One plausible explanation is straightforward corruption. The captain was paid to do this. Its easy to imagine him being approached when in port in Russia. And he was prepared to do it in part because of feeling secure in being Chinese flagged so there would be no repercussions.

Well Yi Peng 3 recently changed operating only between Chinese ports to operating only outside China and mostly to Russian ports. Current actual owner is probably some Russian oligarch.

Oreshnik does not register for the people living around the Baltic sea. We have seen big explosions in Ukraine for years now, its not going to move any discourse in northen europe by now. Not saying that the cable cut will, but it has a better chance.

Sabotage tactics is the modus operandi of Russian foreing intelligence so it does not make much sense to talk about this being a retaliation. Much like election interference and the incitement of conflicts in other countries, these actions are integral to Russia's hybrid warfare strategy, specifically designed to destabilize nations that are economically more advanced than Russia itself.

>Certainly the visual effects of Oreshnik were greater than a cable cut that just reduces gamer latency in Finland for a couple of days.

The Russians are testing our response and response times. They do it like this by cutting cables, they sail ships close to the border, they cross into our airspace.

Remember, in the 80s a Soviet submarine ""accidentally"" ran aground in southern Sweden. (Totally not spying on us btw)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_submarine_S-363

If real war happens, physically cutting communications will certainly be part of it.

It's a Chinese-flagged ship, not a ship operating at the direction of the PRC. While one doesn't want to assign guilt too quickly, it's extremely reasonable that they just took a contract to sail a bunch of Russian around and not ask questions. Or even to rent out the whole ship to a Russian crew

I mean, this is spy stuff here. It strains reason to expect that Russia would use only clearly identified Russian government vessels for its clandestine sabotage operations.

> The article cites Russian involvement again, followed by mentioning the Yi Peng 3 anchor-dragging accusations.

> It seems unlikely that the Chinese would get involved at the behest of the Russians. Russia depends on China now and not vice versa

1. Russia still has significant autonomy and is not a "client state" yet.

The Russia-Ukraine War itself was a major blow for Chinese ambitions - much of China's naval (eg. Aircraft carriers [0]) and aerospace technology (eg. Turbofan Jet Engines [1]) exists thanks to Ukraine's defense industry in the 2000s and 2010s. Ukraine was also one of China's largest Belt and Road Initiative (BRI/OBOR) partners in Europe [7], which has all now gone to smoke.

Russia's rapprochement with NK is also worrisome for China, as China is trying to negotiate a three-way free trade agreement [2] with South Korea and Japan which collapsed as both view North Korea as an existential threat [3], and North Korea has pivoted towards Russia for military cooperation because China has also unofficially committed to North Korean denuclearization in order to unblock the China-South Korea-Japan FTA [4]

2. The crew on the ship were Russian nationals. The ship was China flagged, and realistically this was probably a Russian operation. This fiasco came at a horrible time, as European policymakers are in the process of adding additional tarriffs on China and de-coupling from China, and this fiasco only proved that point.

3. Even Russia doesn't want to become a client state of China. This is why Russia has been wooing North Korea as leverage as NK has become increasingly anti-China [5], and diversifying trade relations by leveraging India, especially because it was Russia that mediated between China and India during the 2020 Galwan Crisis which almost became a China-India War [6]

-------------

All in all, the Russia-Ukraine War was a massive failure for Chinese ambitions, and treating Russia and China as part of a single axis doesn't make sense.

[0] - https://galeapps.gale.com/apps/auth?userGroupName=mlin_oweb&...

[1] - https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/Portals/10/CASI/documents/R...

[2] - https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Trade/China-Japan-and-South-...

[3] - https://www.nippon.com/en/in-depth/d01007/security-tensions-...

[4] - https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2024/05/844fe5afa077-japa...

[5] - https://www.joongang.co.kr/article/25278704

[6] - https://www.deccanherald.com/world/how-russia-and-singapore-...

[7] - https://www.econstor.eu/handle/10419/259271

I think it's less of a matter if Russia can get China involved in its sabotage operations and more if they can get a handful Chinese citizens involved in its sabotage operations.

[dead]

Just like the Nord Stream, huh?

In Finnish news currently whenever anything bad happens, the first suspicion is a conspiracy throry about Russian involvement. The press is in sort of a war propaganda mode.

And if you mention this, you're an instant suspect of taking part in a Russian disinformation campaign.

>The article cites Russian involvement again

Everything gets blamed on Russia now. The press and politicians tells us Russia is both incompetent and omnipotent. "Normal" people on Twitter will accuse you of being a "Russian bot" if you have a slightly different opinion. We blamed the Russians for blowing up their own pipeline for no reason in particular. It's crazy.

Is this a meta-attack from Russia to flood the information space so that blaming Russia becomes something people ignore? Hmmm....

The only thing certain is that faced will be saved.

Fines? Act like a privateer, get treated like a privateer. The people bankrolling this behaviour don't care about fines.

Haha! Finish brothers! <3

Dasvidaniya Putin! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1ozCWyUlCg

The Russians hate this and will do sneaky stuff to counter this.

Russia has already anticipated this problem and updated their nuclear doctrine to include nuclear first use also against countries that would "isolate" Russian territory (Presumably thinking of Crimea and Kaliningrad).

Edit: Not sure what the downvote is. It's factually true. I don't think that necessarily means it's a bad idea or that it's a red line that should be observed when all other red lines are obviously illusions.

https://www.submarinecablemap.com/

Plenty of cables.

BUT this is a test by the Russians of our response.

You people always try to either downplay or exaggerate.

"oh nothing happened so it is fine" or "waowh internet totally went down!!!" This is also propaganda to try an minimize the Russians actions.

Luckily (unluckily?), the internet is smart enough to route around single links disappearing :)

When you lose your internet connection, its the perfect time to lay back and dive into your thoughts, to contemplate over your oh wait its back on

The last time there was cable and gas pipe damage in the Baltic, it took about two weeks for the investigators to do their thing and hold a press briefing. Some details ("mechanical damage, doesn't look like an explosion") had been published before, but most of the investigation results were publicized all at once.

What is publicly known this time: when and where the cables were cut (locations approximately, times accurately), and that there's a Chinese ship (Yi Peng 3) that was followed by Danish navy vessels, and the ship has been anchored for a week with constant guard from German and Danish (and possibly Swedish) navy.

There's a video[1] by a Finnish sea captain with MarineTraffic history access going over the track of YP3. Since it's in Finnish, a brief summary (or try your luck with auto-translation):

1) The ship sets off with a speed of 9-10 knots, but then slows down to 5-6 knots for 400 km or so, before returning to 9-10 knots. While weather could be a factor, other ships in the area experience no slowdowns. 2) The ship crosses the cables right around the reported break times. 3) There is an additional slowdown to 3-4 knots near a known underwater sand ridge. 4) The ships heading jumps around a bit; again, the other ships do not do this. 5) There is a missing portion in AIS data; however, this is seen with other ships as well.

Now, this is all circumstantial evidence, but is consistent with dragging the anchor on the seafloor for an extended period of time. Calling it sabotage would require establishing malicious intent, of course.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fB-vEp3wr-0

That conclusion probably takes some time. Even if they found some evidence now, we're unlikely to hear about it until the investigations are wrapped up. And there are multiple criminal investigations in at least 3 countries, so it won't be this year.

The ship went over 2 cables and dragged its anchor 100 miles.

They knew what they were doing.

Don't try and play coy ruskie.