenience as they are caught. However China still has the opportunity to say that this is something for their law enforcement to take care of not international, and then give the captain "a slap on the wrist".
What we don't know is if China knew they were going to try this beforehand or not. Flag of Convenience is common enough that we can't be sure. This could have been planned on the high level from China and we would never know - something conspiracy theorists will run with! If China knew they would probably give the crew a sever punishment, but unofficially it is for getting caught and not doing the act. Most likely though China didn't know before hand.
Look up 'Grey Zone Conflict': Destroying another country's assets is generally an act of war, but obviously this incident falls short of causing a war. That is the 'grey zone', a prominent feature of current international relations and a major focus of the defense of the democratic world and international order, including in the US military.
The international order is often called the 'US-led rules-based interntional order'. Russia, China, and some others dislike the first element, of course. The second element refers to the legal, rules-based structure (rather than power-based anarchy, which led to the centuries or millennia of war before the 'order' was created post-WWII). Aggressive international warfare is outlawed, for example; if France and Germany have a dispute, there is no question of violence - they use a legal structure to resolve it, which wasn't always true!
Grey zone activities accomplish illegal things without reprocussions. And therefore they also serve the goal of undermining the international order by demonstrating its powerlessness in these situations. In some ways, it's like trolling.
Russia uses grey zone tactics heavily - for example, they used them to capture Crimea (which was before the clear act of war, their 2022 invasion). They use them to run destabilizing 'grey zone' campaigns throughout the world, including directly interfering in elections. The tactics suit Russia in particular because they cannot compete miltarily with the democratic world.
China uses them too, for example using their 'coast guard' and 'civilian' 'fishing boats' to attack (up to a point) and intimidate ships from other countries in the South China Sea. If China used their navy, it would possibly be acts of war. A Chinese coast guard ship shooting water cannon at a fishing boat, though illegal in international waters, isn't going to start a war. 'Civilian' 'fishing' boats from China blockading access to a reef won't either.
Edit:
Before you look at Russia and China and other Grey Zone actors as miscreants, understand that it's just the normal behavior of 'revisionist' powers - those who want to change the current rules. The current rules serve the interests of the 'status quo' powers, who get all self-righteous about 'illegal' activities.
In a more common situation on HN, think of IP outsiders, who break the 'rules' made by major IP holders, such as DMCA or those extending copyright for decades or restricting access to scientific knowledge - the IP holders want the status quo and call violations 'theft' and the outsiders 'criminals', etc. If the US wasn't a status quo power, they'd be doing grey zone things.
(That doesn't at all justify Russia and China's goals of stealing land, oppressing people's freedoms, and solving problems through violence.)
> The international order is often called the 'US-led rules-based interntional order'.
There's the actual international law (and the UN) and there's the US-led rules-based international order (ie, what the US wants basically). They're completely at odds - often times the US (and Israel or a couple of other minor countries) vote against or simply flout whatever the rest of the UN wants.
The US is king of Grey zone actions. Random drone strikes, funding insurgency and terror groups, invading countries without international approval, blockading Cuba, etc. - the list is very long.
So when the US complains about Russia doing similar things (often responding to provocation by the US or NATO), the complaints can easily be filed in the "hypocrisy bin".
https://towardfreedom.org/story/archives/americas/the-u-s-ma...
Russia engages in random drone strikes, funding insurgency and terror groups, invading countries without international approval, blockading Ukraine, etc. - the list is very long. Indeed, russia appears to be king of grey zone actions.
So when russia complains about the US doing similar things (often responding to provocation by russia), the complaints can easily be filed in the "hypocrisy bin".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_General_Assembl...
> There's the actual international law (and the UN) and there's the US-led rules-based international order (ie, what the US wants basically).
Those are the same 'order', the same thing. The UN and international law are unquestionable, essential parts of the international order.
> often times the US (and Israel or a couple of other minor countries) vote against or simply flout whatever the rest of the UN wants.
Agreed, as I discussed in the GP: the US and its partners often violate those rules and let themselves off the hook, as status quo powers tend to do. It doesn't excuse it at all, but that's not inconsistent with the rules-based order.
Also, with a veto on UN Security Council decisions, if the US votes against something then it's not law.
> 'US-led rules-based interntional order
You have to look deeper into what kind of government has a problem with an international rule-based order. It is not the democratic countries with trias politica that have a problem with that, but autocratic regimes.
How are you going to ethnically cleanse Uyghurs in a rule based order, or run international crime networks at the level of statehood?
The question is: how are you going to integrate criminal and very powerful clangs in a world that is past the French Revolution? We tried, we failed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partnership_for_Peace
Answer is: you can't, unless the common people take ownership over their own countries. Very difficult.
I am the OP and say: spot on. Also problematic that the Dems do not have the information space to follow their own agenda. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42068340
I went into more detail here about hypocrisy: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42203997
With the far right on the rise, the rules will disappear, because their ideology is "might makes right". That is the mindset of a maffia boss. War and conflict will follow, those who are not powerful enough get trampled.
> The rules are of the status quo powers (matching their political cultures), by the status quo powers, for the status quo powers
That might seem so, and all individuals have some degree of hypocrisy at times, the more a body of multiple countries. Without rules this devolves into warring tribes and fiefdoms, a lesson the societies in the west had learned themselves.
Everyone is invited to be critical and keep your representatives in check. When the people speak loud and clear about what they accept and what not, representatives will have to listen.
I will add that Western elites were handcuffed by those international rules, it went against their interests. So no, it is also a self-restriction. The west certainly did have the power to exploit other countries, but instead self-restricted by abolishing colonies. There are certainly cases of ifs and buts, but the whole idea is that you stand by your values.You mentioned the US making transgressions. That they get this room internally is certainly a problem of society and the state of ethics. Let´s not devolve in relativism, it will make things worse!
Not like the US follows rules it tells others to follow. Hypocrite in charge.
Ok there's all the signalling between states that breaking a cable has. That also works for false flag operations, or true flag operations while making it look like a false flag operation (etc).
But also, cutting these cables doesn't stop communications. There are other land and undersea routes, and maybe terrestrial radio/satellite routes as well. You might damage these cables so that communications travel other routes which are more observable (or less observable). Or you might damage these cables so you can modify them elsewhere to enhance observability before they're repaired (or as part of the repair process).
Or it could be a training mission for your elite squad of cable biting sharks.
Lots of potential for intrigue here.
Prof. Stephen Kotkin — an historian who wrote multiple extensive biographies on Stalin — calls the Russian regime a "gangster regime".*
Once you see them as gangsters, it's not difficult to see why they would do this.
*A full link with exact timestamp of Kotkin saying this is [1]. Here he talks about why Merkel kept making oil deals with Putin even though in hindsight this was probably not the best idea. Kotkin argues that, yes, according to econ 101 trade is good for both parties, but not when the opposite party is a gangster. Merkel thought that Putin was thinking like her, but he wasn't.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/live/jJSDdCPpbto?t=4410
It should be noted that Putin was personally an enforcer for St Petersburg's mayor Anatoly Sobchak[1] in the early 1990s, and his "circle of friends" from that time now mans key positions of the entire government. For example, Viktor Zolotov[2], Sobchak's bodyguard and Putin's judo partner, is now in charge of National Guard, despite not having qualifications for the job.
Russia is literally run buy thugs who ran protection rackets not so long ago. So there's much more to this than just a fitting figure of speech. Someone from the worst parts of LA would be better equipped to understand and deal with such people than those who spent their teens and early adulthood playing Model UN at a foreign relations club.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatoly_Sobchak
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Zolotov
One theme of cyberpunk is that Russia remains a gangster regime in the future. William Gibson's "Kombinat".
This is basically Russian retaliation for US providing Ukraine with ATACMS and first Ukrainian attack using ATACMS.
The "retaliation" against US is to disrupt communications between.. Finland and Germany?
Applying the same logic, Ukraine should retaliate against Russia for bombing their hospitals with an attack on.. Iranian civilian infrastructure? Did I get that right?
Russia's regime pretends to be fighting those entities. It's real enemy is simply independent Ukraine with its currently recognized borders.
This is entirely straighforward. Nothing that requires any struggle to understand.
Newnew shipping signed huge contract with Rosatom.
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Tit-for-tat response to the NS2 bombing.
Assuming it bears out that the Russian state is the perpetrator.
The CCP thanks the expendable crew for their sacrifice. May they continue to suck the resources of their new host countries for many years to come.
Given that ships often cut undersea internet cables and China has the biggest export economy, doesn't it make sense that the most likely country to accidentally cut an internet cable would be a Chinese trade ship?
On average, it seems like undersea internet cables break 200+ times per year. For example, Vietnam's internet cables break on average 10 times per year.
What would be the motivation for a Chinese trade ship to deliberately cut an internet cable? It has next to no impact on internet communication and only serves to annoy a small amount of people for a short period of time. In addition, China and Europe are trying to have a better relationship in general so it doesn't make sense for the Chinese government to order this.
I could believe that cutting one cable was an accident. But two, by the same ship, 60 miles apart?
Absolutely no way this wasn't intentional.
The question then becomes why did they do it in a way where they would be caught
>What would be the motivation for a Chinese trade ship to deliberately cut an internet cable?
Money. Russia is reportedly bribing people into doing sabotage in western nations.
There's also reports that Yi Peng 3 is captained by a Russian national, which would also be another reason for a Chinese trade ship to conduct sabotage operations beneficial to Russia.
> What would be the motivation for a Chinese trade ship to deliberately cut an internet cable?
The most charitable reason is that they don't give a fluck. Same reason why their rocket boosters just fall wherever they fall, population center or not
Edit: https://x.com/Tendar/status/1859147985424196010
> The skipper of the Chinese ship is a Russian national and the route leads from Ust-Luga (Russia) to Port Said (Egypt).
Is there any data on which country's ships cut the most internet cables?
I think we need a total ships sailing for country / cuts.
This would be an interesting project for someone to work on, I wonder if there's a place where all the internet cable outages + reasons are available?
At the Baltic Sea the cables and such break mostly because of one reason only: russia. [0]
[0] https://www.csce.gov/briefings/russias-genocide-in-ukraine/
Are you there then?
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