After the Nordstream pipeline attacked and destroyed, its reasonable to expect shortened lifetimes for undersea cables and sattelites.

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

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.

What are some concrete reasons why someone would want to damage these cables? Who benefits?

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.

Are you there then?

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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'?

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)

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.

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...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

  > 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

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.

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

Did I miss WWIII?

More like since Deng Xiaoping initiated the modern Chinese economic strategy in the '80s to control the West through trade.

> 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?

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.

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.

So if Trump is against China, and China aligns with Russia, will Trump then support Ukraine? Interesting (and choppy) times ahead.

Why did they leave AIS on?

Time to start sailing the south china sea.

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.

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.

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

"Chinese-flagged" does not equal "Chinese operated"

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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.

It still seems to require JavaScript be enabled to render anything.

The ship is owned and operated by russians.

China didn't do it and the USA hasn't withdrawn from anything.

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?

... And profits are given to Ukraine.

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?

what possible reason would nato need to blockade russian ports that doesnt already exist?