The problem with Nordstream conspiracies was in fact that you could easily finger anyone as responsible, absolutely including Putin. The benefit to Putin (not "Russia" per se) is that it eliminated the revenue source from gas sales to Europe in the immediate term, and thus made "end the war now" less attractive to his domestic power base (because it wouldn't make them any more money for a few years).

A coup from disaffected underlings unhappy with the status of the Ukraine war is hardly a weird theory. He's fought off one already!

AKA satmarine

https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/us-navy-was-at-...

Putin sabotaged the 3 centuries of Russia’s progress. The pipeline is just a noise here.

>he worked for a decade to get built

that is sweet of you. I just imagine Putin himself welding under water. Not the billions dollars steal by his childhood buddies what typically such Russian megaprojects are.

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...

> maritime law that allows any nation state to freely roam over important cables.

I'd like to see your version of maritime law that doesn't allow freely roaming over important cables. Your country's enemies would gladly drop cables totally encircling you and say "uh uh uh, important cables!" if you tried to leave your perimeter

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.

Inofficially Europe is already at war, whether it wants to or not. Maybe someone needs to inofficially keep a close eye on those cables and take inofficial countermeasures against inofficial sabotage acts.

The exercise left for the reader is to choose two countries that are not adjacent,

and try to plot a path between them without crossing an undersea cable:

https://www.submarinecablemap.com/

We are at war. The United States guided an ATACMS missile into Russian territory yesterday. Imagine the absurdity of if China put missiles on the Mexican border and guided them into missile storage facilities 186 miles inside the border.

Kessler is often overplayed. Kessler trashes a low orbit and you wouldn't want to launch more birds into the trashed orbit. But, loads of com sats live in MEO or GEO, which is far too high for the numbers to work. They're all fine.

You will even see Kessler cited as some sort of barrier to leaving, which is nonsense.

Imagine there's a 1x1m spot where on average once per week, entirely at random and without warning a giant boulder falls from the sky and if you're there you will be crushed under the boulder. Clearly living on that spot is a terrible idea, you'd die. But merely running through it is basically fine, there's a tiny chance the boulder hits you by coincidentally arriving as you do, but we live with risks that big all the time. If you're an American commuter for example that's the sort of risk you shrug off.

Likewise, Kessler isn't a barrier to leaving, humans won't be leaving because there's nowhere to go. The only habitable planet is this one, and we're already here.

Not true. China has taken down 2 US satellites in the last few years.

The military is shifting toward LEO constellations for communications such as SpaceX Starshield. Kessler syndrome isn't a serious concern for those because the orbits decay fairly quickly anyway.

Could they place a giant electromagnet in space to collect debris?

Well obviously you need to have a supply of replacements in stock. From a military perspective, think of satellites as rounds of ammunition that will be expended during a conflict.

At this point it's a distinction without much of a difference. For better or worse, SpaceX has now been fully integrated into the US military-industrial complex. They have huge DoD contracts to build out the Starshield constellation, including the prompt replacement capability. The US government is going to treat attacks on our critical communications infrastructure seriously, regardless of whether the hardware is publicly or privately owned.

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.

What have they posted that was wrong?

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.

Maybe it's because I'm Swedish and we've experienced Russia's "probing defenses" tactic for a very long time (mainly "breaking" into Swedish airspace with airplanes, and discovering submarines at the Swedish shores), but I always thought this was common knowledge, always interesting to learn it isn't for everyone :)

>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.

> but not enough to get shot down

Doesn't always work

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Russian_Sukhoi_Su-24_shoo...

> 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.

Not quite. Be careful, Russia invests a lot in disinformation campaigns and spreading (conflicting, but that is part of their doctrine) narratives. Bothsidisms and False Equivalency are some of the common tools in muddying the information sphere.

NATO and Europe did quite a lot to normalize relations with Russia. Russia was invited and became participant of the NATO program Partnership For Peace [0].

   The program contains 6 areas of cooperation, which aims to build relationships with partners through military-to-military cooperation on training, exercises, disaster planning and response, science and environmental issues, professionalization, policy planning, and relations with civilian government

  - Population will demand political influence.
  
  - Mindset. A criminal thinks in terms of I win, you lose. Might makes right. Complete opposite of what makes up the dna of the free world. 

Notice how on our part, helped via tech oligarchs, there is an incessant bombardment to undermine support for those values. Kremlin troll factories are a thing, but the Chinese are speading up rapidly in the information sphere too. Especially youngsters are targeted.

The war has already begun, but we don´t want to see it. And that is dangerous.

___

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partnership_for_Peace

Except its always Russia instigating. We never sent someone to look at the spire of Saint Basil (the pathetic excuse offered for explaining the presence of GRU officers in Salisbury carrying out chemical warfare), or really struck at their weak points.

Humorous yet concerning that our governments act like children.

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.

If you never go to war with your enemy, your enemy's continued preparations are wasted money and resources (both political and economic), aren't they?

> As a European, I'd say there is just about 0 chance of the EU unilaterally supporting Russian taken any occupied areas to themselves

I agree, but it's not about accepting or saying it's a good idea, it's about whether European countries can replace the US support enough that Ukraine can reasonably keep defending themselves.

They question you're really asking is "why is the war taking so long?"

Because it's a war.

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.

> Russia is playing a very stupid game here.

They are not, if you take the larger context into account - and that is China and their saber rattling not just against Taiwan but also against everyone else in what China thinks is "their" influence sphere such as the Philippines.

Russia's warmongering (not just in Ukraine, but also via Syria, Iran and Yemen!) is breaking apart both the US and EU internally - recent elections have shown that both populations are pretty much fed up with the wars and their consequences, and once enough countries either fall to Putin's 5th column outright or their governments pull a Chamberlain, China can be relatively certain no one will intervene too much when they decide that now is the best time to annex other countries.

I'm very curious, can any European here, or perhaps a German for specificity, tell me whether they believe these sanctions have harmed Russia more than Europe?

Also it would be better if any Russians here could answer a similar question

Neither will Ukraine try to take their territory back as much as sycophants and dictator-appeasers think Ukraine have no agency

Not really. If the internet works, sending and using crypto works and it doesn’t use much bandwidth.

and according this tweet https://x.com/erikkannike/status/1858883945607094541/history

"So - according to Russian federal port records, the Chinese ship suspected of cutting the communications cables in the Baltic Sea was captained by a Russian citizen (one Stechentsev A.E.). Interestingly Yui Peng 3 was only transferred to its current owner in China earlier this month.

The ship is carrying goods/oil from Ust-Luga in Russia, to Port Said in Egypt. Same captain also comandeered URSUS ARCTOS also carrying goods from Ust-Luga to Egypt. Mapped using @SensusQ . "

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.

> 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.

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...

Just a reality check: the United States is currently funding and providing military equipment to Israel, who is carrying out an ethnic cleansing in the Gaza strip. Apparently, democratic governments also have a problem following the rules.

> 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.

The democratic countries follow the pattern of status quo powers. Is that because they are democratic or because they are status quo, or some of both?

The rules are of the status quo powers (matching their political cultures), by the status quo powers, for the status quo powers. Of course they follow those rules and support them. The rules seem to require a country to be a democracy to be legitimate - I agree with that as necessary to legitimacy (not sufficient), but obviously that doesn't suit non-democratic countries.

And like status quo powers, when they break the rules - most prominently the US many times, such as the Iraq war; the EU treatment of refugees and undocumented immigrants; and currently by Israel with US sponsorship - then they let themselves off the hook. They engineer technicalities, such as the weak UN resolution arguably authorizing the Iraq invasion; or just look the other way. They say they can't be handcuffed etc. (And some of those actions may be the right choice - I'm not judging - but they certainly violate the rules.)

Not like the US follows rules it tells others to follow. Hypocrite in charge.

Russia is fighting "Western fascists" and NATO. Don't try to understand this.

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?

Inform them of consequences if they don't make your, hopefully reasonable, changes.

Consequences can range from inconvenient to existential.

Chinese fishing boats specifically.

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?

If you want to be formal about it, none of the countries with Baltic coastlines are formally at war.

> Yes, this is what I'm saying, but with less words.

That's really not all you are saying, and the difference is important. Maybe not to you, though.

Yes… A lot of them really need have it spelt out, twice, in large clear type.

Yes Mr Pistorius is „Verteidigungsminister“ as in defence, and it‘s called that way since 1955. Not that hard to find out.

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.

With "commercial", I guess you imply fishing vessels doing this to go fishing outside their delimited area. That's different from a massive bulk carrier in the middle of the Baltic

> It's completely routine to see commercial ships running without it

I think this depends a lot on the location, as different areas seems to make it different levels of "mandatory". Are you speaking about the Baltic Sea specifically based on experience?

I think classifying western aid to Ukraine as tax transfer to the military industrial complex is just incorrect. Because a lot of it does/did NOT need to be directly replenished for the donors-- instead the donations was more like getting rid of older stockpiles, and for some systems moving the modernization schedule up.

And I think the attitude "its pointless to try and keep helping against the Russians, people have suffered from them for so long anyway" is completeley beside the point (and dangerous!)-- the main gain from helping the Ukraine in my view is discouraging the kind of neo-imperialistm that led to this attack, and stopping the support just sends a signal to ambitious tyrants all over the world that you don't really care about them plundering their weaker neighbors (and with having the biggest military comes some kind of obligation in this regard in my view).

I also think that you are patronizing the Ukrainians themselves in the worst way-- if anyone should get to decide how long it is worth it to fight for their country, it should be them.

> 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.

How can people keep repeating the russian talking point that equates helping Ukraine resist the invasion with "extending the suffering". Don't they know what kind of hell the occupied regions have become? One can't pretend not to understand that the ultimate russian goal is complete annexation and assimilation, which by the way will provide ample cannon fodder for the next war of conquest.

I can't take in good faith this whole "suffering" rhetorics -- not containing the imperialistic expansionist nuclear-armed empire is sure to bring more suffering to the world.

"The military industrial complex" has pocketed trillions upons trillions of tax payers money to arm NATO for a possible confrontation with Russia. Now that Russia is being beaten up and worn down on the cheap, people are throwing tantrums over the amounts that are essentially a pocket change (a half of which stays in the US anyways). How does this make sense?

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’m fine with using my tax dollars to cripple a geopolitical rival and maintain the Pax Americana status quo

Yep, I'm mostly in agreement with you and am also hoping that the West does enable a sudden decisive victory. The best option would have been to nip it in the bud. Instead, Russia were given the space to landmine swathes of land, modernise their military tactics, and build an alliance with Iran and North Korea. And as you say the wrong kinds of people are winning here.

The only thing is, what happens next if the West pulls out? Ukraine's military collapses, Russia moves in on Kyiv, Putin gains another Belarus-like satellite state, and at least considers encroaching on Estonia, Finland etc... . It's more than just the principle of whether warmongering is acceptable - a lot of people will suffer as a consequence and possibly for decades to come. We have to be really careful to consider which is worse in the long-term.

Doesn't need to be a huge escalation.

Just enough to send the tide of attrition turning slowly the other way for a while.

After which HN will instantly fill up with comments about "how badly Russia is losing", "it's clear Ukraine has already lost", and so forth.

There were plenty of options to pressure Ukraine into preventing Russia from having a causus belli in early 2022

Russia never had casus belli in this conflict, and no one did anything to present it with such.

> 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.

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.

Although China's been taking over the SCS, I haven't seen many open hostilities between South Korea and China covered in western news media, almost like SK ignores China's activities for the most part. I don't think there's any chance of a reunified Korea under the Kim dynasty or within 10 years.

edit: forgot to shoutout above's username

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....

Let's not forget pulling out of the TPP, which likely empowered China.

https://www.cato.org/blog/5-years-later-united-states-still-...

That reads like token efforts and then he just moved on ... quit on the whole thing.

This seems very unrealistic, as the resulting distraction is probably of low consequence concerning Ukraine.

Not even replying to the claims about world domination, I don't have time for these... "suppositions".

Transitioning from not finding it boring to finding it boring is exactly being disenchanted with it.

Yes but bluesky does not let you do that!

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/02/ulysses-pact/

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!

It's also astroturfed to death, including moderation.

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.

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

Wow

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.

They're more grey-zone, since many countries do low level hostilities below threshold of war, which is different end of spectrum than blockade that's closer to unambiguous open warfare.

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.