It's worth mentioning that cable breakages happen quite often; globally about 200 times per year [1] and the article itself mentions that just last year, two other cables and a gas pipeline were taken out by an anchor. The Gulf of Finland is evidently quite shallow. From what I understand, cable repair ships are likely to use ROVs for parts of repair jobs but only when the water is shallow so hopefully they can figure out whether the damage looks like sabotage before they sever the cable to repair it. Of course, if you're a bad actor and want plausible deniability, maybe you'd make it look like anchor damage or, deliberately drag an anchor right over the cables.
Cable repairs are certainly annoying and for the operator of the cable, expensive. However, they are usually repaired relatively quickly. I'd be more worried if many more cables were severed at the same time. If you're only going to break one or two a year, you might as well not bother.
"Appears to be", in English, generally means "on first look/glance." It runs very close to "I believe such and such."
If I asked you for an answer to a math question, then you showed me the answer with how you got there, on a very quick glance I might say: "That appears to be correct."
It could mean they've seen more evidence to make that assessment, or are basing that assessment on the same evidence we have. Regardless, "appears to be" is hedging in the absence of certainty.
This is right. But I'd add that the fact that the speaker is the German defense minister adds an additional layer of meaning. Ordinarily such a person would not be expected to give such an initial assessment without careful consideration.
> Bundesverteidigungsminister Boris Pistorius vermutet im Fall von zwei in der Ostsee beschädigten Kabeln zur Datenübertragung eine vorsätzliche Aktion durch Dritte. Man müsse davon ausgehen, dass es sich um Sabotage handle, sagte er am Rande eines Treffens mit seinen EU-Amtskollegen in Brüssel. Beweise dafür gebe es bislang aber nicht. Er betonte: "Niemand glaubt, dass diese Kabel aus Versehen durchtrennt worden sind."
> Federal Minister of Defense Boris Pistorius assumes the case of to damaged baltic sea data cables to be the intentional action of a third party. One should assume it to be sabotage, he said while at a meeting with EU colleagues in Brusseles. Proof, however, is not available yet. He emphasized: "Nobody believes that those cables were cut by accident."
So while carefully not saying anything definitive and firm, he very strongly hints in the direction of sabotage.
In a political and intelligence sense "appears to be" is a rhetorical tool for propaganda purposes, or / and to cover you ass.
He could say "We have no evidence of this being sabotage and further speculation is not useful at this point”
which is what he says, from one perspective.
On the other he is framing a conspiracy theory:
"Something happened that appears to be sabotage and sabotage would be done by the enemy. " and the European media has been stuffed full of conspiracy theories during the entire conflicts.
Educationally you can look at the Nord Stream pipelines sabotage.
Nearly every EU and US source writes in big letters that Russia was behind it.
After a while, it became nearly impossible to keep that conspiracy theory alive.
Sweden and Denmark ended their investigation into the matter with no conclusion drawn
The present narrative is that the sabotage was done by a Ukrainian team with a shoe string budget:
A Drunken Evening, a Rented Yacht: The Real Story of the Nord Stream Pipeline Sabotage
Private businessmen funded the shoestring operation, which was overseen by a top general; President Zelensky approved the plan, then tried unsuccessfully to call it off
https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/nord-stream-pipeline-explos...
The sibling comments are very relevant, but I wanted to provide a marginally different perspective. You have to take not only what is being said, but _who is saying it_ into perspective.
In this case, this is a government official speaking to the press (i.e. in an official capacity). If they were to say "this was sabotage," that is a definite declaration that the government believes - again, officially and on the record - that an outside party has deliberately done material damage to their country. Given the general situation, it is not a huge leap to come to the interpretation that "this was an attack against our country, and possibly an act of war."
No government official would want to be within miles (or kilometers) of that sort of statement unless they have pretty much already internally decided from the top-down to escalate the situation. Almost no single government agent has the authority to escalate the situation in that manner. So what we end up with is "appears to be." This overtly says 'all available evidence points to this being the case, however something else cannot be ruled out.' (As a sibling comment suggests, it can also act as a type of propaganda). So it is not an official government declaration that another nation has damaged them, but they have reasons (probably both apparent and not) to believe what they are saying publicly.
It's inconclusive but only a little. There's a spectrum of conclusitivity through "possibly is", "might be", "could be", "very well might", "looks like", "appears to be", "almost certainly is", "is".
I suppose in today’s world it’s hard to know what was sabotage and what was an accident, and where the buck stops - particularly in marine matters. Was that anchor drag intentional? Did the operator know their charts were out of date? Did that trawl net really fail and snag like that?
Reflexive cynicism about the military isn't as warranted in 2024 as it might have been a decade ago. And it wasn't really warranted a decade ago either, when Russia was blowing up Czech ammunition depots, airliners full of Dutch people, conducting assassinations in the center of Berlin, and sending "little green men" to Ukraine.
It could be an accident, sure, but suspicion of sabotage is not paranoia.
And also, like, the German government (and European governments generally) DOES need to spend more on their military. They underinvested for decades and are now stuck needing to catch up very quickly.
The last time it happened, the Russian ship had also been seen unnaturally going back and forth over the cable where the damage occurred. These damages do not happen by themselves. Considering the current international situation and the fact that it happened in a short time in several places unnaturally in a limited region, the Baltic Sea, you have to be very naive if you do not see this as probable sabotage.
The "Yi Peng 3", a Chinese ship that parted from a Russian Port, has been located near both cables just before they were cut. The ship was detained in NATO water, and now faces an investigation.
Currently, all points to a deliberate act of hybrid warfare
They can measure the location of the break to centimeters by timing how long a light pulse takes to reflect back to the emitter. It is called time-domain reflectometry.
Why are you assuming that would be released publicly? The person you are discussing this with is simply informing you of the existence and availability of the technology you're asking about.
They now the distance to the break from one end. They then use that with a map of the cable to determine the lat and long of the break and send a ship to fix it.
This process assumes the damage is accidental and doesn't involve the military. If Russia keeps cutting optic cables that could change. I can envision military ships getting real-time notification of fiber cuts and the current location of all foreign ships.
Yes. But in this case it's not known who did this. One NATO member is trying to pin it on Ukraine. But evidence is scarce. Personally I'm 50/50 whether this was russian false-flag or combined effort of some NATO members and Ukraine.
So long as we live in democracies, we are responsible for the actions of our governments.
You can certainly go "Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos" during domestic discussions of displeasure of the ruling party. But, in international affairs, we are accountable for our government's foreign policies.
I'm Canadian. "We" are in a proxy war with Russia. "We" need to win lest Putin thinks he can just take sovereign nations like Ukraine without the rest of the world stopping him.
Appeasing dictators is a losing policy. "We" need to do everything possible by having Europe fund Ukraine, and now while "We" have Biden agreeing to do so, until Trump takes over and "we" have infighting between NATO nations about what to do about Ukraine.
Why is this analysis focused on the Baltics? That's p hacking, given that it happened to happen in the baltics.
Let's instead say there are roughly 20 ocean regions we would post hoc consider "the same". Now, given a breakage, what is the probability of at least two more in the same region and day? This is a Poisson distribution with lambda=200/365/20. The probability of two more independent breakages is 0.04 % for that specific day.
But again, picking a specific day would be p-hacking. Zooming out, an event that rare is expected to happen every seven years or so.
Now, "every seven years" is a far cry from "1 in 36 million." Whenever you get crazy p values like that, there is often an error or overlooked assumption in the analysis.
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If you like this sort of thing, have a stab at forecasting competitions! I can recommend the Metaculus Quarterly Cup. The current one is in full swing so use the remaining 1.5 months of the year to practice and then you're set for when the January edition starts.
I see, this was in fact what I had in mind. The maths I posted represent the horizon of my knowledge in probability and was surprised how well o1-preview was able to output correct numerical calculations.
Having said that how would the odds look like if we factor in the fact the Baltic Sea is one of two zones with the most geopolitical tensions (along with Taiwan).
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Thanks for the Metaculus recommendation. I was a bit disappointed in the lack of maths in the comments in general. Can you recommend something in the vein of Leetcode with various degrees of difficulty, from very basic to advanced problems ? I'm both interested in probability and statistics
That's assuming independence. I'm not ruling out sabotage but the world is often not fully independent. A storm or an anchor both may affect multiple cables if they're in generally the same area which would definitely make the probability far more likely than those stated. (edit typo)
I don't buy that number (no source is attributed to it), or rather, I don't believe there's a single incident causing this.
The C-Lion1 cable is predominantly North-East - South-West whereas the BCS cable is NW-SE. They do meet, but the C-Lion1 operator Cinia says their cable broke about 700 km from Helsinki, east of the southern tip of the Öland island. That's easily over 150 km south from where the cables meet.
Also, C-Lion1 was reported broken at 4m, and the BCS cable at 10am the previous day.
The grandparent comment is total nonsense which sounds smart but is not. Damages from accidents are not independently random either. Or do you think it is virtually impossible that 140 people die on the same airliner? It is likely the same ship cut both either by accident or intentionally.
I am leaning towards sabotage but that two cables were cut means very little.
Right, if it’s a case interview, then higher accuracy ought to prompt the interviewee to ask:
(1) Do the 200 cuts typically occur in clusters?
(2) What’s the typical density, eg are they usually collocated? (as an alternative to the above)
(3) Are there pathways that avoid the sea but connect Europe and North America (getting at density in the sea in question)
Etc.
That’s what makes this one so good—lots of opportunities to extend or roll-back difficulty.
I was surprised to see so many upvotes this morning and was disappointed when I realized it wasn't for another comment I made about the Anthropic Principle.
My take is that in face of coincidences supporting the emergence of intelligent life, we should expect to observe coincidences unnecessary for the emergence of life too.
An analogy: imagine you have lost the key to your mansion and try to cut one at random out of a metal sheet. If it can unlock the door, then chances are that you cut unnecessary notches (the analogy only holds for warded locks and the key you crafted is a master key).
What are the chances that they break in close proximity spacially, but not temporarily? (I'm assuming that it would be headline material if the lines had disconnected within minutes)
Tangent: an attacker trying hard to provoke that kind of accident would likely not have a very fast success feedback. "Let's try once more, for good measure"
Still pretty decent, given the right circumstances.
For example, the 2011 earthquake in Japan resulted in damage to 7 cables[0]. But it wasn't the quake itself which instantly broke all 7 cables - they were destroyed by underwater avalanches triggered by the earthquake. Avalanches can occur hours after a seismic event, and some underwater avalanches go on for days.
I highly doubt that's the case here, but if you're asking about chances it's not as unlikely as you'd think!
You can't even assume they follow a normal distribution. For all we know, ships drop anchor more on certain days or weather conditions. That's just the start of the rabbit hole.
I watched a rep from the operators of the cable claim that this particular cable is pretty tough, and anything other than deliberate sabotage would be very unlikely.
Right. It's indeed worth pointing out that while this certainly looks like Russian terrorism, it's really fairly bad terrorism, all things considered, and not particularly hard or expensive to mitigate.
It's basically a "Putin tax" on the industrial democracies in the reason. I don't see how this helps Russia at all, honestly. Putin has a real shot, given the state of US politics, at salvaging something approximating a "victory" in Ukraine and getting back to peacetime economics. Why rock the boat?
The goal at this stage is not the outcome of some minor outage, but signaling that they are prepared and ready to go ahead with major acts of sabotage. This is the local thugs smashing some furniture in your store as a warning.
You offered nothing to support the theory that Russia is behind this. This reminds me of the Nordstream sabotage, when many jumped to accuse Russia even though that made no sense at all. Perhaps wait for the official investigations. If they like what they discover this time, they might publish it.
> deliberately drag an anchor right over the cables
Can we not make the cables resistant to this? Like if someone drags an anchor over a cable, it instantly locates the break based on time-of-flight over the cable and instantly dispatches a drone from the nearest shoreline to spray nasty sticky shit all over the ship?
Cables can be buried and ploughed into the sea floor. This is usually done in the shallow last miles when approaching a landing on a coast, because there the risk for damage due to anchors, fishermen and other human activity is far higher. However, sometimes the ground can be unsuitable, and burying is expensive, so this isn't done for the whole length.
Doesn't need to be a drone, there should be coast guard etc of all neighbouring countries nearby that can dispatch a plane.
That said, radar systems and sattelites should be active at all times too keeping track of every ship on there, especially if they don't have a transponder active.
This is a misleading framing. The two cables last year were not taken out by an anchor as an accident, it was literally a ship putting down its anchor just before the cable and then dragging it over the cable. In other words, sabotage. There's no point in trying to color any of this with rose tinted glasses when it's clear who's done it and why.
> it was literally a ship putting down its anchor just before the cable and then dragging it over the cable
I don't understand. That's how I'd expect most accidents to happen. Someone decides to anchor too close to an undersea cable, the anchor fails to hold and the drifting ship drags the anchor over the cable damaging it.
I'm not saying it wasn't sabotage, but there needs to be something a bit more than that.
Source: have dragged anchors - thankfully never near undersea cables
The case last year with the gas pipeline, the Chinese / Russian owned left Kaliningrad, and then while sailing, dropped its anchor before the pipeline and cable, and then dragged it over them, and then raised it. It was apparently accidental, yet both the Chinese and Russians didn't want the crew interviewed, the Estonian and the Finnish authorities both shrugged and didn't really care, and the Estonian energy prices were severly impacted for ~9 months.
IMO very very likely sabotage, and brushed under the rug in fear of Russian escalation.
The Finnish authorities know exactly who did it, but what are they going to do?
Sanction Russia? Fire a few missiles at Moscow? Write a sternly worded letter?
It's just added to the pile of "shit that Russia does without repercussions" which is opened when (not if) they actually cross the border to Finland and find out what happens when you fuck around with a country who's been preparing for Russian invasion for 100 years.
> IMO very very likely sabotage, and brushed under the rug in fear of Russian escalation.
But what can they do? Imagine you are the leader of a small European country like the Netherlands, and one day Russia decides to shot down your passenger plane with 300 people on board. You can do absolutely nothing.
But once a proxy war started, of course the Netherlands are doing their best to make Putin pay for the lives of these innocent people. He basically alienated many countries in this way and then complains of "Russophobia".
350+ APCs, 150+ MBTs, Patriot bateries, SPGs, F16s - I'm sure those on the receiving end do think that their Donbas proxies could have been a bit less trigger happy when the loaned them that Buk AA system back in 2014.
Those 298 inoccent victims, 193 of them citizens of Netherlands will be avenged many times over.
What goes around comes around - the irony being that russia itself- has very little regarding hightech structure that could be sabotaged.
No russian starlink sats.
No russian fiber lines.
No anything.
Just backwater countries, slowly bled dry to have that heap of loot called moscow polished.
The heap of pillaged academics with nowhere to go has wandered off towards the west.
All there is, is vandalism and downfall while high on nostalgia. The aggressive train station HasBeenHobo of international politics.
Russia wants the West to react, to stop funding Ukraine and instead fund.. protection for their own homelands I guess. This is a known (theory?), and the game theoretic way to then respond is to, ignore that it happens. Dont stoke any fear or reaction from people or government.
NATO countries don't or barely respond because subversion requires a response.
Russia is constantly pulling low hanging fruit hoping for as much commotion, fear, etc. It's party of their destabilization and subversion tactics.
This is why authorities are not loud, but calm & stoic.
And it works, very few people around me are aware of the fact that Russia has blown up NATO ammunition depots, liquidated politicians and has spread bombs on mail flights.
During WW2 the British had a great slogan: /Keep Calm and Carry On/.
It actually helps the war effort, unlike public outcry, wild speculation & unrest.
For the non westerns the west is constantly bribing and threatening other nations to comply with their economic expansion drift. In the end we are all tribal nations. And even the west isntva tiny bit better than others. Unfortunately propoganda at all sides make people sticking to one side, condemning the other.
Generally misspellings like this kind of proves the point...
The comment means nothing, neither mine nor the one I commented on so I won't even bother looking up the spelling.
It's more important to understand why the comment is there.
The GP asked what boat, parent effectively said "a boat" which doesn't answer the question. My comment was one of the least likely options, but hey I could have said sailboat...
Not an excuse either but realistically I on a daily basis speak two languages and often interact with people who can barely speak one of those two so I have some basic understanding of a third... Sometimes I can't remember which one spelling rules come from. Not an excuse, it's easy enough to look it up but just context.
"In August 2024, an internal Chinese investigation indicated that the ship was indeed responsible for the damage, claiming it was an accident due to heavy weather rather than intentional sabotage.[23][24]"
The internal Chinese investigation indicated that was an accident.. LOL
Dropping anchor in a channel is something a container ship (especially one without other mitigations like this Newnew, I mean look at it) might do to increase stability and reduce the risk of drifting out of the channel.
I don't care to convince folks in this thread one way or another, but yes, there are reason a commercial ship would drop anchor while underway, including bad weather and a narrow / shallow channel. The circumstances from last year had both.
I can only upvote. How does the anchor come into contact with the cable if not by that exact sequence of steps? The ship isn't sailing through the Gulf with its anchor down, it has to go near the cable, drop anchor then drag. Otherwise the cable and anchor will not interact. This is the only way an accident could happen (almost).
New New Polar Bear (the Nov 2023 case) was definitely sailing down the Gulf with its anchor down. Estonian defense minister stated at the time there are drag tracks in the seabed for "over 185 km".
>I don't understand. That's how I'd expect most accidents to happen. Someone decides to anchor too close to an undersea cable, the anchor fails to hold and the drifting ship drags the anchor over the cable damaging it.
In most of these cases, it's Russian ships dropping their anchors in areas where the cables are known to be and then driving around in circles until they snag and break it. It's not even slightly plausible that they'd be doing it accidentally.
Have you filed your observations of the ships anchor at sea to the authorities? Because it does sound strange, if you indeed have a witness to this, that they dropped and then hoisted their anchors to damage infrastructure four times that day:
> Swedish-Estonian telecoms cable at 1513 GMT, then over the Russian cable at around 2020 GMT, the [Balticconnector gas pipeline] at 2220 GMT and a Finland-Estonia telecoms line at 2349 GMT.
Well, you never know 100%.
There is a small (really small) chance it was an accident. Just like there is a small chance that Al Capone was innocent man.
(But really, it clearly has “Russia” written all over it)
This is not nearly as obvious as this entire thread is making it out to be, unfortunately. I think it has to due with commercial shipping operations and procedures not aligning with our intuitions.
just to be honest, the Pipelines explosion, had "Russia" written all over it, except after investigation, and a possible culprit, i.e not Russia, then nobody wanted to discuss about it anymore. I think the hysteria is too high, people are thirsty for War, looks like..
Delivery of Russian gas was stopped by Russia in violation of contract. European gas companies demands $20 billion in compensation. Nobody had incentive to blow up empty pipes except Russia.
Of course, Russians used false flag as usual, to blame Ukraine, but Ukraine doesn't hide successful attacks on Russian infrastructure, because Ukraine has legal right to defend itself.
While a false flag operation cannot be ruled out, I don't think the case is as clear-cut as you suggest.
> Nobody had incentive to blow up empty pipes except Russia.
I disagree: Russian gas was the one leverage Russia had over Germany. Blowing the pipeline ensured that Germany wouldn't be able to get out of the conflict quietly - "Germany still receiving Russian gas" would not receive as much condemnation as "Germany repairs Russian gas pipeline".
> Ukraine doesn't hide successful attacks on Russian infrastructure, because Ukraine has legal right to defend itself.
True, but Ukraine doesn't have a legal right to sabotage the infrastructure of its allies. I live in Germany and I can tell you: that first winter was pretty bad for everyone, with plenty headlines about people who could no longer afford their heating costs. If it had been known that it was Ukraine's doing, popular support for the war would have sunk a lot.
how so, if Germany did shutdown almost all their nuclear power plants? Experts say that would be impossible to "simply turn it on back", because of lack of professionals capable to work on that and that each minute that we wait, harder will be to bring them back...
That is a very abbreviated history. There are two pipelines, NS-1 and NS-2, both of which have two pipes each. NS-1 was operational until a turbine had to be repaired in Canada. The bureaucratic process to allow the repair was arduous, but finally it got done and chancellor Scholz did a photo-op in front of the repaired turbine.
Then the Russians played coy and came up with counter-bureaucratic reasons why the repaired turbine could not be installed. Presumably to put pressure on Germany, which was afraid of the 2022/2023 winter at the time.
Then two pipes of NS-1 and one pipe of NS-2 were blown up. Since no gas was flowing at the time, Russia had no reason to blow up its bargaining chip. Ukraine or the U.S. did have a reason.
Russia also delivered gas to Austria through a pipeline that goes through Ukraine and for which Ukraine collected transit fees until this year. Russia didn't shut down or blow up that pipeline.
From the point of view of the U.S. and Ukraine it does not make sense to blow up the Austrian pipeline because Austria is neutral anyway, so just let Ukraine collect the transit fees.
Germany of course must be pressured to be the second largest financial and weapons supporter for Ukraine, so hey, let's blow up the pipeline of our "ally".
Apart from Hersh's "the U.S. did it" theory, the Wall Street Journal recently blamed it on Zalushny. No other theories have emerged, but rest assured that if there were a credible Russia theory the Western press would shout it from the rooftops.
Putin has offered multiple times to either open the remaining pipe of NS-2 or to route gas via Turkey:
> Of course, Russians used false flag as usual, to blame Ukraine, but Ukraine doesn't hide successful attacks on Russian infrastructure, because Ukraine has legal right to defend itself.
This is completely wrong. It involved German/Russian infrastructure, and if confirmed, it would rank as the worst terrorist act in the history of the FRG (Germany) since the Munich Olympic Games. In fact, it could, should, or would lead to the activation of Article 5, as one of NATO's members was attacked.
A terrorist act is an act meant to cause terror. High natural gas prices, while they might be very inconvenient, are hardly terror in the same way as things usually described as terrorist acts, which usually involve civilians exploding at random.
Is this supposed to imply the story is implausible because the couple wasn't in on the plot and would rat the third guy out? If so, all 3 are suspects and presumably are in on the plot, so this argument falls flat on its face.
>The two other suspects, a married couple who do not have warrants issued in their names, have denied knowing Z. and said that they were on vacation in Bulgaria when the attack took place.
> The two other suspects, a married couple who do not have warrants issued in their names, have denied knowing Z. and said that they were on vacation in Bulgaria when the attack took place.
The Dutch military intelligence agency MIVD had infiltrants in Ukraine after MH-17 of a plot to blow up the Nord Stream, they tipped off the CIA, who in turn warned Ukraine not to do it, three months before it happened; source [0], translation [1].
Germany has issued an arrest warrant for a Ukranian national [2] who along with two accomplices was on board the yacht Andromeda, which was located at the blast site days before the blast and on which traces of the same explosive was found as used on the pipelines, as well as DNA evidence.
I suppose it's not "actual evidence Ukraine did it", but it's more than enough evidence to make a Ukranian national that since fled back to Ukraine a suspect.
> The two other suspects, a married couple who do not have warrants issued in their names, have denied knowing Z. and said that they were on vacation in Bulgaria when the attack took place.
:-/
So, one diver moved and installed 500kg of explosives in 4 places in front of a married couple?
The "investigations" you reference were by German media, whereas the wsj article was allegedly from German authorities. Moreover, while you accuse the wsj article as "hearsay", the same is true for the tagesspiegel you linked. The crux of that article's claim is that the company that rented the yacht had Crimean owners with ties to Russia, but no proof was presented. We're asked to trust the journalists on that, just as we're asked to trust the wsj journalists on the facts of the German authorities' investigation.
To attribute culpability, you need solid proof. I'm not saying that Russia did it - simply that there's enough evidence that Russia had means, motive and opportunity - which makes it a probable candidate.
Biden had a great deal of incentive to destroy that pipeline.
But far too many more obvious counterincentives.
Unlike the Ukrainians, NATO/US were smart enough to see that blowing up NS2 would be hugely stupid, providing precisely zero strategic advantage while simply provoking Russia to respond assymetrically (in exactly the same way as it is apparently doing right now). In addition to the huge methane release.
So if anything, the standpoint of "incentives" points squarely in the opposite direction (that is, against the idea that the US/NATO must have done it).
Your belief in the infallible nobility of NATO belies a vested interest in ignoring its massive, undeniable war crimes, crimes against humanity and violations of human rights at massive scale, as an organization, this century.
>Unlike the Ukrainians, NATO/US were smart enough
I do not concur with this glib assessment one bit.
Had. NS2 was almost two years ago. Your current Biden assessment may be correct, but two years ago there was a great deal more lucidity, when he stated that "no matter what, the NS2 pipeline will not be allowed to persist" ..
Nobody in the West wants any war. The usual tactics of Putin is to do what he wants whether on his or foreign soil, using poisoning etc. in a way that everybody knows it's him but he will politely deny. It's a kind of a silly game, the GRU could just have put a bullet in Lytvynenko's head but they choose a slow death to show off.
I’m not sure that no one wants a war. I can see some groups profiting from it.. I see some politicians being quite blunt about it—some in Germany, for instance, who are well-known lobbyists for the defense industry. Biden’s decision to allow the use of long-range weapons seems like a tactical political move designed to make Trump’s life significantly harder from day one. It feels irresponsible, as it appears that war is being used both to weaken the opposition and to enrich the defense industry.
>Biden’s decision to allow the use of long-range weapons seems like a tactical political move designed to make Trump’s life significantly harder from day one.
I have a different take on this, basically parroting Perun on YouTube. The lame duck period is the perfect time for escalatory steps, as the Russians always have the option of waiting until the new administration comes into office rather than responding aggressively. Trump will be free to re-impose whichever restrictions he wants, but he'll be starting from a stronger position. He'll have the "stop UA use of long-range weapons" bargaining chip, _and_ he'll be able to relatively costlessly blame Biden for the "bad decision" of allowing them.
A war in europe is not going to be profitable squared against the damage it will do to the global economy. Thats why the middle eastern wars were attractive for American coalition members. Defense contractors profit. You can demo new tech and tactics. And whatever damage you do in that corner of the world won’t really impact anything at home.
I don't know what goes on to comment. I'm not there and I don't fool myself into thinking that I know geopolitics just because I read some articles. My comment was replying to someone who said the Russians are the war thirsty people of the world. It's a bit rich because, there's a bunch of other ongoing wars in the world and people aren't just "bad" or "good"
Objective facts though: Russia invaded Ukraine, in 2014 and 2022. There was no formal declaration of war. There were widespread and indiscriminate attacks on civilians.
Which parts of those are "good" in your opinion? Do you believe Russia's "denazification" claim?
There are no international laws that legitimized Russia's invasion of Ukraine. If Ukraine was in violation of something, there's procedures in place to declare war legitimately - but before that there's the nonviolent approach, which Russia skipped.
No parts of the war are good - I didn't make any claims about the Russian war, I don't know what caused it or why it's going on, and I don't like wars. I don't believe most claims by either side, I doubt there's advantage in revealing the real reasons by either side - the articles we read are to craft an opinion either to support one side or the other and I don't think it's that simple - that's my whole point. I don't need to think a war is legitimate to have a reaction to someone saying there's one country with warmonger people and one country without. In general I think it's normal to side with the invaded party and I'm personally inclined to support that side - but it doesn't mean I tell myself I'm making some informed decision.
Not really, but to declare a whole population as "very bad thing", yes I need to approximate first hand observation. I have no need to declare a whole population bad though.
> Like, Russia is actually 'doing the bad things'.
Yes, Russia is doing bad things.. But do we really need or want a third World War because of it? It’s not Ukraine’s fault that Russia invaded, but Ukraine bears responsibility for having been so corrupt over the past 20 years and for being irresponsible given its proximity to Russia. We still don’t know how much of the aid sent to Ukraine is being lost to corruption... So I am not willing to fight this War.
For me? Definitely not for me. But my country investing my pension, health infrastructure, education system to support their civilians. Even you and all other Ukraine that spend the day online here, are being paid by us. Still, no reason to Europe to go to war for Ukraine, but instead invest our military budget in our NATO partners and preparing to defend them.
If you ask European military leaders where we should invest and how we should prepare, they'll tell you that strong support of Ukraine is one of the best investments into European defense that you could make at the moment. They calculate that it's better to stop Russia in Ukraine than to face Russia (with additional resources from fully occupied Ukraine) in Poland or elsewhere.
Military leaders are pragmatic people and this is a pragmatic approach. We have a problem. We see that the problem has grown in time and will grow further if ignored. So it's better to deal with the problem now rather than waste valuable time and face an even larger problem in 5 to 8 years.
> Military leaders are pragmatic people and this is a pragmatic approach.
Military leaders are politicians. I am in the Military. The official position, is inline with what the political leaders want. Internally, the same Military leaders disagree with the politicians. Internally all say the same: There is no accountability and responsibility in Ukraine. Better is to concentrate our resources where matters: NATO. Ukraine is necessary strategically to consume Russian men, artillery, etc.. That's the military opinion that we hear internally.
> Military leaders are politicians. I am in the Military. The official position, is inline with what the political leaders want.
That's not the case in countries bordering Russia, starting from Finland and heading south, where military leaders take a lot of pride in being constitutionally independent like supreme court judges. Politicians would very much prefer to hide behind NATO guarantees and pretent that the risk does not exist and that the Americans would come to save us (without specifying any details), whereas military assessments are much more calculated and take into account hard facts like redeployment speed of a brigade or daily ammo expenditure. Assessments from military circles have so far been consistently the closest to how events have actually unfolded.
They case they are presenting is a no-brainer. It is by all measures significantly cheaper - by orders of magnitude - to support Ukraine in halting Russians in Eastern Ukraine than to fight invaders on our home turf.
Exactly. They need Ukraine to keep Russia busy. Other than people try to convince us, Men matter. Every single russian soldier that dies, fighting in Ukraine, is one less potential barbarian in their border, that's all truth, but people should understand, it's not about saving Ukraine, but about protecting themselves.
But that's what military leaders are saying too: by giving Ukraine better weapons to defend their homes, we hit two birds with one stone. Better weapons save Ukrainian lives and do more damage to the resources that threaten us too. Every tank Ukrainians blow up with our advanced missiles is a double win. A win for Ukraine and a win for us.
Even if you don't care one bit about Ukraine, it's still a really smart thing to do for our own sake.
Well, the situation changes really fast. To make Trump's life harder, Biden gave green to Ukraine to use their weapons as they want. This isn't what the countries around the conflict want, because it means eminent scalation to a nuclear war. So the general opinion among the experts (and Finland and Sweden started this week to prepare to War) is "yes, let Ukraine drain Russia's army, but they shouldn't win this War, otherwise it means 3rd World War". I care about Ukraine people and soldiers, but the a scalation in this War, isn't the right decision for both.
That's not how it goes. We are supporting Ukraine in a level that nobody does. Germany is investing the pension from everyone under 45 years old, education and health system, just to support ukraine. All Ukraine online warriors here in Hackernews, are here being support financially by us. It doesn't mean however we should go to War for it. The online warriors here aren't there too, but here in Germany, "figthing online" with +1 or -1...
> Lets say Russia wins, and re-integrates Ukraine.
It won't happen. If you think so then, you are not well informed about this topic. Russia has no manpower to "re-integrate" the whole Ukraine. Ukraine will always exist, but for the next years, maybe not as big as in 2014. Ukraine can still prepare itself to take the lost area back in the future. That's up to Ukraine, not to Europe.
Said that, one possibility, for now, which is part of the negotiations is Russia keep the conquered land, Ukraine joins EU/NATO. Realistically, it would be Ukraine joins EU and US won't block Ukraine applying to NATO.
> Now what does the world look like in 20 years when Russia is eye-balling Poland?
Poland, other than Ukraine, isn't one of the most corrupt countries in the World, and did their home-work. Beside it, other than Ukraine, Poland is NATO.
They murdered an entire town. Well several. Raped and tortured those they didn't kill. Kidnap children to Russianize them. Torture and kill POWs. The only difference between them and the Germans is that they haven't carried out industrial slaughter of Jews.
But this person is just speaking the truth - I worked for an ISP with cable landing stations. These cables went down several times a year due to physical damage of non nefarious kinds. It's not obvious that this malicious. It certainly might be but it's not a slam dunk.
Yeah but in this case, we don't know whether the guy in question actually got shot, only that he died. In that case it's premature to assume "this is murder".
Is it though? From my understanding it's clearly sabotage, but who's responsible is open to some debate. Compare to NordStream, it's still not officially determined who's responsible.
If this wasn't an accident, given the recent Biden escalation that allows ATACMS strikes in Kursk in could mean two things:
1) Russia hastily retaliated, which is out of character. You can accuse Russia of many things, but not of retaliating instantly (against the West, in Ukraine they probably do).
2) False flag in order to drum up pro-war sentiment in the West.
If Biden escalates in the last weeks of his presidency, presumably to make it more difficult for Trump to negotiate, why would Russia take the bait and escalate? It does not make any sense.
"Escalate"? Allowing Ukraine to use the weapons it has to strike back at an aggressor in order to mitigate or reduce said aggressors ability to continue attacking is ... "escalation"? I don't think so.
If anything artificial limits have been placed on Ukraine that are not placed on other nations (or in some cases proscribed terrorist organisations) purchasing or being "gifted" weapons. Whether those weapons are from the U.S., UK, France, Germany, Russia, RoK, whoever.
Yes. Weapons hitting places deep inside Russia that haven't been hit before is escalation. Whether one favors the act or not isn't how a step is considered as escalation. Now the Russians might or might not take steps that the other side considers escalation.
Ukraine has been hitting targets "deep" inside Russia for a long time now - further than ATACMS or the export Storm Shadow/SCALP-EG can reach. Whether Ukraine use their own weapons or those purchased/gifted from others seems irrelevant. This is Russia saying "we can hit you with weapons provided by other nations, but you cannot be allowed to hit us likewise" - it's pathetic.
As for what Russia may do, they've been told publicly and privately by multiple nations: from the U.S., UK, and France, even China and India to wind their necks in with regard any nuclear escalation. However, they are very adept at asymmetric responses, and Putin has already said he would consider arming groups with anti-"western" sympathies - he probably already has.
Earlier hits were using Ukrainian drones, while the Atacms are reported as needing to be programmed by US military to hit the targets. So while it is Ukraine that supposedly fires them, it is the americans who will reportedly get them to their intended targets. I don't think there is any moral debate in Ukraine hitting Russia with missiles. After all it is a war fought by Russia against an Ukraine which has Nato proxy support. But it is an escalation nevertheless.
It is now up to Russia on how to respond. And as you noted, one scenario being talked about, at least in social media, is some groups houthis, hezbollah or others getting Russian missiles and those being fired at western targets, ships or others. And I assume it would be Russian military who would control the targetting in that case depending on the missiles used. Or the Russians don't go for direct escalation with the intent of not jeopardizing the chances of Trump ending support to Ukraine in few months from now.
But either way Russia's deterrence against Nato has been challenged yet again, and the chances of escalations and counter-escalations going out of hand remains a more nearer scary possibility in the unfolding scenario in process.
We need to make clear we have the cards. Russia invited us to slaughter the forces sent in in 2014 by making them deniable. They backed down when Turkey downed one of their jets. The instant they feel real force they back down.
> Joint statement by the Foreign Ministers of Finland and Germany on the severed undersea cable in the Baltic Sea
> We are deeply concerned about the severed undersea cable connecting Finland and Germany in the Baltic Sea. The fact that such an incident immediately raises suspicions of intentional damage speaks volumes about the volatility of our times. A thorough investigation is underway. Our European security is not only under threat from Russia‘s war of aggression against Ukraine, but also from hybrid warfare by malicious actors. Safeguarding our shared critical infrastructure is vital to our security and the resilience of our societies.
It can also mean that Russia is posturing and retaliating for the US's announcement that Ukraine can strike inside Russia with US missiles. This feels more like the same kind of exercise that North Korea does with their missile tests than it does an actual invasion.
I never really liked the whole sabotage is just "posturing" opinion.
Like there's real physical stuff destroyed (or in most circumstances digital stuff). How hard is it to impound ships that break stuff and etc so that the ones responsible are actually punished?
Probably no harder than impounding illegal unsafe unregistered oil shipping transports making their way through the Baltic->Black sea right now, evading sanctions.
Possibly, but only by hours—the news about the missile announcement was on Sunday afternoon, and the cable was cut Sunday morning. But it's unclear when the policy was actually communicated to Ukraine and Russia almost certainly found out about it immediately after Ukraine did (or even before).
yes. What Russia does currently is probing and testing - what it takes to disrupt all the necessary cables simultaneously to create communication breakdown and a lot of chaos, what resources and time it takes to repair (and thus planning the options on blocking those repair resources, etc.) It takes tanks half-a-day to cross the Baltic states to reach the sea. That is the time Russia wants to buy. Once Russian forces are already in Riga, Tallinn, Vilnus, the NATO will have a decision to make on whether to bomb the Russian forces already placed by that time among the Baltic states population.
> Once Russian forces are already in Riga, Tallinn, Vilnus, the NATO will have a decision to make on whether to bomb the Russian forces already placed by that time among the Baltic states population.
NATO has forward deployed forces to assure that to take Riga, Tallin, and Vilnius, Russia will have to attack and defeat armed forces of the UK, Canada, and Germany respectively. More than that, really, those are just the lead nations in the NATO forward-deployed battlegroups in those countries. There are also five other forward-deployed battlegroups, four of which — as well as reinforcement of the original four in the Baltics + Poland – were deployed in response to the 2022 Russian escalation in Ukraine.
Cutting undersea cables is not going to prevent (or even meaningfully slow) a response given that.
Baltic states have 30K military total combined - Russia loses 20-30K/month in Ukraine. So, with all the respect to the Baltic states military - with them being responsible for the defense of about 700km long strip of land, it isn't about full invasion force, it is about having NATO not responding long enough.
You're comparing frontal assault on battle hardened troops vs. potentially highly maneuvering invasion. It is somewhat like comparing Harkiv operation in the Fall 2022 vs. counteroffensive in the South in the Summer 2023.
In Kursk Russian forces can't maneuver much, they have to directly push on Ukrainians. The density of Russian and Ukrainian forces in this war - like ~500K each on the 1000km of the battle lines - is order of magnitude higher than that of the Baltic states militaries. Potential invasion in the low density situation of the Baltic states would make sense by cutting through un/low-defended areas with encircling/etc. of the more fortified areas without direct assault of them, at least initially.
If fighting starts in the Baltics (or Poland) Russia will face the greatest air force in the world fairly quickly. The conventional conflict will be over in a few months. Hopefully it will not escalate into nuclear conflict.
I would imagine at least US Air Force getting involved. And that would mean Russia will be pushed out of Baltics fairly quickly (assuming the conflict remains a conventional conflict and does not escalate into nuclear conflict).
Nice try. Almost like the "perfect phone call" never happened. Except it did.
Apparently you haven't seen the map going around with Trump's proposed solution. Ukraine gives up all of what Russia is occupying right now, and doesn't keep Kursk. Ukraine can't join NATO for "20 years" (aka never). "European" troops are supposed to sit on a "DMZ" (which they will never agreed to).
Aka Ukraine surrenders, and Russia will just organize a hybrid-warfare coup to get a Lukashenko-style puppet gov't back in in Ukraine. Or come back in with troops in a few years.
Basically it's crappy bargaining, from a weak president. If you were Putin, and you saw that map... why stop now? You'd be laughing. No consequences.
Trump is a puppet not so much of Putin, but of the oil and gas sector. And Russia is an energy superpower. They both speak on behalf of the same global financial interests. They are very tired of this conflict and care little about Ukraine.
I cannot see Trump playing along with an Article 5 reaction to Russian aggression. And Putin is not stupid enough to use direct conventional warfare against a NATO state anyways. It's just more and more hybrid provocations, to wear down western solidarity, to topple gov'ts or undermine response, and all excused by useful idiots in the west.
Apparently you haven't seen the map going around with Trump's proposed solution.
Because apparently there isn't one. It seems some Republican "strategist" put out a map, but it has since been disavowed by the incoming administration.
"Bryan Lanza was a contractor for the campaign," said the spokesperson, who declined to be named. "He does not work for President Trump and does not speak for him."
The Trump - Zelensky call was about discrediting Biden not about appeasing Putin. OK, moving on...
Trump is not longer Putin's puppet but the puppet "of the oil and gas sector". OK, moving on...
This thread is about about Russian military invasion in the Baltics and you reply with "And Putin is not stupid enough to use conventional warfare against NATO".OK, moving on....
"topple govt's" - Putin cannot even topple Ukraine...
Maybe, but that's assuming their war economy lasts for that long, that they still have people to run those things, etc. Besides, Europe was caught with its proverbial pants down; in 5-10 years, they will (should) have their military up to speed again, with fresher, better equipped and better trained people than Russia has. The border countries have all upgraded their defenses already, and if they invade a NATO country they suddenly have all of Europe and - if still applicable at the time - the US on their back.
There are no scenarios in which Russia can have any significant victories. The only thing they maybe have is nukes, but nobody wins if those are deployed.
Not a single serious war. A war against Russia will be similar to ww1 and ww2. meaning men from all age groups will die in large masses. Or you believe a war will be similar to sandal terrorists.
There's no secret real russian army just waiting to invade some another country, or just chilling in Urals. If russia did not have nuclear weapons, road to moscow would be open.
What non-NATO European country are they going to invade (and hold!) as a bargaining chip?
Any how many of those tanks go straight to Ukraine? Do you think Russia can afford to stockpile tanks (and everything else necessary) for several years for an invasion of Europe while simultaneously engaged in the their current war in Ukraine?
They would not need a direct attack. Orban talked about allowing free access to any Russian citizen towards Hungary. We have seen this film yet and is called "green men 2".
They might occupy some area, sure, but if they invade a EU or NATO country they'll get that full force on top of them. And they have a lot of aircraft to deploy too; tanks have zero chance against an airstrike.
NATO cannot stop Russia in Ukraine, even with help of 1 million Ukrainian army. NATO have no enough tanks, shells, soldiers to stop 2 million army in few first weeks, even if Russians will just march with their AK-s in hands. The only thing that will stop Russia for sure is a nuclear strike. Planes are good for strikes, but ground must be captured and hold by soldiers.
> NATO cannot stop Russia in Ukraine, even with help of 1 million Ukrainian army.
I mean, they are doing pretty good for a total NATO deployment of 0 combat forces. Funny to describe the only country with troops involved as “helping” and treating the nonexistent NATO presence as the primary force.
> NATO have no enough tanks, shells, soldiers to stop 2 million army in few first weeks, even if Russians will just march with their AK-s in hands.
In the event of a Russian invasion of Eastern flank NATO members and the NATO forward-deployed battlegroups in those countries, NATO policy, unlike in Ukraine, would not restrict the use of long range weapons against command and control, logistics, and combat aviation facilities in Russia, nor would NATO forces be short on their own combat aviation to use against the invasion itself.
Ukraine isn’t NATO, and while impressive for their conditions, what Ukraine can do is not a model for what NATO can do.
Russia is at war with NATO. Ukraine is invaded because Ukraine wants to join NATO, to make NATO weaker. Same for Georgia. If Ukraine will fall, Russia will win, NATO will lose.
Long range weapons will hit hard for sure, but millions of soldiers still must be defeated in close combat to take ground. Ukraine has western tech, it good, but it not good enough when Ukrainians are outnumbered. To win the war, Ukraine must dominate in the war, but western allies fail to deliver anything that will dominate over Russia.
No, its not. Russia is at war with Ukraine. No NATO countries are fighting Russia, Russia is fighting no NATO countries.
> Ukraine is invaded because Ukraine wants to join NATO
Even if that was true, invading Ukraine is war with Ukraine, not NATO.
But it is not true, you have cause and effect reversed. Ukraine had a legal dedication to neutrality when Russia invaded in 2014, that provision was eliminated and its pursuit of NATO membership, which had been abandoned years before in favor of neutrality, resumed after the invasion. Ukraine wants to join NATO because Russia invaded it, not vice versa.
None of the western air forces are involved. In the Iraq war most of the Iraqi casualties were due to air force, not ground forces (like Iraq' Highway of Death for example). If US Air Force ever gets involved in this conflict it will be a turkey shot.
F-16 are already in Ukraine. They fail to demonstrate great results, because of Russian air defense. Both RF and Ukraine can launch glide bombs at enemy.
Eh, western militaries are holding a lot of weaponry back from Ukraine; like the vast majority of it. They have run low in a few areas that have been key in this war, like artillery shells, but that's in part because these countries haven't prioritized that production in recent history in favor of other systems.
I actually do think that the US and Europe should be moving faster to increase their military manufacturing capacity, especially Europe given the situation they are now facing. But to say that NATO countries have been throwing everything they have to Ukraine is wildly off the mark.
Conversely, I have no doubt that Lithuania's armed forces have learned from Ukraine's experience: those Russian tanks would all be destroyed within the first few kilometers.
...and that assumes Russia still has enough tanks to even mount an offensive, in sufficient numbers to capture several capital cities, belonging to nations with a fearsome grudge against them.
(Three years ago, I would have fully agreed with your assessment!)
yes. That is why Russia hasn't yet moved, and still looking for a way to do it. Russia is deliberately stuck in the past where for example the "War scare of 1927" laid ground and provided the excuse for the militarization of and repressions in USSR and ultimately to the USSR starting WWII together with and as ally of Hitler. And the first thing USSR did back then in 1939 was the "solution" of the perceived issues of the 1927 (the issues which there for the last several centuries) - Finland, Poland and the Baltic states. If you look at the current Russian TV, chats, etc. - their thinking and perception are the same as back then. For them it isn't an issue of whether to do it, it is an issue of how to do it. It took 12 years from 1927 to 1939 during which the country got prepared for the war, at least how they perceived the necessary preparations - in particular it was industrialized and the society was militarized and put completely under dictatorship, and i think we see that today too.
>The Soviet Union was right to be scared back then. The next invasion from the west happened 1941.
Not really. The USSR was scared about what they perceived as Anglo-led forces and so united with Germany against them and attacked them first. The invasion of 1941 came from Germany who was still an ally even just the night before the invasion -
Hitler even fed Stalin (and Stalin went for it!) the fake that the German forces got accumulated on the USSR border to mislead Britain into thinking that Germany plans to attack USSR while instead Germany was supposedly preparing to invade Britain.
>And I guess there is still some paranoia in Russia. The NATO Neocons are busy feeding it.
The Russian paranoia hasn't changed much since Ivan The Terrible, long before neocons.
The invasion from Nazi Germany, the USSR's ally in the invasion of Poland, and the one it signed extensive trade agreements with and helped to avoid sanctions.
yes, due to geography, success at Voznesensk basically saved Odessa and the rest of the unoccupied South. That is the point - if Russia took Odessa back then it would basically be game-over. I don't see such strategic points like Voznesensk in the Baltic states though.
There is vast difference between just driving somewhere and actually controlling it. Russia learned that in first month of the invasion. If they weren't stopped at Voznesensk, they would be stopped somewhere else - there was singular BTG driving somewhere deep into hostile territory.
I don't believe they'd be able to keep and reinforce it, given that they were only able to bypass Mykolaiv due to the early day chaos. And Mykolaiv was giving rest of russian forces there enough problems.
However, at this point it's only speculation, probably not worth getting deeper into it.
There's plenty of alternative communications systems in place and I presume the military does not depend exclusively on one, two, or even three systems, least of all the relatively vulnerable internet cables. NATO, borders, and the Russian invasion response playbooks predate the internet by decades, too.
While theoretically it's possible that Russia would simultaneously dismantle or jam the internet, mobile phones, radio, sattelite, and runners in fast cars, if that does happen it's already red alert everywhere.
> It takes tanks half-a-day to cross the Baltic states to reach the sea
And how long does it take for the F35 to fly across all Baltic States? 30 minutes at max speed. Without air supremacy, Russia would be dead in the water.
> That is the time Russia wants to buy. Once Russian forces are already in Riga, Tallinn, Vilnus, the NATO will have a decision to make on whether to bomb the Russian forces already placed by that time among the Baltic states population.
If you think Poland and Finland would sit on their hands and do nothing, you're being naive.
RF has no air supremacy in Ukraine, so they have high loses, but they advance anyway. Small or large losses will not stop an empire, except Imperial Japan maybe.
Ukraines Air Force is tiny and poorly equipped. Compare it to just the Nordics for example who are soon on hundreds of F-35 and Gripen. Staging any mass movements against that kind of air support will be challenging.
Besides NATO already has a large land based army as well. US, Turkey, Poland , Finland all have large ground forces
We can look at October 7th in Israel how long, with all the communications and infrastructure working, it took to organize defense in a very technologically developed country which basically had been living in the state of war readiness. Now add broken significant communications, chaos of non-working banks/ATMs, power shut-offs, clogged highways, etc. (don't get me wrong - i'm not saying that Russia can do all that, i'm saying that Russia is actively working on those capabilities, and whether they achieve it to the needed extent is the key to how the events would go in the near future)
I still don’t get how Oct 7 was not an inside job. With mossad crabs everywhere how do you miss such a major plot to attack with so many actors involved?
You're right, but I think there were a lot of other factors involved there unrelated to basic infrastructure. Not to get too in to politics but i think there was a lot of underestimation, dismissal of warning signals (focus was elsewhere, as you can see with how precise intelligence seems to be in Lebanon), and just bad timing for them. I don't think anyone living in Russia's shadow, seeing what is actively happening, will be that unprepared.
Hey! I woke up at 06:00 to check what was wrong with a service. It turned out, a server in Germany could not reach a server in Finland in the 20" timeout I had set.
I suggest you revisit the history of the first days of the invasion, specifically the depth which the ground armored forces reached in the first 2-3 days and what and how they were stopped. The Baltic states "width" is much smaller, and thus there is much less time to organize defense, etc. It is hardly enough time even just for taking the decision to initiate defense. Of course, like in the case with Ukraine, Russia wouldn't succeed if the quick invasion turns instead into a face-to-face war midway. That is why they are looking for a way to create blackout and chaos.
I’m sure they have a plan to deal with this and loads of NATO troops there armed to the teeth and air superiority so it will be shooting fish in a barrel. We don’t know what will happen but I’m not sure cutting the internet won’t affect Russia pretty badly too - certainly China will not be a fan of the huge disruption it will cause them too.
Russia does not have the manpower or logistics to invade anywhere (else). They have spent 2 years tossing meat-waves against Ukraine to grind them down, take a few km a week, and cause demoralization until their stooge could get into the Whitehouse and give it all to them for free.
Invading the Baltics or Poland or Sweden... not on the table.
"Hybrid" warfare, yes. But that's been going on for two decades.
Thing is: cutting people's fiber optic lines isn't going to get them out of this sanction regime.
Interestingly, Ireland is not a NATO member, so it's somewhat surprising Russia is poking around there. Although they're still EU, so maybe that's why.
Yes, there is fiber infrastructure in the Channel Tunnel [0]. I'm pretty sure that while any one good link is vastly better than zero links, no one link is sufficient to carry all traffic from/to the British Isles?
ok, so a quick check of submarine cable maps shows around two dozen from England across the channel (ignoring those to the Nordics and North America)
Would a pair of cable sets replace all of that? That's a lot of data, routing, and redundancy gone. Sure, if they had to try to make it work, they would.
But you seem to be suggesting that because there's a couple of cables in the tunnel, it's OK if the undersea links all get cut by RU/China? If so, WTAF?; you need to explain that
I mean, the UK has 20+ fibre links to other lands. If one goes down, fine, if a second goes down, it's suspicious. If a third goes down, and there are Russian ships milling about over the location of the.. yes, there goes a fourth, it doesn't take long to realise what's going on.
Now, what the British Navy would do about this I'm not precisely sure. But even to escort the ships away would put a stop to it, and the UK wouldn't be cut off.
> Can’t they tell the Russian non-combat ships (or pressure them) to get lost?
Not in international waters, which is where submarine cables are largely located.
And even if they could: The oceans are... kind of big. If it were that easy to "just patrol" shipping lanes/submarine cable tracks etc., why would piracy still be a concern?
I doubt it. It seems to be a similar problem to missile defense: When you have a lot of ground to cover and can only be in one place at a time, the defender will always be at a huge cost disadvantage compared to the attacker. That's only in one/two dimensions – add a third (submarines) and the cost imbalance shifts even more.
And even if it works, this will only give attackers pause that are deterred by attribution.
Just because it is not publicized does not mean it is not happening. Most military operations do not take along journalists, and are not reported to the press. Some are even secret.
That said, there is a limited amount that can be done in international waters without creating an international incident. Law Of The Seas, Freedom Of Navigation, etc.. It is to our advantage for example, when we want to prevent CCP's from denying access to international waters around Taiwan or Phillipines, but to Russia's advantage when scouting undersea cables in international waters.
They can field more "research" vessels than we'd typically field mil vessels, but I'd bet real money that that ratio just changed a lot in the past few weeks, as it hits the press.
Back during the cold war, there was very often a Soviet "fishing boat" trailing after any substantial US Navy fleet. Said fishing boat may have had far more antennas than any fisherman would expect, but far less interest in catching fish.
Fast forward - what would be the cost of having cheap western drones hanging around nearby, when suspected Russian assets were close to undersea cables, pipelines, and such?
Agreed that interdicting - if that means a naval or coast guard ship, or a submarine - is far more difficult and expensive.
But cheap drones can transmit "don't do that!" warnings. And also video footage of the situation. Which would seriously change both the maritime law and political situations.
>Fast forward - what would be the cost of having cheap western drones hanging around nearby, when suspected Russian assets were close to undersea cables, pipelines, and such?
If the suspicion is high enough, it's pretty standard for a US submarine or surface group to shadow whatever it is. It's free practice for the submarine crew.
This happened when the Russian ships visited cuba earlier this year.
So what's the solution ? Assign a surveillance UAV to every Russian ship parked "without a good reason" over a cable ? It would be expensive, but doable, and create a reserve of vehicles for wartime use.
The solution is to project strength and hit them where they don't expect. You are dealing with a thug, not a cost/benefit accountant, as Obama seemed to mistakenly believe. As long as they do things and we respond, nothing good will happen. They have already calculated the response and found it acceptable. Instead of this, go to the mattresses. Oh, your bridge has suddenly exploded? Shame.
It's already been settled that the trump dossier from 2016 was a work of fiction.
Why did Putin take crimea under Obama's watch, parts of Ukraine under Biden's watch, but then not make any huge moves like those while his "asset" was in the white house?
Because he needed all that time (2014-2022) to build up his forces and cash reserves.
Also, he needed a green light. Which was provided in the form of the chaotic Afghanistan pullout in 2021. Not that he was counting on it -- but once it went through, it seems very likely that tipped the scales in his mind in favor of deciding to actually go through with the full-scale invasion in 2022.
Doubtful. He needed another 8 years after an annexing Crimea to build up the Russian army? Why would he need cash reserves if he has a toadie in the white house?
Imagine how quickly ukriane would have collapsed if the US was not providing support, and the US was preventing European nations from providing support. And then imagine how well off Russia would be if there were no sanctions placed on it by America. All in all your point doesn't make sense. You don't get an asset sitting in the oval office and then not use them.
You're saying Russia couldn't have invaded Ukraine successfully in 2018, if the US and Europe were not providing support, and no sanctions were levied on Russia?
You're saying Russia couldn't have invaded Ukraine successfully in 2018
They didn't invade successfully in 2022, either. Meaning they were never able to invade successfully at any year before that. The whole war is a gigantic delusion for them, remember.
But as for evidence that they needed about 7-8 years to build their resources to a point where its regime thought they could invade successfully:
One of the pieces of evidence in favor of this view is the graph of the CBRF's (that's the Central Bank of Russia) holdings of foreign cash reserves, over the past 20 years. It shows oscillation or decline up until 2014, and then from 2014-2022, steady increases each year, resulting in a net increase from about $100b to $300b by 2022.
Military analyst say that Russia engaged in similar purchasing patterns internally (building up its reserves of shells and missile stocks, for example).
You're ignoring half of what I'm saying. In 2022, they had to deal with the US and Europe providing aid and arms to Ukraine, and sanctions levied on Russia, because they didn't have their stooge in the White House.
If they invaded in 2018, they wouldn't have had to deal with any of those things. That is, if Trump actually is a Russian agent. So why did they wait until the situation was much worse for them in order to invade?
> In 2022, they had to deal with the US and Europe providing aid and arms to Ukraine, and sanctions levied on Russia
On top of what the GP listed, there was also the post-pandemic uncertainty, soaring inflation and increase in the support of far-right/isolationist politicians in Europe. The Russians probably expected a slow start from them and a quick takeover of Kyiv[0], which would likely mean game over for a big chunk (if not all) of Ukraine. To be fair, they almost succeeded: it came down to the single battle that saved Kyiv from a quick occupation[1].
Last (but not least), there was the Putin's isolation during the pandemic when he might have read too much of Russian fascism philosophers'[2]. To me, the open all-out invasion at that time seemed very much out of his style as he had always preferred covert probing and sabotage before that.
Its also been widely reported that when Trump first met Putin he said if he invaded Ukraine, he would turn Moscow and several other cities into a parking lot. Trump in several interviews has said he warned Putin not to do it, that he would pay a very, very heavy cost and he would see to it that he would.
This is all Trump had to do.
He was able to leverage the media's reporting on him that he was reckless, dangerous and prone to rash behavior and they were convinced he was going to start WWIII with? Yeap, you guessed it, the Russians. Putin believed what the media were reporting because Trump himself had verbally warned him.
He didn't need forces and cash. He did what OP recommended, he threatened Putin with force and Putin complied and just waited out Trump. It was a gift that Biden was elected in 2020 and if you go through the news reports, literally months after Biden was elected, Russia started massing troops on the border and readying their troops to invade. Its a strange coincidence that they didn't invade in the four years Trump was in office. He leaves and less than a year later, Russia is preparing to invade? C'mon man.
Your timeline is completely wrong.
- Biden's inauguration took place on January 2021.
- The Russians were amassing troops by December of 2021 (less than a year after he took office).
- The Afghan pullout wasn't until the Summer of 2021
- The Russian officially invaded in February of 2022
The green light wasn't needing forces and cash built up, it was Trump leaving office. The Afghan pullout had no effect on when they were going to invade since they were already massing troops and air support to the border regions where they finally launched their invasion from. Its not like the Russians decided to invade during the Afghan disaster as you insinuated, the invasion plans were already established by then.
Again, the tipping point was Trump leaving office.
> Its also been widely reported that when Trump first met Putin he said if he invaded Ukraine, he would turn Moscow and several other cities into a parking lot.
Yeah. Trump talks a lot. Like his best friend, Melon.
“They're all saying oh he's a nuclear power, it's like they're afraid of him,” Trump said in a recording of the phone conversation with Daly. “You know, he was a friend of mine, I got along great with him. I say, Vladimir, if you do it, we're hitting Moscow. We're going to hit Moscow. And he sort of believed me like 5 per cent, 10 per cent - that's all you need.”
He's also said the same thing in several interview. That he told Putin he would make it very difficult to take Ukraine and it cost them economically and militarily. You can infer that meant could mean several things depending on your point of view.
Trump says that he wants to finish "fundamentally reevaluating NATO's purpose and NATO's mission", and "the greatest threat to Western Civilization today is not Russia. [...] It's the Marxists who would have us become a Godless nation worshipping at the altar of race, and gender, and environment." I take that as a pretty clear stance that he wants to help Russia this term by dismantling or weakening NATO and creating too much infighting within America to worry about defending allies from Russia
"We" already screwed their pipeline, what's left? Provide Ukraine with the means to blow up the Kerch bridge maybe? They're the ones that could legitimately do that sort of escalation.
The other pipelines. Their shadow oil fleet. There are lots of options. But to my knowledge, only the British, French and Americans are capable of the long-range clandestine operations.
The "problem" of Western countries is that the political sphere operates under different moral compasses: like taking down a shadow fleet tanker would be a natural disaster... taking down many would mean many disasters.
The real question is, should security and defense concerns be placed on hold? If our basic freedoms and rights are being attacked, how big of a deal would be a shadow fleet tanker catastrophe?
If something bad happened to a mostly empty Russian shadow tanker in the Gulf of Finland, that impact is going to be mostly confined to Russia. i.e. past the major Finnish and Estonian ports.
As long as we're all playing silly only-kinda-deniable games, that's an option on the table.
Except it isn't in the Gulf of Finland but the East Sea or Soth China Sea. Most of these ships are transporting oil to China, India, Singapore, The Middle East. The only allies able to interdict most of these ships are Japan and South Korea. Japan doesn't engage in such activities after WW2 and South Korea is reluctant to because of retaliatory actions from Russia and China. Maybe they'll change course after the DPRK has sent triops into Ukraine, but don't hold your breath.
What exactly do you think we spend all that money on fast attack subs and frigates and destroyers for? Of course the US Navy (and the French and British) can interdict those ships anywhere on the high seas.
Thry do but it only benefits Ukraine. So they're the ones who should blow it up, preferably with with weapons of their own in order to avoid NATO escalation. Just lke the Moskva sinking.
If Russian leadership doesn't change there's just no chance it will stop at Ukraine. Next those sharing your sentiment will say "it only benefits Poland".
The problem is we (The US) used to swing our """nation building"""/Imperialism dick all around, coup'ing and invading whoever we want, but after Vietnam and wasting trillions bombing sand for 20 years, a lot of us have softened on the idea of forcing our desires through explosions.
Add to that a natural conservative tendency in the US to jump at isolationism whenever there's an easy excuse (the guy you like is doing the "bad thing" so you don't actually want to stop him, the war is literally somewhere else and doesn't exactly involve us)
So it's hard for people like me, who used to be pretty pacifist, to decide that yeah maybe violence is the right option sometimes?
Also, the entire time we are trying to shake off bullshit "Democrats are warhawks" nonsense from the party that did the desert bombing just because Bush wanted to defend his daddy's memory. The same people who call the Dems warhawks spent the 2000s screaming that "you're either with us or against us" and calling anti-war people pussies so I guess they don't have very good memories.
So for various reasons, some good, the US is extremely gunshy right now. Even those of us wholeheartedly in support of Ukraine, wishing we gave them a thousand Bradleys and tanks, feel uncomfortable with the idea of boots on the ground. Meanwhile Europe has forgotten what intervention is, and seems utterly unwilling to do anything, lest they have to get off their holier than thou pedestal.
Appeasement definitely doesn't work, but the middle east is full of examples of "just bomb them all" also not working very well. Everyone is very nervous. It sure seems like Russia won't stop their horseshit until someone makes them stop, but that's going to require a million dead.
Germany was told to stop buying Russian gas financing the Russian war machine by the previous Trump administration. They were told to pledge 2% of their GDP for defense, contributing more to NATO. They didn't listen. This is what happened: Ukraine got invaded, the pipeline was blown up to ensure compliance, their defense spending reachd 2% this year, more two years too late in a worse economic climate. Next year, the next Trump administration is going to demand more, because 2% is already insufficient.
Don't forget how Germany's exports of chips and machinery to places like Kyrgyzstan skyrocketed since the invasion.
> Exports of motor vehicles and motor vehicle parts to Kyrgyzstan grew particularly strongly in the first quarter, soaring more than 4,000% from a very small base to over 84 million euros...
That came after a six-fold rise in German exports to Kyrgyzstan last year following Russia's February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
I know people in Kyrgyzstan, trust me they did not suddenly become industrialized when Russia invaded
Anecdotally, as a Russian, some of my craziest interactions with foreigners who support the thugs in Russian gov, blame US/NATO for Russian aggression and totally buy the propaganda were with Germans. (Not a proper data point, just venting frustration, Germany get your act together...)
With the gov't coalition collapse in germany, there's definitely some voices that oppose western actino against russia (adf is one, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hG4bxFKBNos).
I can't help but suspect that russian influence and covert action behind the scenes, most of which might be decades in the making, is kicking into high gear.
Half of Germany was, for roughly 4 decades, a soviet puppet state. With indoctrination programs, propaganda towards the western part, cadre schools, the whole deal. And even in West Germany the soviets always had a lot of support, especially in the burgeoise (yes, the irony...) upper layers of society. Socialism and communism weren't just invented here out of thin air and such.
This means that a good part of especially the general former East German population as well as the academic and cultural upper class are left-leaning (in USian terms: deep red communists), soviet/russia-supporting and antiamerican by default. This got even stronger the farther we got past the 1990s, because the view back on the communist times naturally lost the memories of the bad parts.
I always ask Germans which side of the wall they are from, it seems like East Germans are a bit more disillusioned or realistic but people from West parts can be ardent supporters of Putin
The Danish straits is European Waters. We fully control shipping in and out of the Baltic. International law dictates that Denmark cannot prohibit transit passage of foreign vessels unless the vessels appear to be violating the international rules on marine pollution prevention.
So Denmark can start assuming every vessel (or at least more vessels) are in violation. Russia can take that to some international court if they so desire. Inspect every ship. Question the crews. Take plenty of time doing it. Perishable goods on board will perish before reaching St Petersburg and Kaliningrad. Tankers will be refused entry, limiting or delaying export income for Russia.
There’s loads more we can do but the Russian government might just collapse if they go too far attacking western assets. They know there will be a response “at a time and place of our choosing” and cutting the Internet properly will be extremely expensive for Russia, they will have no banking system at all and we will give Ukraine weapons to attack their oil infrastructure.
The long term solution is to stop being naive about submarine cables. This is a well-known vulnerability, inevitable, and ignored. There are better alternatives now, and locally this may be temporarily re-routable. But there's no way to protect existing cables on par with something like the Hardened Intersite Cable System (HICS). I'm surprised it hasn't occurred more in the Persian Gulf area. And it could occur in western urban areas with relative ease. Most critical cabling intersect points in the US are unguarded, although may have cameras or other remote monitoring.
Treat it as the act of war that it is, and confiscate or sink the ship involved in it. If it can be done before it reaches a harbor, of course also arrest the crew.
If it happens repeatedly, declare the passage of all Russian ships (or possibly starting with ships of the type involved in the incident, allowing other shipping and giving Russia a chance to stop abusing it) "prejudicial to the peace, good order or security of the coastal State" and deny passage through territorial waters. Extend the territorial waters between Finland and Estonia to the full 12 miles without the current corridor in between.
Russia understands and responds to strength better than to diplomacy and appeasement.
>Treat it as the act of war that it is, and confiscate or sink the ship involved in it. If it can be done before it reaches a harbor, of course also arrest the crew.
The ships involved aren't warships. They're ostensibly civilian vessels. Also other people mention that accidental fiber cuts happen all the time. Are we going to drone strike Russian civilian ships on the off chance is malicious?
>Russia understands and responds to strength better than to diplomacy and appeasement.
The best way to stop someone committing war crimes is... to commit war crimes ourselves?
Is this supposed to be an argument in favor of sinking civilian ships? From the linked article:
>The sinking was a cause of embarrassment to France and President François Mitterrand. They initially denied responsibility, but two French agents were captured by New Zealand Police and charged with arson, conspiracy to commit arson, willful damage, and murder.
There seems to be consensus that this was not an accident (politicians have stated as such), and treating it accordingly would show Russia "no, you can't just pretend it was an accident and expect us to do nothing".
On the off chance it actually is an accident at some point - that's the downside (for Russia) of having pretend-accidents too many times.
The alternative is ignoring it "because we can't be sure" until we get to ignore the "little green men" that totally aren't Russian when they come across the border...
I’m certain the sea is as mapped as you can possibly imagine, cutting say 50% of cables would lead to a lot of Russian ships sinking and a ban on them entering western waters. Their equipment is absolutely shit compared to ours and we know exactly where it all is. Surely they have been told this is a declaration of war which clearly they are scared of too.
According to CNN reporting, the US is already keeping track of Russian ships near critical submarine infrastructure. Chances are that they already have a prime suspect as to what ship or ships have been engaged in this.
The solution is to refuse passage of the ships to\into Russian part of the Baltic. Naval blockade. But it is impossible as so many Russian-backed politicians are elected in EU. And all other doesn't have a strong will or doesn't care about Russian threat. No Churchill\Reagan types are there.
Well, since Russia has nothing to gain from such actions, you might want to assign surveillance on some other parties in case. But yes, I suppose surveillance might act as some form of deterrence.
It's harder to get false identification then people on the internet think.
But also the Russian MO has never been to do things where it's not obvious they did it: the spate of critics of the Russian government dying by falling out of windows isn't because they lack creativity in assassinating people.
You don't need false documents, buying and operating a ship that has no direct ties to Russia and is registered at an other country isn't that hard at all. Of course yeah, if suddenly if cables get cut 10x more often that they used to it be pretty obvious who is behind it regardless.
> has never been to do things where it's not obvious they did
They could still shot them or something like that, the window thing still grants them some plausible deniability. e.g. the ship that (unclear if intentionally) damaged the cables last year was Chinese.
> You don't need false documents, buying and operating a ship that has no direct ties to Russia and is registered at an other country isn't that hard at all
You literally just described a program of falsifying documents! If you're buying and operating a ship, then to have "no ties to Russia" while using Russian money, someone is showing up with forged paperwork or some off-the-books bribes to make that happen.
Drawing down those sorts of sums from a country's treasury isn't something you can actually just "do" - people have to take actions, funds transferred, meetings held and operations authorized.
You are describing a system of resources which likely does exist, but is by no means easy to use or acquire and would not be expended unnecessarily.
Again, I'm not sure getting a ship registered (or just buying one) in a random island country through a shell company would be that hard.
> funds transferred, meetings held and operations authorized.
It's Russia... I doubt there would be a lot oversight. But they might just as well get the money from one of the "private" companies run by Putin's cronies with zero direct involvement by the Russian government.
Anyway, I still think that acquiring the ship itself is still a relatively trivial problem to solve.
>It's harder to get false identification then people on the internet think.
The US can barely enforce its sanctions against Iran. Despite the sanctions, they can still move tens of billions of oil proceeds. What makes you think any country is going to be any more successful at preventing Russia from renting a rogue ship?
Dumb question but my assumption is fiber optic cables could be “tapped”? But the disruption would be noticeable when monitoring the cable. Could you just tap it when you cut it and when it hooked back up that’s the new baseline with the tap in place? That would seem more of a logical reason then a country just randomly cutting lines to me?
Hybrid warfare - the infrastructure is offline, and the repair resources are consumed. And you gather intel what the resource impact and offline time is.
Message - we can do this. Now think what else we can do.
Of course the message is also pushing EU closer to war footing. But China and Russia don’t see it that way - they think the lack of popular outcry means weakness.
That wasn't the case in the past. Events over the past 15 years have resulted in most companies encrypting all traffic between datacenters (due to the perceived risk). TLS between consumers and companies is probably at an all time high though due to a push for end-to-end encryption.
TLS doesn't help here, because state actors (including China, Russia) own trusted root certificates, which allow them to TLS-terminate for _any_ website they choose and silently decrypt/MITM the traffic.
TLS offers quite good protection actually: Anytime they create fraudulent certificates they risk burning their CA. Attacks need to be very targeted to keep risk of detection low. Due to Certificate Transparency, hiding attacks got even harder. And for sites that use cert pinning, the attack doesn't even work in the first place.
And eavesdrop is one thing but I'm not clear how you could MITM an undersea cable without the operators noticing.
Except it's not silent because you need to expose your misissued certificate every time. Sure, the average joe won't spot it, but all it takes is one security researcher to expose the whole thing. AFAIK there are also projects by google and the EFF to monitor certificates, so the chances of you getting caught are really high. Combined with the fact that no such attacks has been discovered, makes me think that it probably doesn't occur in practice, or at least is only used against high value targets rather than for dragnet surveillance.
These things get encrypted at a lower layer, macsec. At the transport layer it's all transparent. No need for TLS between your servers, that's just wasted overhead.
You typically encrypt anyway because you just lease the line and buy the b/w. It's operated by a different company and you share the wire with other customers.
It should be around 25 ms in normal conditions. That's what I got when pinging Hetzner in Germany, from Finland, when the cable was still in use and when using a connection that routes through the cable.
I am don't use Hetzner, but I use ssh between Finland and Germany every day. As a matter of fact even back and forth because of tunneling. After reading the news this morning (Hetzner incident is date 3:30 UTC) I was surpised that I had not noted any lag. It remained very reponsive all day.
I have a persistent VPN tunnel between Finland and Germany and I’ve not noticed really any disruptions. If it had cut out for even a moment, it would’ve interrupted my services (since they don’t recover gracefully at the moment) and I would’ve found out.
I think it is slightly higher than normal. I remember getting 30-40ms pings to germany in recent years. 45-55ms is around the range it used to be in early 2010's before the direct cable from finland to germany was built.
If you want to know if they are affected, search for "Looking glass hetzner". It will help you better than ICMP PING.
See https://bgp.he.net/AS24940 for example.
It'd be nice to see stories about a western navy or two getting off its butt, and actually trying to discourage "accidents" which damage critical infrastructure.
Alas, some would rather let criminal governments invade sovereign countries, commit acts of global sabotage and murder dissidents all over the world rather than take any action at all to dissuade them. Peace through appeasement is likely to work as well as it has at any other point in history.
Right? Turns out having a spine is really annoying and inconvenient for the ruling class who now find themselves actually having to fend off interlopers.
I'm not convinced that cutting an internet cable - even a vital one - results in more actual death and human misery than actual bombs falling on urban centers.
There is a point where this kind of aggression, left unchecked, may ultimately lead to actual bombs falling on urban centers. It's already happening in the Ukraine. The global peace we all enjoy in the West is based on the idea that the price of aggression is higher than the benefits.
Also: Internet cables today, essential power distribution cables tomorrow. Infrastructure is fragile, and human lives will eventually be at stake.
I mean, you're not wrong. And in general, this is ... high-stakes bullying. And if you let them get away with this, I agree that they'll keep pushing the boundary, even more than they already have;
There is a point where this kind of aggression, left unchecked, may ultimately lead to actual bombs falling on urban centers. It's already happening in Ukraine. The global peace we all enjoy in the West is based on the idea that the price of aggression is higher than the benefits.
"this kind", "left unchecked", "may ultimately"; that's three levels of maybes used to defend a definitive "are more dangerous" claim, not exactly inspiring rigour.
I'd prefer if the devs added resilience to network outage over having navies fight each other...
Especially as navies are just fundamentally not constructed to defend extended things like a cable: starting a war over them is the best way to ensure every cable is cut.
Cables getting cut is only dangerous because it’s an escalation that may lead to bombs. There aren’t thousands of civilians dying because Finland doesn’t have high speed fibre to Germany.
>>"“We put in place a National Maritime Information Centre in about 2010 and we needed a Joint Maritime Operations Coordination Centre alongside it, because we said very firmly we have to take threats to our territorial seas and exclusive economic zone very, very seriously.
They are now in place, which is good, but they need to be really reinforced and the departments involved need to fully man them, because otherwise we are not going to be able to counter what is a very real and present threat and could cause major major damage to our nation.”" [0]
Looks like a pretty transparent hint on how response to the recent US/UK/France permission to use long-range missiles against the Russian territory could look like. The Nord Stream sabotage has opened Pandora's box almost exactly how it was predicted in Cryptonomicon.
It didn't open a pandoras box, Russians are very creative in the escalation warfare. It was known for quite a bit of time that Russians were mapping these cables out. They are probably, like always, just testing to see the response (rather lack of it).
"You can't seriously be telling me that governments are threatening to--"
"The Chinese have already done it. They cut an older cable--first-generation optical fiber--joining Korea to Nippon. The cable wasn't that important--they only did it as a warning shot. And what's the rule of thumb about governments cutting submarine cables?"
"That it's like nuclear war," Randy says. "Easy to start. Devastating in its results. So no one does it."
"But if the Chinese have cut a cable, then other governments with a vested interest in throttling information flow can say, 'Hey, the Chinese did it, we need to show that we can retaliate in kind.' "
"Is that actually happening?"
"No, no, no!" Avi says. They've stopped in front of the largest display of needlenose pliers Randy has ever seen. "It's all posturing. It's not aimed at other governments so much as at the entrepreneurs who own and operate the new cables.”
Probably yet another case of fish trawlers or some dumbass freighter captain not reading the sea charts before dropping their anchor.
I'm all for finally showing the Russians a response for their covert warfare... but this is not the right opportunity. This kind of situation happens many times every year (and the causes are almost always the same, with a few cases of submarine landslides or seismic events).
> "it’s obvious this wasn’t an accidental anchor drop.”
If it's "he who shall not be named", gotta admit, that's a clever strategy: ramp up sabotage and see how NATO/EU will feel about their "red lines", and how well does that article 5 really work in practice. Is it worth more than the paper it's printed on? Let's find out!
People have been laughing at the West crossing multiple Russian "red lines" and the Russians not doing anything. So the Russians can follow a similar route: a cable torn here, a warehouse blows up there, maybe a bank website is hacked, water supply or power station company blows up "randomly". Is anyone going to launch nuclear bombs because of that? That's absurd, of course not, yet NATO/EU just looks weak and pathetic in the process.
Ideally, these countries should ramp up similar acts of sabotage on the Russian territory if they confirmed that's exactly who it is. A dam fails in Siberia, maybe the payment system goes down for a week, a submarine catches on fire while in port for repairs. Honestly I don't think they have the guts to do that.
Some regimes only speak the language of power. They have to be believably threatened; calling them on phone to chat and beg for them to behave, is just showing more weakness. Scholz just called Putin. Anyone remember Macron talking with Putin for tens of hours at the start of the war? A lot of good that did. When they see a credible fist in front of their nose, that's the only way they'll stop.
Ask yourself, when was the last time a nation officially declared war?
It doesn't happen anymore for legal reasons.
NATO will 100% not be the first to declare war despite even very serious provocations. Maybe they'll take a leaf out of Russia or Israel's book and declare a 'special' or 'limited' operation though...
> Maybe they'll take a leaf out of Russia or Israel's book
As you yourself just pointed out a few lines line above this, there's no need to take a leaf out of anybody else's book: all the US' and NATO wars of the past decades have been presented as "special operations": e.g. the war against Serbia, the war against Iraq, the war against Afghanistan, etc.
NATO's operation in Serbia actually prevented an imminent genocide in Kosovo. Serbs were emboldened by their "successes" in Croatia and Bosnia, and it took that long for the EU and NATO to finally summon up enough courage to do something proactive.
Comparing Russia to Serbia, the cliff of inaction seems almost insurmountable.
If you want to, I think you can invade Russia without declaring war, because the Korean war is still unresolved, and North Korea's military is active in Russia.
Just claim your advisors to South Korea are taking care of extra-territorial combatants from that war. No reason to declare a war on Russia when it's clearly part of the existing conflict.
> NATO will 100% not be the first to declare war despite even very serious provocations.
But if it doesn't declare war, it now looks weak. That article 5 isn't worth very much all of the sudden. At the same time it's stupid to start WW3 over a village in the Baltics, a town in Romania, a cut cable or a few blown up warehouses. The Russians took the same "red line" idea and are playing it against the NATO and the EU. I can't interpret as any other way. And on one level, it sort of works.
> Maybe they'll take a leaf out of Russia or Israel's book and declare a 'special' or 'limited' operation though...
I'd like to believe. But remembering how much hand wringing was needed to send a few tanks to Ukraine and some F-16. Somehow, I doubt they'll be able to do anything as bold as a "special" military operation against Russia. Heck, they can't even provide air defense for Ukraine's skies. (As in use NATO's own defense systems to stop the Russians destroying apartment buildings). That's the point the Russians are providing. They are destroying NATO's reputation without even trying to too much, and I posit, so far it works.
13th largest backed by the whole NATO and other US-aligned countries. They send almost everything they can outside of nuclear weapons, the most cutting edge military tech, and people (well, outside of a limited contingent of "advisors"). Let's be honest, without this backing the war would've ended in the first month as was drafted in Istanbul.
> Let's be honest, without this backing the war would've ended in the first month as was drafted in Istanbul
The West didn't really help Ukraine in the first month [1]. We thought the Russian army was competent and would ride into Ukraine like we did in Iraq. It wasn't until after the weakness was made apparent that aid started dripping in.
Ukraine repelled a Russian invasion on its own. Our generations-old anti-air systems are downing their latest weapons. Meanwhile, our generations-old missiles are taking out their state-of-the-art systems.
To the degree Russia has been able to claim any victory, it's in not being demolished. That's the standard. Not winning. Simply surviving.
The West was actively supplying Ukraine since 2014, especially after the Debaltsevo embarrassment. Yes, it pales in comparison to the post 2022 levels, but it still was far from insignificant. Even your Wikipedia link lists a lot of pre-2022 aid and I am pretty sure this page is far from being comprehensive.
And it's even without mentioning the direct role of Boris Johnson in tanking the Istanbul accords.
Stil far from closing the gap between the 6th and 13th largest armies. Russia invaded an inferior force and got stymied. This would be like America's Vietnam being Cuba, where we fully committed the U.S. military and economy to the task and still continued to fail. The fact that Russia has never even established air superiority knocks it out of the category of running a modern military.
The Russian military doctrine is quite different from the US one. It places far more importance on artillery and anti-air forces than on air superiority. The Russian army clearly sucks at maneuver warfare and together with the unrealistically optimistic views which were prevalent in the Russian government (read Putin), it explains perfectly well the extremely poor performance in the first months. The performance in the recent months shows results of a more "comfortable" for the Russian army mode of warfare.
Also note that the Russian army was not "fully committed", it was not using conscripts (there was a small scale deployment of conscripts, but after the public scandal they were quickly removed from Ukraine) and did not fully pull forces from all its military districts.
Meanwhile Ukraine was fighting in the total war mode from the first days (they do not pull "recruits" from streets in the broad daylight into military buses just for the fun of it) with huge external support. And having the well trained by the West ideologically charged army backbone with 8 years of practical warfare experience has helped immensely in the first months.
> Meanwhile Ukraine was fighting in the total war mode from the first days (they do not pull "recruits" from streets in the broad daylight into military buses just for the fun of it) with huge external support
Did they do that during the first few months of the war? I recall them having more volunteers than they could use in the early days.
At the moment, Russia has fully conquered (and integrated into their nation) 20% of the largest country in Europe. They seem intent on going for about 50% of it.
US cannot claim a single victory in the past 4 decades, it's been debacle after debacle.
> US cannot claim a single victory in the past 4 decades, it's been debacle after debacle
Militarily? You've got to be joking. Russia is still struggling with the military part of the campaign.
Russia's "top of the line" weapons are routinely being potted by decades-old NATO kit. They are a spent force, conventionally. The military turned from a fighting force into a propaganda tool, aimed at projecting masculinity to a domestic audience over maintaining martial capability.
The problem in the West is there are a lot of Soviet-era talking heads who make money when Russia gets attention. There is no money to be made if Russia is a loser. So it's in the interest of that foreign policy wing to trump up Moscow as if it's a competent military versus the dumpster fire that it is without Pyongyang and Tehran.
Technically no, but a more forthright assessment would be: "Russia has been winning the war of attrition, but very slowly, and only for the past year. At current rates, it would take several decades to reach Kyiv. Meanwhile, for the sake of these extremely modest gains, it's spending about 10 percent of its GDP."
Yes, that's basically accurate. Russia has a huge advantage in manpower and equipment, and has been using that to gradually take more territory. Ukraine will have to achieve about an 8:1 casualty ratio in order to achieve an outright battlefield victory, which they haven't been able to do even with foreign military aid. A more realistic goal is basically to inflict enough Russian casualties that domestic political and economic pressures force a withdrawal from most of the occupied territory. That's not impossible but it's kind of a long shot.
Another approach which is more likely to work is for NATO countries to step up and really hurt Russia through every means short of war. That mainly means finding a way to reduce their fossil fuels export income.
I don't remember desert storm being a debacle, but maybe I missed it. Certainly arming Iraq in the 80s and fighting them in the 90s was problematic, but you know things happen.
The 2000s invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were pretty successful. The holding of Afghanistan and Iraq, not so much. Russia doesn't seem to be having nearly the level of success in invading Ukraine (although invading Crimea seemed to be pretty successful).
Zero substance? It was reported by Ukrainska Pravda (and Ukraine is far from being famous for its freedom of press) not by some Russian propaganda outlet. It's the same as saying that WSJ citing "sources" has zero substance.
Regardless, you can believe that the West did not provide any assurance to Ukraine during the Istanbul talks and that Russia has blown its own pipeline. It's your right.
It was speculated as a possibility by that article, but then it was looked into by others, quite thoroughly, and the narrative fell apart. That happens, you know.
The Foreign Affairs article in the aforementioned thread has a pretty good writeup about the whole thing, if you are interested.
You can believe that Russia has blown its own pipeline
You can change the subject as many times as you want, and speculate, falsely, about what you think other people believe about random topics, all day long if you want.
But this has absolutely no bearing on what we were just talking about.
> They send almost everything they can outside of nuclear weapons
Equipment from the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s isn't "almost everything they can outside of nuclear weapons."
But you're 100% right, Ukraine should have received more, especially because we asked them to surrender their nuclear deterrence.
There is still a lot of equipment Ukraine could use, like long-range cruise missiles would help them a lot to stop from being attacked by Russia long-range cruise missiles.
>They send almost everything they can outside of nuclear weapons, the most cutting edge military tech, and people (well, outside of a limited contingent of "advisors")
We sent a couple hundred tanks, out of 8k. We sent a couple hundred Bradleys, out of 6k. We sent literally expiring missiles. We sent the tanks missing it's best armor, because we are squeamish about giving away uranium I guess. We sent a few extremely dated F16s, instead of the thousand F35s we have. One of the main ways things were donated to Ukraine was former Soviet powers donating their old trash and getting IOUs from NATO to replace it.
With this sample platter of western equipment, Ukraine has dragged a supposed bear to its knees. With this smattering of 80s vintage, anti-soviet equipment, Ukraine has forced Russia to massively draw down their old soviet inheritance to replace the 2500 Russian tanks lost (plus several hundred essentially donated to Ukraine a couple years ago) and 1000 AFVs destroyed, and nearly 4000 IFVs destroyed.
Like it's not some bombastic victory of course because both sides are so short on equipment that it's basically 1 million men vs 1 million men, and Russia CAN build artillery shells in quantity, so they are advancing at a snails pace in some areas.
But the insane ROI on vintage NATO equipment is hilarious. The Soviets were always afraid of the West invading them, and it appears their opinion was accurate, they would have had a very very bad time. We built this stuff to mulch soviet equipment, and boy were we good at that.
The Patriot is old enough to have been embarrassed during the first gulf war by a SCUD missile. HIMARS/ATACMS is even older. The tanks and Bradleys we sent are the scraps that didn't get upgraded after Desert Storm.
> They send almost everything they can outside of nuclear weapons
Oh come on now, you know this isn't true. The US and it's allies have a mountain of military tech they haven't sent for a variety of good and bad reasons. Ukraine regularly begs for more and better weapons, if they were "sent almost everything" would they be begging for more?
That's exactly how the Russians perceive the EU. They are perceived as weak. There is no way they would have started the invasion if they were afraid of them. They are engaging in asymmetrical warfare because they are convinced they can demonstrate that to the world as well "look what we are doing there and well we get is phone calls form Sholz" [1]
> Scholz condemned the war of aggression against Ukraine
> The German leader called on Putin to withdraw Russian troops from Ukraine ...
Russia is absolutely in a full war time economy at the moment. There's nothing left to squeeze out of it and they're headed for a meltdown in 2025/2026.
> Russia is absolutely in a full war time economy at the moment.
So it would seem.
> There's nothing left to squeeze out of it and they're headed for a meltdown in 2025/2026.
Promises, promises. By the time 2026 rolls around, nobody will remember this comment to tell you how wrong you were.
I mean, you could be right. Who knows. The point is the future is uncertain, and using predictions as proof or arguments is stupid. Nobody knows what's going to happen 2 years out.
Did you know ahead of time they would get NK soldiers, NK artillery ammo, Iranian drones? What if Putin finds some clever ways of compensating for the losses? He's actively trying to improve his situation, not just sitting on his ass watching, as these predictions imply.
And what if an asteroid destroys all the Russian forces..then what?
Current Russian interest rates are 21% on cash, 15% on 10 year bonds[1] and the government is increasing spending on the war.[2]
The wheels aren't going to come off immediately, but they've been reaching the peak of their ability.
Or to put it another way: you're not clever for going "nah uh" and there's no such thing as magic. For the next 3 years Russia's economy is being tossed at the war entirely, and every dollar which is is coming at the expense of everything else.
And this is all based on the heavily massaged Kremlin figures: they're not easy to lie about, but they're certainly also only ever going to be reported to try and shape a message of the type you're now parroting: you can't win so don't even try, Kremlin-strong, authoritarianism is just plain tougher then you decadent westerners.
> That might look like a "power move" by Germany but it looks absolutely weak in the eyes of Putin
Calling and talking with Putin as acting as some kind of "power broker" or "decider" (Bush junior's classic). I think that's the context there. That's after years of hand wringing, should we help, or shouldn't help, maybe help, but not too much and so on.
> Europe has been weak. The difference is Russia is weak while trying its hardest. Europe is weak because it can't bother to try
I agree, and I don't know if now it finally woke up or it hasn't yet. It's not over till it's over, as they say.
Poland at least seems awake. They are gobbling up Korean tanks and artillery. Poland has seen this story play out and they are tired of being the butt of the joke.
If Europe won't protect Poland, Poland will defend itself.
That Russian ideology is stuck in 19th century / WWI-era imperial mentality is their own problem. How they "perceive" Europe is their own concern.
Europe mostly learned its lessons after WWII and is more interested in commerce and trade, not in battling over colonial possessions and ethnic partitioning. The games that the US (in Iraq, Syria etc.) and the Russians are playing have had nothing but negative effects on the world. US poked the hornets nest in Iraq/Syria and now Europe has had a refugee crisis for 10+ years. Russia butchering Ukraine the same.
It looks more like they are just winning their war by the most effective means they have at their disposal.
To say that Russia is just being a nuisance.... They have just won a war. That is clear as day now.
Trump's election is the nail in the coffin. Immediately we saw Schultz call Putin and Zelensky declare that the war will be over early next year - implying a negotiated settlement.
It's done. The Russians won. Exactly what they won is all that is to be decided.
Won the war? Putin lost his political goals the first month. Everything since then has just been a very slow (and literal) death animation.
Putin has destroyed Russia's population pyramid and driven away all sensible educated people. Their society is screwed for a generation.
Trump is a wildcard and may try to pressure Putin if he thinks it will get him the Nobel Peace prize he so desperately desires. But even the most conciliatory Trump cannot save Russia now.
Poland is building an extremely strong army, and is having none of Russia's BS.
Rutte is head of NATO now, and he has peace as his nr. 1 goal.
There are so many ads for cybersecurity and military on tv here in the Netherlands.
Ukraine received ATACMS (long range missiles) a while ago. This is why they are able to invade Russia back.
We are "weak" because Putin has been destabilising our peaceful politics over the past 20 years.
Russia isn't a fucking bear, it's a drunk wasteland with plenty natural resources, but with fucked up leadership. The Russian oligarchy is desperate, and it's showing.
And yes, I _am_ mad. I am 100% going to protect the EU. What we have and what we had is beautiful, and my Russian friends and my Ukrainian friends deserve better.
I am picking up math, Nix, ML, geopolitics, nature, sports and more because of these idiots in Russia. And I'm exactly what they fear most. A transgender person.
EU as a whole has actually been weak in terms of military capability and perhaps also civil defence. The end of the Cold War and the long peace had allowed a lot of us to believe that there wouldn't be a foreseeable risk of military conflict or a need to seriously prepare against aggression. Many European countries cut back significantly on their military spending and capability. And that seemed like a reasonable and popular thing to do given the circumstances.
(Countries in Eastern Europe were perhaps the exception and didn't cut back, at least not so much.)
The problem is that defensive capability cannot be just built all of a sudden if it turns out to be needed after all.
Of course the reason that has become a problem is Putin's aggression and authoritarian rule.
But Europe has indeed been weak in the sense of not having maintained defensive capability. Perhaps that is, both fortunately and unfortunately, changing. (Fortunately for obvious reasons, unfortunately because it means significant spending on something that should not be necessary even though it is.)
Hopefully EU societies will remain strong and resilient in the sense they've been strong all along: strong civil society and democracy.
> Russia isn't a fucking bear, it's a drunk wasteland with plenty natural resources, but with fucked up leadership. The Russian oligarchy is desperate, and it's showing.
It doesn't matter. It attacked one of the largest countries in Europe, captured territory and is still holding it and making progress. Right under EU's nose. It can brutally throw men in the meat grinder and doesn't worry too much about it. Calling Putin like Sholz did or like Macron didn't help. Showing him a fist that's ready to strike, only that works. Anything else is showing weakness.
> We are "weak" because Putin has been destabilising our peaceful politics over the past 20 years.
The weakness is not accidental, they've been weaving in their agents all over the place and shaping public opinion. Now they are engaged in asymmetrical warfare. Germany has been doing deals with the Russians buying gas and oil from them. Merkel laughed at the US for being worried about it:
> The weakness is not accidental, they've been weaving their agents and shaping public opinion. Now they are engaged in asymmetrical warfare. Germany has been doing deals with the Russians buying gas and oil from them. Merkel laughed at the US for being worried about it:
Yep.. When Merkel was German chancellor, I thought she was amazing. Not a big fan anymore :(
> It doesn't matter. It attacked one of the largest countries in Europe, captured territory and is still holding it and making progress. Right under EU's nose. It can brutally throw men in the meat grinder and doesn't worry too much about it. Calling Putin like Sholz did or like Macron didn't help. Showing him a fist that's ready to strike, only that works. Anything else is showing weakness.
Yeah. I agree. Putin is not interested in anything but power. And he doesn't listen to anything but power. Europe is slow and timid, but the impacts of ww2 are still deeply embedded in our cultural memory.
> Or to paraphrase Vladimir Kara-Murza, democracy will come to Russia. So far the west has been better off letting Putin tie his own noose.
Unfortunately the noose is a tie and it's soaked in Ukrainian blood so far.
Of course Ukrainians should be grateful for the help they got, and no doubt they are. But they should also be worried about how little they got and based on that rate where this war will eventually end. I am afraid it will end with bleeding all of Ukraine. I wish Western leaders, especially West European leaders were more bold. Where are the Margaret Thatchers, François Mitterrands, and Helmut Kohls of yesteryear. We got milquetoast Sholzs and Macrons instead.
Putin would not be where he is without the support of China. And China has plenty of levers that the west can press without needing to do sabotage or war. 15% of China's exports go the US. EU another 15% or so.
The west won the cold war without firing a shot or blowing any bridges or sinking any ships.
I do agree Putin will change course if he feels he can lose power but it's not clear how pressure on Russia leads to that. He holds the country in his iron fist. He's not going to care about losing some ships or bridges as long as he thinks that he can come up ahead in the long run. He'll just use that as motivation to send even more soldiers to Ukraine and ramp up arms productions.
Despite all the shifts in China and in Chinese-Western relations in the last 10 years it remains the fact that the thing China cares about the most is commerce. If the spice stops flowing because of international warfare, China will not be happy.
Which is why I think it's insane that both US political parties have made "trade war with China" a major policy plank. I think the CCP is as awful as the next person, but cutting trade now means cutting leverage later.
China has had to face no consequences for their support of Russia. What I'm saying isn't about trade war with China. It's about world order. Not that the "western" world order is ideal but it's way better than Russia or China's ideas for world order.
If what you say is true then there should be no problem with China to stop supplying Russia in return for the west not cutting a similar amount of trade with them. However I think you'll be surprised to find there are things that China cares about more than commerce.
I dislike the immediate jumping to “war, sabotage, destruction!” that happened in this article. Cable breakage happens quite often, and sometimes are caused by such menial things as sea debris, or at times, sharks chewing on them [1].
I wonder how expensive it would be to bury undersea fiber cables deeper under the seabed to protect them from anchors cutting them. It might be cheaper to just install a second cable far enough away that they are unlikely to be cut at the same time.
The Swedish part of AMPRNet [0] has some ambitions to be a fallback in case of a crisis[1]. It seems cheaper and easier (a bit of an understatement) to deploy and repair, in case it gets attacked.
At Starlink altitude there is still operationally significant volumes of air. So much so that Starlinks need to altitude raise regularly. Starlink shrapnel would drop below Starlink orbit almost immediately, and completely deorbit in a month or so.
Sure, let them try down 1700+ satellites, with new being put up multiple times a week by the dozens. Cant't even cause a proper Kessler Syndrome due to the low orbit.
Getting more and more Footfall vibes these days with Spacex already having a full orbital dominance. ;-)
So to keep score, in the last year we've seen cables sabotaged between Finland and Germany, Lithuania and Sweden, Estonia and Sweden, Estonia and Finland. Any others I missed? You might say it's too early to call it sabotage, but the earliest two cable incidents were exactly the same, so it's hardly a coincidence at this point.
The point isn't that they don't do things, it's that there are people issuing a constant stream of threats and people doing things, and it's not entirely clear there is even a correlation between the two.
That is not as comforting a comparison as you might think it is.
In my experience, the problem is also that one group of people refuses to act on what the other side actually says (because it’s inconvenient/dangerous).
Hey, hold your horses. Biden also threatened to blow up the Nord-Stream 2 pipeline, yet after the sabotage, everybody said "it was Russia". Now about this incident, to be consistent, I'm inclined to think it was the Americans.
The article's only sources are "people familiar with the operation". That's a heck of a lot to take on trust, particularly considering the increasingly disjointed relationship between Ukraine and the US, and the increasingly evident reach of the Kremlin's intelligence services and supporting propaganda machinery.
The same article you link only quote "speculation" on the role of Ukraine. There is no detailed evidence of the people involved (and if some certain other agencies are involved in this).
> He said it would be "ended", meaning the one thing that it obviously means -- that it would be shut off.
When Biden said that he was talking next to the person with the power to legally shut it off, the German chancellor. If he and Biden were in agreement on that point, that Nord Stream would be shut off if Russia invaded Ukraine, why did Biden say that explicitly but not Scholz, even after being asked directly by the journalists present?
If they were not in agreement on that point, how could Biden promise that they would put an end to it?
> The reasonable, level-headed people said: "We just don't know yet".
Come on dude. He said "we will bring an end to it", and when the reporter challenged him how he's going to do this given that it's a deal between Germany and Russia, he said "I promise you we will be able to do it."
People have been convicted of murder on less evidence.
This would be an excellent time for Germany to announce that it is tripling munitions production, and that they’re going to do whatever they have to do to protect the territorial integrity of Europe. But they won’t.
Our governing coalition just split and there will be early elections (most likely) in February. Nobody has a majority right now, any anmouncement is currently unlikely. In fact our lovely head of the Government just reaffirmed that we won't send taurus to the ukraine.
These long-range missiles are a short-time tactic designed to merely hurt the Russians or prevent them from doing certain actions under threat of pain and not a real strategy. Ukraine hasn’t had any battlefield successes since the Kursk Hail Mary which failed early and is now only maintained with the hope of improving their negotiating position when the time comes.
The approval of long-range strikes by the US & co likely means that Ukraine’s position was getting even worse than expected.
Furthermore, it became clear from the leak of German military communications that it would be German soldiers who would have to operate the weapons.
All in all this seems like a case of Scholz knowing Germany’s capabilities and risks and the public overestimating the former while dismissing the latter.
Increasing armament manufacturing capacity is critical for Germany and European self-defense regardless of whether those shells go to Ukraine or just get stockpiled. Does anyone seriously think that Europe is going to avoid future warfare in a world where Russia achieves its military goals in this conflict? It's madness.
If it were critical, it would have already happened. But Germany and the EU know deep inside that this isn’t about ideology and conquest and Ukraine is a pretty unique case.
On the other hand with Germany and the EU acting so tough, Russia might believe them, so some military investment is probably wise.
There's nothing unique about Ukraine. Russia has already taken action against Georgia, and will continue to destablize the eastern half of Europe. You're either aware of this or you're in denial, which Germany obviously is. (Same people who made themselves dependent on Russian gas right before the Ukraine invasion, despite every warning to the contrary.)
But Germany and the EU know deep inside that this isn’t about ideology and conquest
Looks like an attempt to project your own views onto people you don't know.
Meanwhile, to the extent that we do have a recent, official statement from the European hive mind -- it points in the exact opposite direction of the sentiment you are attempting to assign to it, saying that "Russia is systematically attacking European security architecture". And in terms of ideology, it specifically cites the Russian regime's "reckless revisionism".
Regardless of your other points, I think approval of long range strikes has more to do with Biden doing what he can before leaving office. And leaving a calculus for Trump: keep with the policy and irk Putin and his other patrons, or cancel it and look weak and anti-Ukraine.
This decision might have been made earlier if the election hadn't been in the way.
The constant Russian interference, combined with the regular escalation from the jets patrolling, and the radar jamming, really needs to be dealt with.
We're stuck between having to do timid actions and full NATO escalation. This feels like constant creep.
The bear metaphore is indeed nonsense. Russia is not a bear, you are dealing with a bunch of state level criminals.
The state of Russia is essentially better understood as a criminal gang masquerading as a country.
Those stealing, money laundering, killing, trafficking an warring circles of oligarchs are heavily rooted in Intelligence Services, inside and abroad. Some of those oligarchs even have private militaries.
Those people primarily care for themselves. They know they can get away with a ton of insane and inhuman shit, as they calculate the other well-behaving party will back off.
They however do not want to get nuclear consequences themselves, it is pure bluff.
Those discussions are had all the time. One of downside of this bear is bear strapped with explosives that could kill us all if bear gets angry enough.
Also, once you are 12 miles offshore, technically you are in international waters and thus cannot be stopped by any Navy except your own unless there is UN Sanctions. If NATO Countries decided to violate that, it obviously opens up massive can of worms that could impact worldwide trade.
I'm completely aware, used to be involved in this stuff. In international waters, these are UNCLOS requirements to board a ship not of your Navy Flag.
(a) the ship is engaged in piracy;
(b) the ship is engaged in the slave trade;
(c) the ship is engaged in unauthorized broadcasting and the flag
State of the warship has jurisdiction under article 109;
(d) the ship is without nationality; or
(e) though flying a foreign flag or refusing to show its flag, the ship
is, in reality, of the same nationality as the warship
Which one would you like to use to board and/or force the ship to depart against Russian cable cutting ships?
> Which one would you like to use to board and/or force the ship to depart against Russian cable cutting ships?
High seas (which is what that list applies to) is not the EEZ. I don't think anybody could legally argue thar a country wouldn't have the right to board (or fire at, if it didn't comply) a foreign ship from it's coast 24 nautical miles if it suspected it was doing something illegal. Whether that right extends to the entire EEZ isn't exactly clear.
However there are no "high seas" areas in the Baltic so all of the listed items are irrelevant.
Unless the reactor is directly hit there shouldn't be any significant problems? It's not a warship so there wouldn't be any need for heavy munitions to force it to surrender.
Of course the Baltic is very shallow so if the reactor started leaking it might be a bit more problematic than if a nuclear ship/sub was sunk in the middle of the ocean.
The EEZ only applies to resource extraction. Otherwise, it is the same as high seas. What lets you board is the territorial sea, and outside that, the contiguous zone. Even then there are limits.
Also the practical reality of countries not giving a shit about any of that when someone starts breaking their shit. There is a reason Russia is knocking out European lines while leaving American ones alone.
High Seas "international water" start at after 200 nautical mile EEZ. There's a few explicit articles dealing with malicious submarine cable damage.
But IIRC the TLDR is it has to do with indemnities and putting a vessel/person up for prosecution after the fact. And it doesn't apply if cable damaged while trying to prevent injury, which RU can always claim.
More broadly I think you're correct on paper... RU damaging subsea infra is under UNCLOS is technically punishable, but after the fact. And they're not going to lol pay damages to countries that sanction them. NATO kinetically trying to prevent RU damaging subsea infra (especially in highseas), in lieu of formal UN policing mission against such acts, is closer to act of war.
NATO kinetically trying to prevent Russia from damaging subsea infrastructure WITH a formal UN policing mission is also an act of war, its just more clearly not an act of aggression.
Of course, that would also be true of NATO doing so as part of a broader collective defense operation reported to the Security Council, directed against Russia and explicitly aimed at rolling back the Russian (UNGA-condemned) aggression in Ukraine under Article 51 of the UN Charter.
International law can be selectively applied for different party according to different scenarios (relative to different geopolitical power). NATO triggering art5 (self defense) won't make it valid / feasible to trigger at parallel UN art51. RU using UN art51 to target UKR a soveign territory, is also going to be different than NATO / or NATO country using art51 to do whatever they want on non-soverign / international high seas. All of which is to say while international law doesn't matter much to the motivated, not everyone is powerful enough to normalized/destablize with impunity. NATO might, but not without RU security council (trumps UNGA) approval, of course NATO can supercede from UN Charter framework which IIRC that NATO explicitly states they operate within. But then we have NATO going independant of UN, which goes back barrels of worms.
12.1 nm offshore is not any country, which is the point…The laws of zero countries matter, and only certain multilateral agreements matter, at least on paper.
It’s still a de jure crime on the ship itself, because the laws of the flag country apply there. If the captain of the ship intentionally damaged something in international waters, he still committed a (de jure, which was the question) crime.
No? Why would the laws of the flag country matter for an anchor slowly drifting to the seabed detached from a vessel several km away?
Edit: I’m pretty sure most, if not all, such countries don’t even ascribe any legal status to wrecked and sunken lifeboats, let alone anchors. Probably most countries don’t even have a formal penalty, of any kind, for lifeboats detached and sunken, for any reason, for anyone on the ship.
The „anchor accidents“ with cables are normally when a ship is dragging an anchor over the cable. That’s property damage of someone else’s stuff, which is a crime in pretty much any country. And even if you drop your anchor to intentionally destroy someone else’s property, that would be a crime anywhere. You don’t need a specific law for anchors.
Vessel captains drop anchor all the time if they are caught out of port in a stormy area. And if it’s a big enough storm they are quite literally dragged around along with the anchor.
It literally happens every month on Earth.
It just’s implausible that dragging alone would be a crime in any flag country.
Edit: Maybe they can criminalize dragging it for a very long distance, say 10+ km, but I’m pretty sure the most popular flag countries do not, e.g. Liberia.
Do you not understand what intentionally anchoring in a place means on a ship?
I’ll repeat as clearly as possible, literally every single month on planet Earth many ship captains are intentionally putting very heavy objects into the water in areas that they know may contain some property that their anchor may hit/drag/snare/etc… on something.
This is usually done when the probability is very low, but in bad enough conditions they may just not care regardless of probability, and anchor anyways.
Ok, so we could have saved 5 comments if you just answered „yes“ to my first question. The cable disruptions most likely aren’t real accidents but sabotage, coupled with plausible deniability explanations of anchor accidents. That’s why I was talking about intentional damage from the start. Read the thread again.
Because piracy is one of exceptions to "No stopping not your flag ships in international waters."
Here is list of exception:
(a) the ship is engaged in piracy;
(b) the ship is engaged in the slave trade;
(c) the ship is engaged in unauthorized broadcasting and the flag
State of the warship has jurisdiction under article 109;
(d) the ship is without nationality; or
(e) though flying a foreign flag or refusing to show its flag, the ship
is, in reality, of the same nationality as the warship.
>No? Why? Worst case it would be considered an act of war. Practically, they'd just be arrested.
So under which clause would you like to stop Russian ships cutting cables in international waters?
UNCLOS does have this provision around submarine cables:
Every State shall adopt the laws and regulations necessary to provide that
the breaking or injury by a ship flying its flag or by a person subject to its
jurisdiction of a submarine cable beneath the high seas done wilfully or
through culpable negligence, in such a manner as to be liable to interrupt or
obstruct telegraphic or telephonic communications, and similarly the breaking
or injury of a submarine pipeline or high-voltage power cable, shall be a
punishable offence. This provision shall apply also to conduct calculated or
likely to result in such breaking or injury. However, it shall not apply to any
break or injury caused by persons who acted merely with the legitimate object
of saving their lives or their ships, after having taken all necessary
precautions to avoid such break or injury
But Russia is obviously ignoring the rules so now what?
I agree. Do you want to sign up and go fight in a war? Or should other people besides you die? It's easy to say it "needs to be dealt with" but it's not an easy thing to do.
Some of us live close enough that it's not really an option, surrendering to Russians don't work that great if you live in Eastern Europe. I will volunteer first day to join Polish Army.
So when you say, "country willing to do this for you" (how nice!), what you mean is a bunch of politicians and officers are willing to go in the street and capture random civilians to conscript them. Because that's the reality of how Ukraine is "willing to fight".
Living in a country next to Russia, it basically feels more and more likely that I will actually have to participate in a war effort. Not really sure how since I have not undergone military training, but it's definitely something to keep in mind these days.
If you would have asked me while I was a young Marine I'd say, "hell yes." I recall the commandant visiting in Afghanistan and Marines were asking him where the next combat zone is because they are eager for more action.
What exactly would "properly" arming Ukraine look like? The entire Western world doesn't produce enough Patriot missiles to meet Ukraine's air defense needs, just as one critical example. We are aiming for a global production target of 750 missiles/year ( https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/15354795 ).... Russia has fired about 6,000 missiles and large drones per year ( https://kyivindependent.com/defense-ministry-over-2-000-russ... ).
You can send Ukraine all of the F-16s in the world, it won't matter if there aren't enough Ukrainian pilots with the linguistic skills to get them through the Western training pipelines.
The reality is that the West can't make the math work at a level of commitment/investment that it is willing to accept. To say nothing of the steadily-worsening problem of "lack of living, breathing Ukrainian men willing to do the fighting in the first place"...
> What exactly would "properly" arming Ukraine look like?
More long-range offensive weapons and clearance to hit sites in Russia. Let Israel know that we wouldn't mind them taking out the Iranian drone factories supplying Russia.
I won't criticize the Pentagon. They're taking orders from higher up who's waiting for Russia to escalate in order to respond. The ballistic missile strike on Dnipro is a new devlopment: "This could have been a strategic nuclear strike, but it's a Russian PR statement instead". I wonder what South Korea is waiting for, Kim getting proper ICBM tech from Russia?
Who would want Ukrainian citizenship? Nobody. Certainly not experienced aviators who already hold more valuable/useful passports, and are probably on a career track that leads to them becoming airline pilots and making very nice salaries.
Gonky and Mover, two veteran US fighter pilots on YT, had a video segment discussing foreign pilots flying for Ukraine....they both totally shit on the idea. The risks are too high and the potential compensation is too low. These guys have no desire to tangle with Su-35s and MiG-31s chucking R-37M missiles, likely from beyond the effective engagement range of the F-16 + AIM-120 combo.
Which happened and kept happening for a long time now, including the US sending billions of dollars and weapons (among other things). That did not help, did it?
I heard US sent so many weapons that even US' supply of weapons were running low if and when it came to defending themselves. Is it true? I have no clue.
> heard US sent so many weapons that even US' supply of weapons were running low if and when it came to defending themselves. Is it true? I have no clue.
No, it's not. For small-scale war, we are amply stocked. For large-scale war, stocks don't matter, production does.
Surely if the US was actually in a situation where it was attacked and had to defend itself, they’d be able to do that. If nothing else, the civilians have a whole lot of guns too and attacks on the US (think Pearl Harbor, 911) have a massive rallying effect. As far as I know, the biggest thing preventing a civilian semi-automatic from being converted to an automatic firearm is the risk of a long prison stint.
The USA is a giant ocean away in any direction from any meaningful threat. No-one is invading the USA. Everyone will be nuked to oblivion before that would ever come to pass.
The US has THOUSANDS of tanks and THOUSANDS of Bradleys. We have sent Ukraine 32 Abrams and 300 Bradleys. For reference, Australia was able to swing sending Ukraine 50 Abrams. The US has THOUSANDS of F16s, and is starting to build up thousands of F35s. We have full munition stockpiles for all missions for both platforms. We gave Ukraine about 1000 various "armored vehicles", like hundreds of M113s which are nearly useless on a modern battlefield except as glorified trucks. We sent Ukraine 200 "Strykers" that we considered a failure in the middle east. We sent a few hundred MRAPs. We sent 20 HIMARs systems, out of over 600 built. The US sent only a single patriot battery.
I encourage you to go look at the numbers the US put together for the various gulf wars. We sent a trickle of supplies.
The only substantial supply we offered was 3 million 155mm artillery rounds, which is a large fraction of our stockpile but the US (before Ukraine) did not care for tube artillery, preferring instead to lob JDAMs and other air launched munitions. This is also only a problem because American Industry refuses to invest in increasing production capacity unless we bribe them, you know, just like capitalism says it should work.
The people who said we were harming our weapons stocks were lying. Reconsider who shared that information with you.
I'm sorry, but this is the type of claim of someone who gets news from the Joe Rogan podcast.
Ukraine managed to defend its capital from annexation, liberated thousands of miles of territory, and managed to improve its protection of civilians thanks to air defense systems, has lower casualty rates than Russia, and now is starting to create a buffer zone into Russian territory.
How isn't this a sign that it didn't help?
Now... could, and should, Ukraine receive way more help, on time to help them even more? Of course. The drip feed has been one of the worse strategic decisions in this conflict, almost like there's no strategy in place.
I do not get news from Joe Rogan podcasts, and as such, it is unnecessary and inappropriate to claim so.
Something that people seem to not realize is that the Minsk Agreements refer to two accords (Minsk I in 2014 and Minsk II in 2015) aimed at ending the conflict in eastern Ukraine, specifically in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, where pro-Russian separatists had declared independence with alleged support from Russia.
That said, while Russia claimed that Ukraine failed to implement the Minsk Agreements, this does not justify a military invasion. Diplomatic mechanisms were available to resolve disputes, and both sides bore some responsibility for the lack of progress on Minsk. It can be attributed to challenges and shortcomings on all sides involved. With the election of Donald Trump, there may be an increased opportunity to revive diplomatic efforts and achieve meaningful progress, given his emphasis on unconventional approaches to negotiation and relationships with key stakeholders, potentially (and hopefully) providing a better opportunity to bring an end to the long-stalemated conflict.
> Now... could, and should, Ukraine receive way more help, on time to help them even more? Of course.
I am sorry but providing additional aid at this stage would likely prolong the war rather than bring about a resolution. This protracted conflict has already pushed global economies toward collapse, with ordinary taxpayers shouldering the financial burden of a war they never chose to participate in. It is irrational to continue pouring taxpayer money into a long-stalemated conflict without a clear path to peace or resolution, particularly when domestic priorities are being neglected in the process.
> I am sorry but providing additional aid at this stage would likely prolong the war rather than bring about a resolution.
That would only give Putin time to replenish his forces and attack again. The time to act is now.
If the Russians lose, we might be looking at another USSR style dissolution of Russia: more breakaway Central Asian and Caucasus republics and maybe a break from Russian interference. Make no mistake, these are the people that Putin is grinding in this war.
This is a good opportunity for the US to weaken Russia without firing a shot and consolidate its power in Eastern Europe with reliable allies.
> This is a good opportunity for the US to weaken Russia
Have you ever considered that US giving Ukraine lots of money & weapons weaken the US, too? <conspiracy theory> Imagine if Ukraine and Russia worked together to achieve it. </conspiracy theory>
> I do not get news from Joe Rogan podcasts, and as such, it is unnecessary and inappropriate to claim so.
I simply stated that's the same level of shallow analysis and severe lack of understanding of what's at play, sprinkled with mystical thinking and conspiracy theories, which is prevalent in the right-wing media and amplified by Russian propaganda. I don't think it's inappropriate, it might just be a coincidence.
> (...) where pro-Russian separatists had declared independence with alleged support from Russia. That said, while Russia claimed that Ukraine failed to implement the Minsk Agreements, this does not justify a military invasion. Diplomatic mechanisms were available to resolve disputes, and both sides bore some responsibility for the lack of progress on Minsk. It can be attributed to challenges and shortcomings on all sides involved
Just to point out two red flags here:
- The separatists didn't have alleged support from Russia, there were Russian troops in both Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk. By the way, those regions were at peace until Russia sent "little green men"[0]. The same happened in Georgia by the way, in 2008. Where do you think "separatists" got a Buk 9M38 to shoot down a commercial airliner killing 300 people? [1]
- Russia did not just claim that Ukraine failed to implement UNCONSTITUTIONAL parts of the Minsk agreement, Russia itself failed to comply with the agreement - and they were the ones on sovereign Ukrainian territory, killing Ukrainians. An agreement goes both ways, so the general sense was that Russia never looked to abide by the agreement, just gradually turning Ukraine ungovernable with cancer from within, by subverting the Ukrainian constitution.
From the words of Macron in the talk with Putin before the escalation of 2022:
"They are in front of my eyes! It clearly states that Ukraineʼs proposal should be agreed with representatives of certain districts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions in a trilateral meeting. This is exactly what we propose to do. So I donʼt know where your lawyer studied law. I just look at these texts and try to apply them! And I donʼt know which lawyer could tell you that in a sovereign state, the texts of laws are made up of separatist groups, not democratically elected authorities."[2]
> With the election of Donald Trump, there may be an increased opportunity to revive diplomatic efforts and achieve meaningful progress
So your idea of a diplomatic effort is to appease a dictator with the subversion of Ukraine, a sovereign country of 40 million people, and target of genocide, that was at peace and posed a threat to no one. To the point of surrendering their nuclear arsenal in exchange for the guarantee of their sovereignty - with the signature of the USA representatives.
> It is irrational to continue pouring taxpayer money into a long-stalemated conflict without a clear path to peace or resolution, particularly when domestic priorities are being neglected in the process.
The only irrational thing is to push the Russian narrative that Ukraine should be left on its own, for the illusion of internal stability that stems mainly from propaganda.
Again, this just confirms the same ill-informed narrative Joe Rogan-type podcasts are pushing around, some of these podcasts being funded by Russia Today operations.[3] I won't claim its deliberate, but as time passes it increasingly looks like so.
It all began when President Yanukovych rejected an agreement he promised to sign with the EU (which was, and is, a public document with known the terms) in exchange for a deal with Russia, of unknown terms and vague promises, and framed with threats.
This was a 180 turn that led to the Maidan Revolution and the impeachment of the president. It was the decision of the President against the will of the majority of Ukrainians who voted to elect Yanukovych, who promised close ties with the EU including signing the Association Agreement.
This was followed by Russia invading Ukraine in late 2013/early 2014 with "separatists"/"little green men".
By the way - "pro-Russian" Ukrainians didn't revolt against the EU Association Agreement, it got Yanukovych elected.
So again, you have strong misinformed opinions aligned with the Russian narrative, of a subject you don't seem to know that much about. That happens to be oddly aligned with some alternative media like The Rubin Report, Tim Pool, etc.
> After the 2014 Ukrainian Revolution and the ousting of President Viktor Yanukovych, a divide between pro-European and pro-Russian factions in Ukraine became more pronounced.
> In the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, many residents harbored pro-Russian sentiments due to historical, linguistic, and cultural ties to Russia.
> Following Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014, separatist groups in Donetsk and Luhansk, supported by local pro-Russian factions, declared independence from Ukraine.
What matters is that it's a false and misleading narrative.
These statements are false?
Yup - either false, or misleading/irrelevant. Time is short so we'll just go over 2 of them for now:
> In the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, many residents harbored pro-Russian sentiments due to historical, linguistic, and cultural ties to Russia.
True, but irrelevant. Simply put, that wasn't was caused hostilities to happen.
> Following Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014, separatist groups in Donetsk and Luhansk, supported by local pro-Russian factions, declared independence from Ukraine.
Except there were no indigenous "separatist groups" driving the action. It was entirely coordinated by Russia from the very start.
Whether or not it aligns with whatever you say it does
It's wrong on its own merits, not on the basis of anything I say.
How would I really know? It is mostly hearsay.
Actually it's not. It's actually pretty easy to get a good sense of what's going on, just by reading whatever sources one does read with a reasonably critical eye. And if one is really bold, by taking the care to read diverse sources. What brought me to respond to you in this case is that you seemed be echoing talking points you had heard or read somewhere, but which were just not grounded in the basic reality of the situation.
Talking to people actually from the region (actual real, regular people) can be very helpful, also.
In fact to make this very simple for you: just completely forget everything you've read on the internet -- and just talk to people actually affected by the situation for a while. You'll definitely start to get a sense of what's hearsay and what's fact, very very quickly.
I wish I could provide specific sources, but my information comes partly from Wikipedia and partly from conversations with others, most of whom hold pro-Ukrainian perspectives. There is significant sentiment against Russia and China in general, and I understand why (I am pretty much in the anti-China camp myself and I admittedly hold a bias against China). I have not even heard of "The Rubin Report" or "Tim Pool". I am somewhat familiar with Joe Rogan, but I have only watched one of his popular podcasts, the one featuring Elon Musk.
> In fact to make this very simple for you: just completely forget everything you've read on the internet -- and just talk to people actually affected by the situation for a while. You'll definitely start to get a sense of what's hearsay and what's fact, very very quickly.
Where can I find people who have lived through that situation as it unfolded? Are you one of those people by any chance?
Talking to people from the region may indeed provide valuable insights and perspective that might not come through in articles, reports, or podcasts, but it is important to remember that personal experiences, while genuine, are often shaped by individual perspectives, biases, and incomplete information. We know that people living through a situation may not have access to all the facts, may interpret events differently, or may even unknowingly perpetuate misinformation they have encountered. Even those directly affected by events might be influenced by propaganda, local media narratives, or their own personal hardships, which can influence their understanding. This does not mean their accounts are worthless, however. We need to cross-check details, separate fact from emotion-driven narratives as much as possible.
I believe it can be valuable for me to hear your personal perspective, for example.
First, if you ever get a chance to travel to Eastern Europe, you'll be very glad you did. Western Ukraine itself is actually reasonably safe (compared to many large cities in the world), though you should definitely do some research on your own (and have at least a few local contacts) before going over there.
Most large cities in the West by now have substantial Ukrainian expat/refugee communities. In general they're pretty easy to find, and are quite friendly. Talking with people from other Eastern European countries (especially Poland and the Baltics) can be very helpful, also. As with people anywhere, some will be a bit nationalistic or have other axes to grind. But proportionally they are small in number. The vast majority are just regular people trying to get on with their lives, and make sense of the current insanity just as you and I.
Are you one of those people by any chance?
My own background is unimportant, but I will offer that I've spent significant amounts of time in countries affected by both Hitlerian and Stalinist (and other) dictatorships, and have had all kinds of conversations with people about these topics. Hearing personal stories about what their families went through in those years (virtually none were not affected in some way) really helps to size things up in the bigger picture, and avoid the charms and traps of highly ideological narratives.
Finally, any amount of serious reading about pre-1999 (that is, pre-Putin) Cold War history, preferably by hard-nosed academic historians (and not pundits like Mearsheimer, Sachs et all; and unfortunately I have to say Chomsky also) can be very helpful also. (Technically the Cold War ended in by 1991, but another view is that it's still ongoing).
I believe it can be valuable for me to hear your personal perspective, for example.
I apprecite your forthrightness, and if I came across as browbeating or arrogant, I take it back and apologize.
> My own background is unimportant, but I will offer that I've spent significant amounts of time in countries affected by both Hitlerian and Stalinist (and other) dictatorships, and have had all kinds of conversations with people about these topics. Hearing personal stories about what their families went through in those years (virtually none were not affected in some way) really helps to size things up in the bigger picture, and avoid the charms and traps of highly ideological narratives.
This reminds me of videos from "Bald and Bankrupt" where people in villages have said that life was better under communism.
> I apprecite your forthrightness, and if I came across as browbeating or arrogant, I take it back and apologize.
No hard feelings. :) I did not read any arrogance into your comments. Thank you for your replies, I really appreciate them! I will need some time to reflect on them and delve deeper into what has been said.
> This reminds me of videos from "Bald and Bankrupt" where people in villages have said that life was better under communism.
It's part of the post-WW2 generation inductrinated by state propaganda who had access to food and gov't services through a network of connections doing each other mutual favours or poor people who were confortable with the state providing (job, living spaces) for them in exchange for doing what they were told. The other part which resonates well with Western culture and private enterprise absolutely hates communism, the USSR and Putin's Russia because they suffered under the communist regime. To them Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan are heroes.
Yes. The "separatists" were entirely a fiction created by Russian armed forces as a cover and pretext for their invasion. The lengthy verdict by the European Court of Human Rights[1] lays it all out and concludes that there is no reason to consider "separatists" anything less than unmarked members of Russian armed forces or security services. The entire story about ethnic tensions that resulted in "pro-Russian Ukrainians rising up against Kyiv government" and Russia coming to their support is a total bunk, a manufactured lie trying to misrepresent an unprovoked invasion by a foreign country as a stereotypical third world civil war that western audiences are accustomed to. Russians are playing directly into your stereotypes to erode support for Ukraine.
> After the 2014 Ukrainian Revolution and the ousting of President Viktor Yanukovych, a divide between pro-European and pro-Russian factions in Ukraine became more pronounced.
This is a broad irrelevant statement. The signing of the EU Association Agreement was part of Yanukovych's campaign, and Ukrainians elected him. The "pro-russia factions" is a Russian construction.
A small fraction of the Ukrainians might have disagreed with the impeachment, but it was THEIR ELECTED OFFICIALS in the parliament that impeached the president - BY MAJORITY VOTE[0]. So the elected deputies did what they believed was in the interest of those who elected them.
That's democracy, and Ukraine is a democracy. Those who were unhappy could change their vote to elect other deputies on the following elections.
No Ukrainians wanted their families killed, and cities occupied and razed by Russia.
That's yet again, another Russian narrative spin, along with the "Ukrainians don't have agency/will of its own" implication.
> In the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, many residents harbored pro-Russian sentiments due to historical, linguistic, and cultural ties to Russia.
Ukraine was a former soviet state, where many Ukrainians have family in both Ukraine and Russia. I don't get the point you're trying to make from "sentiments" to a war of occupation with +1.000.000 casualties, 10.000.000 refugees, +25.000 kidnapped children.
> Following Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014, separatist groups in Donetsk and Luhansk, supported by local pro-Russian factions, declared independence from Ukraine.
Yes, there was a theatrical display of claims of independence, and Russia did some more of it in 2022 with the "referendums" of occupied territory - which of course no sovereign country recognized, except for Syria, and North Korea. What's your point here and why do you stand with Syria and North Korea in these recognitions?
----
So, overall those statements are decontextualized, rendering some of them wrong or irrelevant/misleading. If you were trying to make some point here, I don't see it, just confirms what I said before.
I am not trying to make a point; I am simply exploring, exchanging ideas, and sharing thoughts that provoke a response, allowing me to hear another's perspective on the matter. :)
I may be wrong, and I want to get an understanding as to why that may be the case.
I just think it's regrettable to have strong confident opinions with a shallow understanding of probably the most important event since WW2, Russia is trying to annex a democratic sovereign country of 40 million people. It's an attempt at mass-scale genocide.
That is the type of opinion is passed on by the vast majority of alternative media podcasts - it's shallow entertaining stories that give the illusion of understanding a subject.
The invasion of Ukraine is probably the most documented war in History, and you can get a very good understanding of the event in a short time with little effort. You can even access original documents, yet you prefer a low-resolution misinformed version of it.
I must say that my comments do not necessarily reflect my own opinions. In retrospect I can see why it might have given that impression, as I may have phrased my sentences in that way.
(FWIW you know "entertaining" is debatable, and I personally do not find either position entertaining).
To clarify, the entertaining part doesn't come from the subject but from the perception of having an insight and opinion about a subject, which most of the time is someone else's idea built on top of another shallow notion.
It's fun to believe you have an understanding of reality, that didn't require much effort to understand.
This is the main problem we're facing at the moment with regard to information: people mistake a thin veneer of anecdotes and stories, for knowledge with some depth, but they don't care because it feels nice to know a lot of shallow things.
The result is a wrong understanding of reality.
Just for you to understand, your current stance - I want peace so we can focus on our "internal problems", let Russia keep what they stole and Ukraine needs to figure it out on their own - will make a direct conflict with China inevitable, and that will be a war where you won't be sending just weapons.
> let Russia keep what they stole and Ukraine needs to figure it out on their own
What do you think would be a strategically wise course of action? Should we consider peace talks, take drastic military action like using nuclear weapons on Russia or Ukraine, or explore other alternatives? I apologize for being so extreme, but I struggle to see how simply providing financial aid and weapons - which are finite resources - will effectively resolve the situation. Should we attempt to drain Russia's resources[1]? Is it even possible to achieve this without risking the weakening of the defense capabilities of the countries supplying the aid?
> What do you think would be a strategically wise course of action? Should we consider peace talks, take drastic military action like using nuclear weapons on Russia or Ukraine, or explore other alternatives?
How do you go from peace talks to nuking Russia? What is the goal of nuking Russia? Do you want to go in and occupy the Russian Federation?
Ukraine is a sovereign country with borders recognized by 193 countries in the UN - including Russia by the way. No one, except Syria and North Korea recognizes occupied territory as being part of Russia.
The reasons are self-evident: if this precedent is opened, then it means we're back to pre-UN times where the strong can annex smaller countries. Countries might as well each get their own nuclear deterrence, and then you'll have nuclear proliferation. Which in case you might not be aware, was a victory to be able to prevent countries from pursuing this avenue.
What's wrong about giving Ukraine what it needs to defend itself, as we promised with the Budapest Memorandum?
They're not asking for nukes, they're not asking for troops on the ground, they just ask to be supplied with what they need on time. Don't make a theatrical display of it, don't drip feed it, just do what was done when we helped the Soviets win against the Nazis, but on a much smaller scale.
Providing financial aid and weapons is a small price when compared to the collapse of a global order that was won after WW2. Especially when you're giving them equipment that won't be used by the US and would be decommissioned - it's probably costlier to dispose of it than to give it to Ukraine.
> Is it even possible to achieve this without risking the weakening of the defense capabilities of the countries supplying the aid?
We can mobilize a global industry to produce mRNA vaccines in a short period of time, that requires specialized resources, we boast about being able to land rockets upright... somehow you think we cannot produce 155mm shells?
Are they asking for the means to achieve victory? If so, what does that entail specifically? When and under what circumstances would it be considered a victory for Ukraine? How much aid would Ukraine require for this to succeed? Would it be sufficient to deter Russia? Is Russia's production capacity worse?
> Are they asking for the means to achieve victory?
Yes, and victory for them isn't taking over Moscow but guarantees their sovereignty, independence, and security.
That entails:
- reducing the capacity for Russia to strike Ukraine with long-range missiles;
- the capacity to disrupt supply lines and push them back into Russian territory;
- the capacity to strike air defense systems so Ukraine can secure its air space;
- the capacity to defend unoccupied territory;
- be part of a defensive alliance that guarantees Ukraine's defense in case of a future invasion;
- be part of an economic alliance that will allow Ukraine to rebuild and thrive;
> When and under what circumstances would it be considered a victory for Ukraine?
Victory will be achieved when their citizens can go back to their homes knowing they won't ever have to deal with a genocidal hoard that thinks Ukrainians don't exist.
> How much aid would Ukraine require for this to succeed?
As much as necessary, and I think Western allies and partners can sustain this - if Russia can, the largest economies surely can too.
> Would it be sufficient to deter Russia?
Russia is already paying a high cost in human lives, the economy and culture, they're on a self-destructive path - so just let them do their thing, continue to accelerate this path, and keep supporting Ukraine.
> Is Russia's production capacity worse?
There is a shortage of labor in Russia, with the unemployment rate extremely low, they reached a cap. Now they're trying to outsource production to North Korea.
In conclusion, so you have a historical framing: you'd be in the group of Nazi Germany appeasers, and we saw where that led the world to - WW2. I'm not saying you're a Nazi sympathizer, or anything like that, far from it. I'm saying that you're misinformed to the point that you prefer to sacrifice a country of 40 million people that represents democratic values (even if they're in their infancy), that wants to protect it and be aligned with us... and that won't impact the privilege US has in the global stage.
In exchange for the illusion that... companies that increase consumer prices will drop prices? That housing will suddenly pop out of the sky... housing that migrants mainly build? That the multibillionaires will start to pay more income now that they're part of the government?
That's all to blame on Ukraine aid receiving old military equipment meant to be discontinued and decommissioned, right?
> I'm saying that you're misinformed to the point that you prefer to sacrifice a country of 40 million people that represents democratic values
I did not intend to say that we should sacrifice a country.
What would happen if Ukraine "peacefully" would give that region to Russia? I am not saying they should, I am asking what would happen, considering it may not lead to more bloodshed and it may not mean "sacrifice" either, as long as they can continue living there, just under a different rule. Is this not an option? If not, why not?
> What would happen if Ukraine "peacefully" would give that region to Russia? I am not saying they should, I am asking what would happen, considering it may not lead to more bloodshed and it may not mean "sacrifice" either, as long as they can continue living there, just under a different rule. Is this not an option? If not, why not?
The easiest answer would be "Look at the History of XIX and XX centuries", in reality, you don't need to go that far:
What happened when Russia occupied Moldova territory in the 90's and we did nothing?
What happened when Russia occupied Georgia territory in 08 and we did nothing?
What happened when Russia occupied Ukrainian territory in 2014 and we did nothing?
Now they're making veil threats to Kahzkstan.
So the most important question is, in light of Russia constantly invading and occupying and oppressing sovereigns that were at peace, what do YOU think will happen?
No, it began with Russia's regime sending paid mercenaries (to the Donbas) and regular troops (to the Crima) in March-April of 2014. There was no indigenous revolt of any significance before this happened. Even pro-Russian sources acknowledge this fact.
Billions of dollars worth of Gulf War era weapons some of which they need to replenish anyway. It actually did help a lot but it's apparently still not enough to win this war. I beleieve that the US strategy is to slowly grind the Russians, supplying Ukraine with just enough weapons so that both sides are fighting a positional warfare. The trouble is this strategy is not working and Russia has already escalated by involving DPRK troops.
Ignoring the passive voice, who do you suggest should deal with that, more precisely? And how do you suggest "dealing" with one of the two nuclear hyper-powers in existence? (the other one being the Americans)
Maybe I should clarify that I am not in charge of any executive or military branch in the EU or NATO. I express my frustration with our leadership.
If you're interested in how I think it should be sorted: the cables are between Finland and Germany. I think we start with Finland and Germany:
- stepping updiplomatic pressure.
- Expulsion of Russian and Belarusian diplomats.
- Confiscation of Russian owned properties.
- Freezing bank accounts.
- Increasing tariffs on their goods
- Reducing overall trade.
- Increasing spending on national defense
- And weapons production.
- Increasing aid to Ukraine.
The military leadership is seriously considering that Russia might push for the Baltics (meaning, the EU) within 4 years. The EU is not at peace with Russia. They are biding time for a war they need to prepare for.
From history: "Flexible Response" was a policy implemented by JFK in 1961, in response to previous administration's over-reliance on massive retaliation.
Of course, it dragged the United States into Vietnam as things slowly escalated.
IMO the right action is to counterattack with equal force, ideally in the same way. So cut one of their undersea cabals, fly jets near or over their airspace, etc.
That way, there's a clear line for what NATO will and won't do that Russia can understand. If attacks escalate it will be Russia that escalated every time. If Russia feels it's threatened, all they have to do is stop the attacks and NATO will stop. If Russia is going to nuclear warfare over not being able to unevenly harass NATO, because we can't read Putin and the oligarchs' minds, and what objective measure would allow that but not allow Russia to go nuclear warfare over not enslaving all of NATO, or claiming they can/others can't do everything not written unambiguously in a treaty (which would extend to new technologies like partitioning the solar system that we couldn't have thought ahead-of-time)?
But I'm no diplomat, so maybe I'm wrong and my idea would be catastrophic.
>If attacks escalate it will be Russia that escalated every time.
So sending jets into their airspace is not an escalation, but shooting down the plain is? Yeap, you are not a diplomat.
Should I remind you how US reacted to the Soviet military presence in Cuba? On the US scale Ukraine is somewhere between Mexico and Texas in importance for Russia from the military point of view.
I don't know whether Russia is flying jets over NATO airspace. If they're not then NATO shouldn't be flying them over Russia.
In my idea it would be essential to confirm Russia is responsible for anything before the even counterattack. If there's an attack NATO can't confirm, the only thing they would do is defend and monitor more closely in case Russia tries the same attack in the future. Only the things that the Russian government definitely does to NATO, NATO would do to them.
So according to this principle, Russia can send military aid to the Syrian government to strike the US military bases on its territory and the US should not be able to retaliate?
In that case the US would be allowed to send aid to some other government to strike Russia (they're currently doing this with Ukraine but for a separate reason, for Ukraine's self-defense...)
Or in an ideal world, the US pays Syria more to not attack them, maybe even gets them to sign a treaty and commits to building Syria's economy and protecting them so they don't feel compelled to take Russian bribes. Although, it's certainly not so straightforward, prior US involvements in foreign countries have been disasters so it would have to be different somehow...
There are many other ways Russia could attack NATO that would be very hard to prove or evenly-counter. Russia could create a culture of NATO hatred and aggression, then set up "rewards" that are given out for obscure reasons, to get Russian NGOs and citizens to attack NATO in their own will. Then NATO can only encourage citizens to attack Russia, which I don't think any treaties forbid anyways, and creating a culture of hate is bad for other reasons. It's not a foolproof system.
But like for this event, there's evidence beyond reasonable doubt that the Russian government is directly involved (https://www.newsweek.com/russia-pipeline-gas-patrushev-putin...). And there are other ways NATO can weaken Russia's influence without even attacking them, like not trading with them, and (indirectly, by having a more liberal government) encouraging Russian citizens to emigrate.
So you do understand that the world can not work according to your simple tit-for-tat principle of "counterattack with equal force". It's a multi-dimensional game where each player has its own fairly opaque "reward function". "Equal force" from one point of view can become "disproportionate escalation" from another. This is where a proper understanding of your opponent becomes important.
Even worse, inside US and Russian governments there are groups with their own interests and agendas. The military-industrial complex can be interested in further escalation and fearmongering (i.e. "good war"), while civilian industry would prefer some kind of compromise as soon as possible (i.e. "poor peace").
> sacrifice more Ukrainian men for the meat grinder?
To the extent there's a meat grinder, it's of Russians [1].
> What has that accomplished so far?
Russia's disqualifying itself as a conventional military threat for at least a generation. It's not yet there yet, largely because Ukraine has been unable to target its war marchine. But the startling inefficacy of its army and technology has been made clear. Moreover, the front line has been maintained in Ukraine: that keeps them further from NATO and thus American and European boys at home.
>To the extent there's a meat grinder, it's of Russians
It's of both. Why deny the fact Ukrainian men are dying in droves? This is disrespectful of those that paid the ultimate sacrifice. Pretending this is not extremely costly to Ukraine in manpower is denying reality. They have been increasing the age of conscripts as they're running out of young men.
> Why deny the fact Ukrainian men are dying in droves?
Nobody is. Meat grinder means excessive loss relative to necessity. The Ukranians are being slaughtered, but not mindlessly. They're fighting efficiently in respect of manpower.
Also, had we given Ukraine all the weapons it asked for in 2022, we probably wouldn't have had a meat grinder.
And, hence, we should give them all the arms and tools they need and the freedom to use them to end it quickly. The dithering on behalf of Biden and Scholz is what's prolonging this.
1. Ukrainian borders are closed from day one.
2. Russian borders are open from day one.
3. Ukrainian conscription is keeping on going from day one, taking radical form in recent year or so (men being violently dragged from streets)
4. Russia has had a single conscription which lasted 3 months.
5. Ukrainians are risking their lives fleeing the country via rivers and mountains. Many escapers were found shot.
6. You can take a plane and emigrate from Russia. No obstacles.
Yet you insist there are much more casualties in Russia. Where’s the logic here?
Given that Russia is invading them and that they are showing no reluctance to stand up to them, yes? Arm them, give them everything they need without restriction and Russia will be sent home to their borders, bloodied and cowed.
C'mon. Their funding is entirely US dependent. What business is that of ours? We are enabling it. How could you possibly ask the question "what business is that of ours"? Explain yourself, that question is absurd.
Who is "they" and what is "clearly"? They are running out of men they can find to fight, and for quite a while the government and military used very aggressive methods to force men into service. There is a huge desertion problem, in the military and the country itself. A whole lot of Ukrainians do not want to fight.
I guess you're right. Ukraine should let Russia exterminate the Ukrainians. 3 times as many people will die as died in the German extermination regime, but it's worth it to avoid conscription, right?
A whole lot of people don't want to fight in any war.
What matters is the relative portion. Though they my differ in the views as to whether the lost regions can be regained, or on what terms a cease-fire may be acceptable -- by all indications, a very solid majority of the society in non-occupied Ukraine supports the fight.
Who is "they" and what is "clearly"?
About 60-80 percent of the population. "Clearly" as in according to reliable polling data I can pull up later. Or by spending any amount of time talking to Ukrainians.
There is a huge desertion problem,
It is obviously a significant problem, but a better source is needed on the "huge" part. The link you provided does not support that view.
If I hear "desertion is a huge problem", what comes to mind it the situation in Afghanstan after the notorious Trump-Biden pullout. The situation in Ukraine is nothing like that, not even remotely.
Exactly because Ukrainians want to fight their borders are closed from the day one. Because the people that want to fight should be kept in their country by force, North Korea style.
I’m not sure how it works, but well.
The majority of committed support by country has come from the United States,
whose total aid commitment is valued at about $75 billion. The U.S. is
followed by Germany and the United Kingdom for highest commitments overall.
The European Union as a whole has committed approximately $93 billion in aid
to Ukraine.[0]
While the US is largest donor by country, the EU as a whole has contributed more than the US.[1] Which is unsurprising, given the circumstances.
So no. Ukraine funding is not entirely dependent on the US. Not even close.
Right... but the EU is acting as US' proxy; the EU only threw all that money at the Ukraine (destroying itself economically in the process!) because of US "influence".
Many EU countries are now little more than US vassals.
I keep wondering if that scale of operation that we are witnessing is their "testing the waters" phase and it is 1% of their true capability, of if what we're seeing is already their full-steam operational pace.
They do a good job of instilling fear, but we've learned from Ukraine that there are a lot of paper Tigers in that army that aren't as capable in a real fight as they are in a demonstration.
I've found this example of a proven sabotage: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-21963100 which involved a few guys caught in the act less than 1 km from shore, then there are a lot of "suspicious" events where intention is never publicly proven.
No. Nord Stream seem more and more having been an Ukrainian action. Maybe not official government, but obviously more in Ukrainian interest than in Russian.
I can't see any Ukrainian interest an cutting internet between two of their supporters. Whether the support has been sufficient can be debated, but both are supporters. Germany among the top in absolute terms, Finland among the top relative to their own size. Yes among, there are stronger supporters in both categories.
Sure, but this ends up being like the boy who cried wolf. When this happens for so long, everyone stops caring about Putin's saber rattling except his puppets whom he already controls.
But damage to communications is a tangible thing, so if this is going to get worse, Putin's boats will be just sunk in such areas as a preventive measure. And Putin will do nada about it despite all this threats, except may be looking for other places to cut cables and engage in similar trash behavior until he is chased out of there too.
Sinking of his ships is something he very quickly understands, since he practically can't make new ones.
It's just practice. Locate the cables, establish a means of damaging them, deploy the means as a test and a show of force.
The western economy is almost completely built using off-prem in Cloud PaaS environments. It should be pretty fun when WW3 starts and not a single hospital, school, laboratory, or factory can operate.
It also sends two messages: "We can do this to any of your cables", and "we're willing to" – with an implied "we could easily do it to all of them at the same time".
And the last scenario is the real problem: While there are enough cable repair ships to continuously handle a normal rate of simultaneous peak failures, fixing multiple cuts can quickly exceed their capacity. (There's nothing that says an attacker can only cut the same cable in one spot!)
The Russian oligarchs have no say in any of this, they never have, people in the West still repeating this mantra almost 3 years since the war in Ukraine has started for good is a big part of the reason why the same West is close to military defeat there, they just refuse to acknowledge how Russia really operates.
while outages definitely cause big problems in hospitals and schools, neither are completely dependent on connectivity in the short term. most hospitals are required to be able to operate critical services in an outage. even a full power outage. Schools will definitely be fine. they just may have a serious backlog of entering grades, absences, and payroll once things get back online.
That would be like trying to cold start a power plant without any power.
I think you're missing my point. I'm trying to point out that there are 3 "infrastructure providers" that our economy CANNOT live without. In a world war situation, these 3 organizations are going to be the biggest targets. They are literally our crown jewels.
They will be under continuous attack from all angles. As we know with security, it is a game of time. Even the strongest bank safe has a rating in hours that it can resist direct tampering. Beyond that time rating the safe offers little to no protection. It is the layers of security that keep the safe from being tampered with beyond its rating.
What I'm saying is, no target can be secured with 100% security guarantee. Even the most secure systems will fail if met with a concerted attacker with unlimited resources.
If WW3 starts, we will lose Azure, AWS, and GCP within 5 days and it will be more or less completely destroyed within 30 days. They won't survive concerted attacks from nation state actors during war time.
Even if they can't be hacked, they will be physically destroyed with kinetic weapons. There is no Bitdefender plan that will save them from warheads.
> If WW3 starts, we will lose Azure, AWS, and GCP within 5 days and it will be more or less completely destroyed within 30 days. They won't survive concerted attacks from nation state actors during war time.
The same probably applies to moist mainstream (public) datacenters. Only ones that will be safe-ish would be something like Scaleway's underground nuclear bunker/datacenter.
> The western economy is almost completely built using off-prem in Cloud PaaS environments
US and lesser extent UK. Companies in France, Germany, Spain, Italy are much less likely to use public cloud providers, especially for critical (customer data, critical for the business, etc.) services. Not that it doesn't exist, one of the premier health tech startups in Europe, Doctolib, is full AWS; but it's rarer and much less prevalent.
Source: I work in a US tech company and cover EMEA, and compare notes with American colleagues.
Which may happen as some people just got Biden to authorize (honestly I don't think he can do that by himself), without congress approval, the use of long range missiles by Ukraine.
Some people are really hard at work trying to start WWIII.
I don't think it's the russian who severed those cables.
Russia knows that if WWIII doesn't start until a few more weeks, Trump is probably going to stop the US aiding Ukraine and stop the US giving its approval for total nonsense (like allowing these long range missiles weeks before handing over the presidency).
So why would Russia severe those cable?
I think there's a very high probability the bad actors here are the same that used Biden as a puppet to give Ukraine the greenlight to fire long range missile on to Russia.
All media coverage after Nord Stream was blown did say that Russia did it (just because it's evil, no real reasoning was presented).
So, was it really Russia that destroyed German infrastructure? Or was it someone else?
North Stream was a existential threat to the EU, especially the Baltic states and Poland have no interest in being sandwiched between Russia and Germany again.
Many German politicians are directly or indirectly bought by Russia, the most notable example being: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerhard_Schr%C3%B6der
As Germany was so stupid to close down their nuclear installations and coal mines at more or less at the same time without investing in enough backbone and LNG installations; rising parties such as the AFD would rather side with Russia and get cheap gas instead of helping Ukraine and the rest of Europe.
This is why more or less everyone could have done it. I would have done it myself if i was living in eastern Europe. Matter of survival.
So I'm sure these Internet cables were also an existential threat to an unknown country. There are a lot of countries who would have done that. Case solved, everything's fine.
Low hanging fruit. Part of a game involving the adversary to weaponize the stupidity of the crowd. That's us. Easy targets. We only see and know the tip of the iceberg if lucky.
Those cables however, that's critical infrastructure. So there is professionals working on it. They don't need our "help". We don't need to worry, so yes - everything is fine.
I'm surprised there's such a cable in the first place, it seems it would be easier to go on land through Denmark and Sweden. Is it for some reason easier to have an undersea cable than a land one?
You can see an undersea cable map here. I don't know about cables specifically but:
1. Anything sea based tends to be cheaper than land based, both in terms of sea transport and also lack of other interfering infrastructure, homes etc along the way
2. Shorter distance means lower latency
3. There surely is a land cable too. There's a lot of redunancy in the system
It's much easier to lay a cable on the bottom of the sea. There's nothing interfering there, you don't have to dig, you don't have to put up poles. If you give it some thought, you'll realize how much easier it is to have an undersea cable.
But EU & NATO ante engaged in a hybrid war with Russia.
- It actively supports a military which is engaged with Russian forces
- It has seized Russian financial assets
- I doubt that attacks on Russian infrastructure are perpetuated (planned & executed) just buy Ukrainian forces
I do not try to support any side by this statement. My point is that by any rational account is a “hybrid involvement”. EU & NATO are part of an active conflict.
This makes them targets for symmetrical actions — economic warfare by means of sabotage.
Russia has been involved in sabotage, shooting down planes with Europeans (MH17), killing people they don't like in EU/UK for years now. If anything EU is extremely timid and does not retaliate.
- shooting down civilians planes is something quite common in military operations (see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libyan_Arab_Airlines_Flight_... ). A bunch of 20 somethings handling equipment designed for mass murder. What could possibly go wrong?
- extra judicial killings on foreign soil are more common than you expect (remember the Saudis ? Or the Indian assassinated in Canada recently)
Russia is an authoritarian system by any account it holds responsibility for repulsive acts. But the current narrative is at best naive.
I look forward to everybody completely missing the resolution to this mystery when it turns out it was something like a Danish sailing boat that got unlucky with their anchor...
It's worth mentioning that cable breakages happen quite often; globally about 200 times per year [1] and the article itself mentions that just last year, two other cables and a gas pipeline were taken out by an anchor. The Gulf of Finland is evidently quite shallow. From what I understand, cable repair ships are likely to use ROVs for parts of repair jobs but only when the water is shallow so hopefully they can figure out whether the damage looks like sabotage before they sever the cable to repair it. Of course, if you're a bad actor and want plausible deniability, maybe you'd make it look like anchor damage or, deliberately drag an anchor right over the cables.
Cable repairs are certainly annoying and for the operator of the cable, expensive. However, they are usually repaired relatively quickly. I'd be more worried if many more cables were severed at the same time. If you're only going to break one or two a year, you might as well not bother.
1: https://www.theverge.com/c/24070570/internet-cables-undersea...
"Germany’s defense minister says damage to 2 Baltic data cables appears to be sabotage" - https://apnews.com/article/germany-finland-baltic-data-cable...
English isn't my first language, but isn't "appears to be" inconclusive? It is or it isn't, "appears to be" is still too vague for my liking.
"Appears to be", in English, generally means "on first look/glance." It runs very close to "I believe such and such."
If I asked you for an answer to a math question, then you showed me the answer with how you got there, on a very quick glance I might say: "That appears to be correct."
It could mean they've seen more evidence to make that assessment, or are basing that assessment on the same evidence we have. Regardless, "appears to be" is hedging in the absence of certainty.
This is right. But I'd add that the fact that the speaker is the German defense minister adds an additional layer of meaning. Ordinarily such a person would not be expected to give such an initial assessment without careful consideration.
Correct. To add context from a German source (https://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/europa/ostsee-datenkabel-p...):
> Bundesverteidigungsminister Boris Pistorius vermutet im Fall von zwei in der Ostsee beschädigten Kabeln zur Datenübertragung eine vorsätzliche Aktion durch Dritte. Man müsse davon ausgehen, dass es sich um Sabotage handle, sagte er am Rande eines Treffens mit seinen EU-Amtskollegen in Brüssel. Beweise dafür gebe es bislang aber nicht. Er betonte: "Niemand glaubt, dass diese Kabel aus Versehen durchtrennt worden sind."
> Federal Minister of Defense Boris Pistorius assumes the case of to damaged baltic sea data cables to be the intentional action of a third party. One should assume it to be sabotage, he said while at a meeting with EU colleagues in Brusseles. Proof, however, is not available yet. He emphasized: "Nobody believes that those cables were cut by accident."
So while carefully not saying anything definitive and firm, he very strongly hints in the direction of sabotage.
I love this about HN culture. HN culture, in general, feels really patient, empathic and knowledgeable :)
In a political and intelligence sense "appears to be" is a rhetorical tool for propaganda purposes, or / and to cover you ass. He could say "We have no evidence of this being sabotage and further speculation is not useful at this point” which is what he says, from one perspective.
On the other he is framing a conspiracy theory: "Something happened that appears to be sabotage and sabotage would be done by the enemy. " and the European media has been stuffed full of conspiracy theories during the entire conflicts.
Educationally you can look at the Nord Stream pipelines sabotage.
Nearly every EU and US source writes in big letters that Russia was behind it. After a while, it became nearly impossible to keep that conspiracy theory alive.
Sweden and Denmark ended their investigation into the matter with no conclusion drawn The present narrative is that the sabotage was done by a Ukrainian team with a shoe string budget:
A Drunken Evening, a Rented Yacht: The Real Story of the Nord Stream Pipeline Sabotage Private businessmen funded the shoestring operation, which was overseen by a top general; President Zelensky approved the plan, then tried unsuccessfully to call it off https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/nord-stream-pipeline-explos...
I've read the original Zeit article. What a bunch of mumbo jumbo.
https://www.zeit.de/politik/2023-09/nord-stream-pipelines-at...
In this case the phrase likely means "we think it was sabotage but can't prove it yet"
The sibling comments are very relevant, but I wanted to provide a marginally different perspective. You have to take not only what is being said, but _who is saying it_ into perspective.
In this case, this is a government official speaking to the press (i.e. in an official capacity). If they were to say "this was sabotage," that is a definite declaration that the government believes - again, officially and on the record - that an outside party has deliberately done material damage to their country. Given the general situation, it is not a huge leap to come to the interpretation that "this was an attack against our country, and possibly an act of war."
No government official would want to be within miles (or kilometers) of that sort of statement unless they have pretty much already internally decided from the top-down to escalate the situation. Almost no single government agent has the authority to escalate the situation in that manner. So what we end up with is "appears to be." This overtly says 'all available evidence points to this being the case, however something else cannot be ruled out.' (As a sibling comment suggests, it can also act as a type of propaganda). So it is not an official government declaration that another nation has damaged them, but they have reasons (probably both apparent and not) to believe what they are saying publicly.
It's inconclusive but only a little. There's a spectrum of conclusitivity through "possibly is", "might be", "could be", "very well might", "looks like", "appears to be", "almost certainly is", "is".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Words_of_estimative_probabilit...
The phrasing is in any case that of the AP article, not the Defense Minister.
What the latter actually said was much stronger and less ambiguous.
As detailed in the helpful sibling comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42187127
Since they likely used the German expression "es scheint", I think your interpretation is correct.
I interpret "appears to be" to mean "we certainly know it to be true based on factual evidence but we need to keep an exit door politically".
I suppose in today’s world it’s hard to know what was sabotage and what was an accident, and where the buck stops - particularly in marine matters. Was that anchor drag intentional? Did the operator know their charts were out of date? Did that trawl net really fail and snag like that?
We’ll go around in circles until it’s irrelevant.
He just wants more funds for his department.
Reflexive cynicism about the military isn't as warranted in 2024 as it might have been a decade ago. And it wasn't really warranted a decade ago either, when Russia was blowing up Czech ammunition depots, airliners full of Dutch people, conducting assassinations in the center of Berlin, and sending "little green men" to Ukraine.
It could be an accident, sure, but suspicion of sabotage is not paranoia.
And also, like, the German government (and European governments generally) DOES need to spend more on their military. They underinvested for decades and are now stuck needing to catch up very quickly.
And yet reflexive cynicism about politicians is just being a realist :D
The last time it happened, the Russian ship had also been seen unnaturally going back and forth over the cable where the damage occurred. These damages do not happen by themselves. Considering the current international situation and the fact that it happened in a short time in several places unnaturally in a limited region, the Baltic Sea, you have to be very naive if you do not see this as probable sabotage.
Do we have some kind of time-of-flight system that can find out exactly where a cable damage occurred, the instant that it occurs?
This: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spread-spectrum_time-domain_re...
I think you mean C-OTDR?
https://www.anritsu.com/en-us/test-measurement/products/mw90...
The "Yi Peng 3", a Chinese ship that parted from a Russian Port, has been located near both cables just before they were cut. The ship was detained in NATO water, and now faces an investigation.
Currently, all points to a deliberate act of hybrid warfare
There's repeaters so the general area should be known.
They can measure the location of the break to centimeters by timing how long a light pulse takes to reflect back to the emitter. It is called time-domain reflectometry.
Ok, then was it used? And if not, why not?
It was almost certainly used.
What was the response?
Why are you assuming that would be released publicly? The person you are discussing this with is simply informing you of the existence and availability of the technology you're asking about.
They now the distance to the break from one end. They then use that with a map of the cable to determine the lat and long of the break and send a ship to fix it.
So, no navy involved? With such a system I would expect them to catch the perpetrator red-handed and raid their ship, etc.
This process assumes the damage is accidental and doesn't involve the military. If Russia keeps cutting optic cables that could change. I can envision military ships getting real-time notification of fiber cuts and the current location of all foreign ships.
yes, OTDR
well, we did blow up their pipeline, so not like we didnt open the salvo for making international resources fair game
It was 50% funded by the west so it was much ours as theirs. I think it was rightly bombed by Ukraine anyway, not nato.
Either Russia or Ukraine blew it up.
Who is „we“?
you can call it NATO
So, Germany?
Your profile says you're in Lithuania. Lithuania is part of NATO.
IF this was an officially sanctioned mission by a NATO country, then you're part of the "we".
That's kind of the deal with alliances.
Yes. But in this case it's not known who did this. One NATO member is trying to pin it on Ukraine. But evidence is scarce. Personally I'm 50/50 whether this was russian false-flag or combined effort of some NATO members and Ukraine.
Hello Mr Internet Research Agency employee,
A random Lithuanian person is not Germany.
Hope this helps.
So long as we live in democracies, we are responsible for the actions of our governments.
You can certainly go "Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos" during domestic discussions of displeasure of the ruling party. But, in international affairs, we are accountable for our government's foreign policies.
I'm Canadian. "We" are in a proxy war with Russia. "We" need to win lest Putin thinks he can just take sovereign nations like Ukraine without the rest of the world stopping him.
Appeasing dictators is a losing policy. "We" need to do everything possible by having Europe fund Ukraine, and now while "We" have Biden agreeing to do so, until Trump takes over and "we" have infighting between NATO nations about what to do about Ukraine.
A 1 in 36 million chance for three breaks in one day.
https://mathb.in/80217
Why is this analysis focused on the Baltics? That's p hacking, given that it happened to happen in the baltics.
Let's instead say there are roughly 20 ocean regions we would post hoc consider "the same". Now, given a breakage, what is the probability of at least two more in the same region and day? This is a Poisson distribution with lambda=200/365/20. The probability of two more independent breakages is 0.04 % for that specific day.
But again, picking a specific day would be p-hacking. Zooming out, an event that rare is expected to happen every seven years or so.
Now, "every seven years" is a far cry from "1 in 36 million." Whenever you get crazy p values like that, there is often an error or overlooked assumption in the analysis.
----
If you like this sort of thing, have a stab at forecasting competitions! I can recommend the Metaculus Quarterly Cup. The current one is in full swing so use the remaining 1.5 months of the year to practice and then you're set for when the January edition starts.
I see, this was in fact what I had in mind. The maths I posted represent the horizon of my knowledge in probability and was surprised how well o1-preview was able to output correct numerical calculations.
Having said that how would the odds look like if we factor in the fact the Baltic Sea is one of two zones with the most geopolitical tensions (along with Taiwan).
---
Thanks for the Metaculus recommendation. I was a bit disappointed in the lack of maths in the comments in general. Can you recommend something in the vein of Leetcode with various degrees of difficulty, from very basic to advanced problems ? I'm both interested in probability and statistics
Something in thr vein of leetcode would be really useful to train people in forecasting, but given how subjective it is maybe difficult to pull off.
That's assuming independence. I'm not ruling out sabotage but the world is often not fully independent. A storm or an anchor both may affect multiple cables if they're in generally the same area which would definitely make the probability far more likely than those stated. (edit typo)
Indeed !
https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/lithuania-sweden-...
>Lithuania-Sweden subsea cable cut, was 10m from severed Finnish-German cable
I don't buy that number (no source is attributed to it), or rather, I don't believe there's a single incident causing this.
The C-Lion1 cable is predominantly North-East - South-West whereas the BCS cable is NW-SE. They do meet, but the C-Lion1 operator Cinia says their cable broke about 700 km from Helsinki, east of the southern tip of the Öland island. That's easily over 150 km south from where the cables meet.
Also, C-Lion1 was reported broken at 4m, and the BCS cable at 10am the previous day.
the contrast with independent random events is exactly the point of the comment you've replied to, isn't it?
The point is that even without a malicious actor the odds are way lower than you'd think.
The grandparent comment is total nonsense which sounds smart but is not. Damages from accidents are not independently random either. Or do you think it is virtually impossible that 140 people die on the same airliner? It is likely the same ship cut both either by accident or intentionally.
I am leaning towards sabotage but that two cables were cut means very little.
What are the odds 140 people would all die from an airplane crash on the same day? Wild
/s
I was told in my stats class that events in the real world are almost never truly independent.
“Knowing that 200 undersea cables break every year globally, estimate the probability that 3 cables break in the baltic sea on the same day.”
I’m stealing this to use for grad-student mock-interviews—thank you!
Hint: The cables are often very close. If one breaks, the otherone also breaks :-)
Right, if it’s a case interview, then higher accuracy ought to prompt the interviewee to ask: (1) Do the 200 cuts typically occur in clusters? (2) What’s the typical density, eg are they usually collocated? (as an alternative to the above) (3) Are there pathways that avoid the sea but connect Europe and North America (getting at density in the sea in question) Etc.
That’s what makes this one so good—lots of opportunities to extend or roll-back difficulty.
I was surprised to see so many upvotes this morning and was disappointed when I realized it wasn't for another comment I made about the Anthropic Principle.
My take is that in face of coincidences supporting the emergence of intelligent life, we should expect to observe coincidences unnecessary for the emergence of life too.
An analogy: imagine you have lost the key to your mansion and try to cut one at random out of a metal sheet. If it can unlock the door, then chances are that you cut unnecessary notches (the analogy only holds for warded locks and the key you crafted is a master key).
See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42178306
I'm wondering where I'm wrong in my reasoning because the implication is weird.
Why would cables close to each other break?
because if it's an accident and someone is dragging an anchor behind them, if the cables are only meters apart then they are going to cut both
Wouldn't they notice after the first cable? I imagine it would be noticable
Are they?
What are the chances that they break in close proximity spacially, but not temporarily? (I'm assuming that it would be headline material if the lines had disconnected within minutes)
Tangent: an attacker trying hard to provoke that kind of accident would likely not have a very fast success feedback. "Let's try once more, for good measure"
Still pretty decent, given the right circumstances.
For example, the 2011 earthquake in Japan resulted in damage to 7 cables[0]. But it wasn't the quake itself which instantly broke all 7 cables - they were destroyed by underwater avalanches triggered by the earthquake. Avalanches can occur hours after a seismic event, and some underwater avalanches go on for days.
I highly doubt that's the case here, but if you're asking about chances it's not as unlikely as you'd think!
[0]: https://www.theverge.com/c/24070570/internet-cables-undersea...
A clever answer would be "it's a 50/50 chance, either it happens or it doesn't". That's statistics my simple brain can comprehend at least.
In what way is that clever? It's clearly wrong. If it were true, we'd experience three breakages at least 150 days of the year, every year.
One a day is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.
Or they’re right next to each other and the laws of physics continued to exist for the object that struck them.
You can't even assume they follow a normal distribution. For all we know, ships drop anchor more on certain days or weather conditions. That's just the start of the rabbit hole.
I'm supporting gleenn who beat me by seconds to much the same observation.
Clusters are a thing.
And what about adding in the chances of a Russian spy ship seen relatively near by only a few days earlier:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/16/russian-spy-sh...
Irish sea is relatively near to the Baltic sea?
According to Google it's 854nm.
The spy ship is alleged to be able to go 15 knots which means it could make the distance in 2.5 days.
https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/russian-spy-ship-present-off...
Russia itself is nearer
FFS: NM, not nm.
Today’s that day. Start the clock for the next one.
I watched a rep from the operators of the cable claim that this particular cable is pretty tough, and anything other than deliberate sabotage would be very unlikely.
> and the article itself mentions that just last year, two other cables and a gas pipeline were taken out by an anchor
Yes, by a chinese ship that dragged around a huge anchor over the seafloor of whole baltic ocean, widley suspected to be ordered by Russia to do so.
This is in no way a reasonable argument for "shit happens".
If cables break organically about 200 times a year then I'd think a bad actor breaking a cable to send a message would be a tear in the rain.
Right. It's indeed worth pointing out that while this certainly looks like Russian terrorism, it's really fairly bad terrorism, all things considered, and not particularly hard or expensive to mitigate.
It's basically a "Putin tax" on the industrial democracies in the reason. I don't see how this helps Russia at all, honestly. Putin has a real shot, given the state of US politics, at salvaging something approximating a "victory" in Ukraine and getting back to peacetime economics. Why rock the boat?
> it's really fairly bad terrorism
The goal at this stage is not the outcome of some minor outage, but signaling that they are prepared and ready to go ahead with major acts of sabotage. This is the local thugs smashing some furniture in your store as a warning.
You offered nothing to support the theory that Russia is behind this. This reminds me of the Nordstream sabotage, when many jumped to accuse Russia even though that made no sense at all. Perhaps wait for the official investigations. If they like what they discover this time, they might publish it.
> deliberately drag an anchor right over the cables
Can we not make the cables resistant to this? Like if someone drags an anchor over a cable, it instantly locates the break based on time-of-flight over the cable and instantly dispatches a drone from the nearest shoreline to spray nasty sticky shit all over the ship?
Cables can be buried and ploughed into the sea floor. This is usually done in the shallow last miles when approaching a landing on a coast, because there the risk for damage due to anchors, fishermen and other human activity is far higher. However, sometimes the ground can be unsuitable, and burying is expensive, so this isn't done for the whole length.
Doesn't need to be a drone, there should be coast guard etc of all neighbouring countries nearby that can dispatch a plane.
That said, radar systems and sattelites should be active at all times too keeping track of every ship on there, especially if they don't have a transponder active.
This is a misleading framing. The two cables last year were not taken out by an anchor as an accident, it was literally a ship putting down its anchor just before the cable and then dragging it over the cable. In other words, sabotage. There's no point in trying to color any of this with rose tinted glasses when it's clear who's done it and why.
> it was literally a ship putting down its anchor just before the cable and then dragging it over the cable
I don't understand. That's how I'd expect most accidents to happen. Someone decides to anchor too close to an undersea cable, the anchor fails to hold and the drifting ship drags the anchor over the cable damaging it.
I'm not saying it wasn't sabotage, but there needs to be something a bit more than that.
Source: have dragged anchors - thankfully never near undersea cables
The case last year with the gas pipeline, the Chinese / Russian owned left Kaliningrad, and then while sailing, dropped its anchor before the pipeline and cable, and then dragged it over them, and then raised it. It was apparently accidental, yet both the Chinese and Russians didn't want the crew interviewed, the Estonian and the Finnish authorities both shrugged and didn't really care, and the Estonian energy prices were severly impacted for ~9 months.
IMO very very likely sabotage, and brushed under the rug in fear of Russian escalation.
The Finnish authorities know exactly who did it, but what are they going to do?
Sanction Russia? Fire a few missiles at Moscow? Write a sternly worded letter?
It's just added to the pile of "shit that Russia does without repercussions" which is opened when (not if) they actually cross the border to Finland and find out what happens when you fuck around with a country who's been preparing for Russian invasion for 100 years.
Action does not need to be immediate.
Plan is clear: continue suppporting Ukraine, continue Russian isolation.
> IMO very very likely sabotage, and brushed under the rug in fear of Russian escalation.
But what can they do? Imagine you are the leader of a small European country like the Netherlands, and one day Russia decides to shot down your passenger plane with 300 people on board. You can do absolutely nothing.
But once a proxy war started, of course the Netherlands are doing their best to make Putin pay for the lives of these innocent people. He basically alienated many countries in this way and then complains of "Russophobia".
Yep, they can and they did:
https://english.defensie.nl/downloads/publications/2024/09/2...
Or the Netherlands section here:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_aid_to_Ukra...
350+ APCs, 150+ MBTs, Patriot bateries, SPGs, F16s - I'm sure those on the receiving end do think that their Donbas proxies could have been a bit less trigger happy when the loaned them that Buk AA system back in 2014.
Those 298 inoccent victims, 193 of them citizens of Netherlands will be avenged many times over.
What goes around comes around - the irony being that russia itself- has very little regarding hightech structure that could be sabotaged.
No russian starlink sats. No russian fiber lines. No anything. Just backwater countries, slowly bled dry to have that heap of loot called moscow polished.
The heap of pillaged academics with nowhere to go has wandered off towards the west.
All there is, is vandalism and downfall while high on nostalgia. The aggressive train station HasBeenHobo of international politics.
Russia wants the West to react, to stop funding Ukraine and instead fund.. protection for their own homelands I guess. This is a known (theory?), and the game theoretic way to then respond is to, ignore that it happens. Dont stoke any fear or reaction from people or government.
"Estonian and the Finnish authorities both shrugged and didn't really care"
Is this true?
Or
Are we now in a world where we are all living in fear of actual military retribution for speaking out?
NATO countries don't or barely respond because subversion requires a response. Russia is constantly pulling low hanging fruit hoping for as much commotion, fear, etc. It's party of their destabilization and subversion tactics. This is why authorities are not loud, but calm & stoic. And it works, very few people around me are aware of the fact that Russia has blown up NATO ammunition depots, liquidated politicians and has spread bombs on mail flights. During WW2 the British had a great slogan: /Keep Calm and Carry On/. It actually helps the war effort, unlike public outcry, wild speculation & unrest.
> Russia has blown up NATO ammunition depots
Can you give a link to some information on this please?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Vrb%C4%9Btice_ammunition_...
For the non westerns the west is constantly bribing and threatening other nations to comply with their economic expansion drift. In the end we are all tribal nations. And even the west isntva tiny bit better than others. Unfortunately propoganda at all sides make people sticking to one side, condemning the other.
Highly likely ))
* The Chinese / Russian owned what left Kaliningrad?
* Which pipeline?
* Last year (2023), not 2022?
There are very few things which can be described as “setting sail” and can “drop anchor” so I think you can fill the gap easily
Of the big metal things that can "set sail" and "drop anchor" there happens to be a very large set of classifications...
But using your heuristics, that catamarang crew should probably have been interviewed.
I think you tried to be a bit too clever there in choosing one of the "big metal things" that you didn't know how to spell :-)
Generally misspellings like this kind of proves the point...
The comment means nothing, neither mine nor the one I commented on so I won't even bother looking up the spelling.
It's more important to understand why the comment is there.
The GP asked what boat, parent effectively said "a boat" which doesn't answer the question. My comment was one of the least likely options, but hey I could have said sailboat...
Not an excuse either but realistically I on a daily basis speak two languages and often interact with people who can barely speak one of those two so I have some basic understanding of a third... Sometimes I can't remember which one spelling rules come from. Not an excuse, it's easy enough to look it up but just context.
A ship. The ship is named Newnew Polar Bear.
Reference for those of us unfamiliar with the incident:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newnew_Polar_Bear#Damage_to_un...
"In August 2024, an internal Chinese investigation indicated that the ship was indeed responsible for the damage, claiming it was an accident due to heavy weather rather than intentional sabotage.[23][24]"
The internal Chinese investigation indicated that was an accident.. LOL
Dropping anchor in a channel is something a container ship (especially one without other mitigations like this Newnew, I mean look at it) might do to increase stability and reduce the risk of drifting out of the channel.
I don't care to convince folks in this thread one way or another, but yes, there are reason a commercial ship would drop anchor while underway, including bad weather and a narrow / shallow channel. The circumstances from last year had both.
Thank you! Had heard nothing about this one.
I can only upvote. How does the anchor come into contact with the cable if not by that exact sequence of steps? The ship isn't sailing through the Gulf with its anchor down, it has to go near the cable, drop anchor then drag. Otherwise the cable and anchor will not interact. This is the only way an accident could happen (almost).
New New Polar Bear (the Nov 2023 case) was definitely sailing down the Gulf with its anchor down. Estonian defense minister stated at the time there are drag tracks in the seabed for "over 185 km".
(Source: https://www.hs.fi/maailma/art-2000010015226.html)
The problem comes when most of these cables land right at major ports.
Have you draged anchor for 100+km?
>I don't understand. That's how I'd expect most accidents to happen. Someone decides to anchor too close to an undersea cable, the anchor fails to hold and the drifting ship drags the anchor over the cable damaging it.
In most of these cases, it's Russian ships dropping their anchors in areas where the cables are known to be and then driving around in circles until they snag and break it. It's not even slightly plausible that they'd be doing it accidentally.
Yeah if I could just anchor these boats right when its windy just over your cables that'd be great.
Whoopsy, well would you ever!
Have you filed your observations of the ships anchor at sea to the authorities? Because it does sound strange, if you indeed have a witness to this, that they dropped and then hoisted their anchors to damage infrastructure four times that day:
> Swedish-Estonian telecoms cable at 1513 GMT, then over the Russian cable at around 2020 GMT, the [Balticconnector gas pipeline] at 2220 GMT and a Finland-Estonia telecoms line at 2349 GMT.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-says-telecoms-ca...
They just released a statement saying it is sad that they have to be suspicious that it is, perhaps, sabotage:
https://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/en/newsroom/news/-/2685132
Oh no, the EU is gasp deeply concerned.
Well, you never know 100%. There is a small (really small) chance it was an accident. Just like there is a small chance that Al Capone was innocent man.
(But really, it clearly has “Russia” written all over it)
This is not nearly as obvious as this entire thread is making it out to be, unfortunately. I think it has to due with commercial shipping operations and procedures not aligning with our intuitions.
just to be honest, the Pipelines explosion, had "Russia" written all over it, except after investigation, and a possible culprit, i.e not Russia, then nobody wanted to discuss about it anymore. I think the hysteria is too high, people are thirsty for War, looks like..
Delivery of Russian gas was stopped by Russia in violation of contract. European gas companies demands $20 billion in compensation. Nobody had incentive to blow up empty pipes except Russia.
Of course, Russians used false flag as usual, to blame Ukraine, but Ukraine doesn't hide successful attacks on Russian infrastructure, because Ukraine has legal right to defend itself.
While a false flag operation cannot be ruled out, I don't think the case is as clear-cut as you suggest.
> Nobody had incentive to blow up empty pipes except Russia.
I disagree: Russian gas was the one leverage Russia had over Germany. Blowing the pipeline ensured that Germany wouldn't be able to get out of the conflict quietly - "Germany still receiving Russian gas" would not receive as much condemnation as "Germany repairs Russian gas pipeline".
> Ukraine doesn't hide successful attacks on Russian infrastructure, because Ukraine has legal right to defend itself.
True, but Ukraine doesn't have a legal right to sabotage the infrastructure of its allies. I live in Germany and I can tell you: that first winter was pretty bad for everyone, with plenty headlines about people who could no longer afford their heating costs. If it had been known that it was Ukraine's doing, popular support for the war would have sunk a lot.
European countries demand US$20 billion for undelivered gas from Russia[1].
Maybe, $20 billion is pocket money for you, but it's big money for Russia. A false flag operation is much much cheaper.
[1]: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/european-countries-demand-us-...
I wish people took this incident to realize that Germany should be investing in energy independence, the way France had.
French nuclear industry maintains links with Russian giant Rosatom:
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/energies/article/2023/03/12/french...
What about the U.S., which is always holier than thou?
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/14/climate/enriched-uranium-...
The U.S. banned it this year, 2 years after Nordstream was blown up, to the amusement and applause from Nuland etc.
how so, if Germany did shutdown almost all their nuclear power plants? Experts say that would be impossible to "simply turn it on back", because of lack of professionals capable to work on that and that each minute that we wait, harder will be to bring them back...
That is a very abbreviated history. There are two pipelines, NS-1 and NS-2, both of which have two pipes each. NS-1 was operational until a turbine had to be repaired in Canada. The bureaucratic process to allow the repair was arduous, but finally it got done and chancellor Scholz did a photo-op in front of the repaired turbine.
Then the Russians played coy and came up with counter-bureaucratic reasons why the repaired turbine could not be installed. Presumably to put pressure on Germany, which was afraid of the 2022/2023 winter at the time.
Then two pipes of NS-1 and one pipe of NS-2 were blown up. Since no gas was flowing at the time, Russia had no reason to blow up its bargaining chip. Ukraine or the U.S. did have a reason.
Russia also delivered gas to Austria through a pipeline that goes through Ukraine and for which Ukraine collected transit fees until this year. Russia didn't shut down or blow up that pipeline.
From the point of view of the U.S. and Ukraine it does not make sense to blow up the Austrian pipeline because Austria is neutral anyway, so just let Ukraine collect the transit fees.
Germany of course must be pressured to be the second largest financial and weapons supporter for Ukraine, so hey, let's blow up the pipeline of our "ally".
Apart from Hersh's "the U.S. did it" theory, the Wall Street Journal recently blamed it on Zalushny. No other theories have emerged, but rest assured that if there were a credible Russia theory the Western press would shout it from the rooftops.
Putin has offered multiple times to either open the remaining pipe of NS-2 or to route gas via Turkey:
https://www.dw.com/en/putin-offers-europe-gas-through-nord-s...
Russia had $20 billion reasons to blow up their gas pipelines and blame Ukraine for that.
You mean vice versa i assume.
> Of course, Russians used false flag as usual, to blame Ukraine, but Ukraine doesn't hide successful attacks on Russian infrastructure, because Ukraine has legal right to defend itself.
This is completely wrong. It involved German/Russian infrastructure, and if confirmed, it would rank as the worst terrorist act in the history of the FRG (Germany) since the Munich Olympic Games. In fact, it could, should, or would lead to the activation of Article 5, as one of NATO's members was attacked.
BTW from the Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nord_Stream
" In June 2024 German authorities issued an arrest warrant for a Ukrainian national suspected of the sabotage.[13] "
This (in German) shed even more lights on that https://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/ukraine/roman-tscherwins...
A terrorist act is an act meant to cause terror. High natural gas prices, while they might be very inconvenient, are hardly terror in the same way as things usually described as terrorist acts, which usually involve civilians exploding at random.
that is your definition. BTW The department responsible for this case in Germany, is the anti-terrorism department.
https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/politik/deutschland/nord-stre...
zdf is the german news broadcast.
So, this is one man, who bought, moved, and then installed 500kg of explosives in 4 places in front of a married couple, right?
>in front of a married couple
Is this supposed to imply the story is implausible because the couple wasn't in on the plot and would rat the third guy out? If so, all 3 are suspects and presumably are in on the plot, so this argument falls flat on its face.
Only one man is suspect, a married couple is not.
Says who? The DW article says otherwise.
>The two other suspects, a married couple who do not have warrants issued in their names, have denied knowing Z. and said that they were on vacation in Bulgaria when the attack took place.
Wait. Wasn't it Ukraine that blew up the pipeline? I'm all for them defending themselves.
Are you saying it was actually Russia that did it? They blew up own pipeline?
There's an outstanding German warrant for 3 Ukrainians in connection with the incident.
https://www.dw.com/en/nord-stream-explosions-germany-issues-...
> The two other suspects, a married couple who do not have warrants issued in their names, have denied knowing Z. and said that they were on vacation in Bulgaria when the attack took place.
There's no actual evidence that Ukraine did it, lest alone solid proof.
Russia is a probable candidate.
The Dutch military intelligence agency MIVD had infiltrants in Ukraine after MH-17 of a plot to blow up the Nord Stream, they tipped off the CIA, who in turn warned Ukraine not to do it, three months before it happened; source [0], translation [1].
Germany has issued an arrest warrant for a Ukranian national [2] who along with two accomplices was on board the yacht Andromeda, which was located at the blast site days before the blast and on which traces of the same explosive was found as used on the pipelines, as well as DNA evidence.
I suppose it's not "actual evidence Ukraine did it", but it's more than enough evidence to make a Ukranian national that since fled back to Ukraine a suspect.
[0] https://nos.nl/artikel/2478770-vs-waarschuwde-oekraine-nord-... [1] https://nos-nl.translate.goog/artikel/2478770-vs-waarschuwde... [2] https://www.dw.com/en/nord-stream-explosions-germany-issues-...
> The two other suspects, a married couple who do not have warrants issued in their names, have denied knowing Z. and said that they were on vacation in Bulgaria when the attack took place.
:-/
So, one diver moved and installed 500kg of explosives in 4 places in front of a married couple?
>So, one diver moved and installed 500kg of explosives in 4 places in front of a married couple?
Are you taking the married couples' claims at face value? The article mentions two divers, not one.
There is some pretty compelling evidence that it was Ukraine. The CIA even tipped Germany off about the potential saboteurs
https://archive.is/dPdoX
What exactly is the evidence there? I read the article and all I see is hearsay.
German investigations found that the Andromeda trail leads to Russia[0].
[0] https://www.tagesspiegel.de/internationales/nord-stream-spur...
The "investigations" you reference were by German media, whereas the wsj article was allegedly from German authorities. Moreover, while you accuse the wsj article as "hearsay", the same is true for the tagesspiegel you linked. The crux of that article's claim is that the company that rented the yacht had Crimean owners with ties to Russia, but no proof was presented. We're asked to trust the journalists on that, just as we're asked to trust the wsj journalists on the facts of the German authorities' investigation.
Why is "solid proof" required for the claim that Ukrainian nationals did it, but "probable candidate" suffices for Russia?
To attribute culpability, you need solid proof. I'm not saying that Russia did it - simply that there's enough evidence that Russia had means, motive and opportunity - which makes it a probable candidate.
> Wait. Wasn't it Ukraine that blew up the pipeline?
Yup, they did it. The question that is being investigated is if any other Country helped them or not.
>Nobody had incentive to blow up empty pipes except Russia.
Nonsense. Biden had a great deal of incentive to destroy that pipeline.
Biden had a great deal of incentive to destroy that pipeline.
But far too many more obvious counterincentives.
Unlike the Ukrainians, NATO/US were smart enough to see that blowing up NS2 would be hugely stupid, providing precisely zero strategic advantage while simply provoking Russia to respond assymetrically (in exactly the same way as it is apparently doing right now). In addition to the huge methane release.
So if anything, the standpoint of "incentives" points squarely in the opposite direction (that is, against the idea that the US/NATO must have done it).
Your belief in the infallible nobility of NATO belies a vested interest in ignoring its massive, undeniable war crimes, crimes against humanity and violations of human rights at massive scale, as an organization, this century.
>Unlike the Ukrainians, NATO/US were smart enough
I do not concur with this glib assessment one bit.
I said absolutely nothing about its "infallible nobility", of course.
Or even implying that sentiment.
LOL Biden has no balls to do that.
Had. NS2 was almost two years ago. Your current Biden assessment may be correct, but two years ago there was a great deal more lucidity, when he stated that "no matter what, the NS2 pipeline will not be allowed to persist" ..
> people are thirsty for War, looks like..
Nobody in the West wants any war. The usual tactics of Putin is to do what he wants whether on his or foreign soil, using poisoning etc. in a way that everybody knows it's him but he will politely deny. It's a kind of a silly game, the GRU could just have put a bullet in Lytvynenko's head but they choose a slow death to show off.
I’m not sure that no one wants a war. I can see some groups profiting from it.. I see some politicians being quite blunt about it—some in Germany, for instance, who are well-known lobbyists for the defense industry. Biden’s decision to allow the use of long-range weapons seems like a tactical political move designed to make Trump’s life significantly harder from day one. It feels irresponsible, as it appears that war is being used both to weaken the opposition and to enrich the defense industry.
>Biden’s decision to allow the use of long-range weapons seems like a tactical political move designed to make Trump’s life significantly harder from day one.
I have a different take on this, basically parroting Perun on YouTube. The lame duck period is the perfect time for escalatory steps, as the Russians always have the option of waiting until the new administration comes into office rather than responding aggressively. Trump will be free to re-impose whichever restrictions he wants, but he'll be starting from a stronger position. He'll have the "stop UA use of long-range weapons" bargaining chip, _and_ he'll be able to relatively costlessly blame Biden for the "bad decision" of allowing them.
A war in europe is not going to be profitable squared against the damage it will do to the global economy. Thats why the middle eastern wars were attractive for American coalition members. Defense contractors profit. You can demo new tech and tactics. And whatever damage you do in that corner of the world won’t really impact anything at home.
> people are thirsty for War, looks like
Russians, yes
I wish I lived in a world where it's so easy to know who is good and who is evil and to pinpoint them so well.
You do. Russia's invasion of Ukraine is not an ambiguous war. Russia is plainly in the wrong.
I don't know what goes on to comment. I'm not there and I don't fool myself into thinking that I know geopolitics just because I read some articles. My comment was replying to someone who said the Russians are the war thirsty people of the world. It's a bit rich because, there's a bunch of other ongoing wars in the world and people aren't just "bad" or "good"
Objective facts though: Russia invaded Ukraine, in 2014 and 2022. There was no formal declaration of war. There were widespread and indiscriminate attacks on civilians.
Which parts of those are "good" in your opinion? Do you believe Russia's "denazification" claim?
There are no international laws that legitimized Russia's invasion of Ukraine. If Ukraine was in violation of something, there's procedures in place to declare war legitimately - but before that there's the nonviolent approach, which Russia skipped.
No parts of the war are good - I didn't make any claims about the Russian war, I don't know what caused it or why it's going on, and I don't like wars. I don't believe most claims by either side, I doubt there's advantage in revealing the real reasons by either side - the articles we read are to craft an opinion either to support one side or the other and I don't think it's that simple - that's my whole point. I don't need to think a war is legitimate to have a reaction to someone saying there's one country with warmonger people and one country without. In general I think it's normal to side with the invaded party and I'm personally inclined to support that side - but it doesn't mean I tell myself I'm making some informed decision.
With this rigid logic you might as well not trust anything you can’t observe first hand yourself.
Not really, but to declare a whole population as "very bad thing", yes I need to approximate first hand observation. I have no need to declare a whole population bad though.
> I don't know what goes on to comment.
And yet you are commenting. Ignorance and a lack of curiosity are not compelling arguments.
Maybe it's time to grow up and start paying attention.
Yeah.
Lot of Russian Apologist.
Russia invades Ukraine -> It is Biden's fault, he ordered it.
Russia actually invading and killing -> It was NATO's fault for discussing admission.
Like, Russia is actually 'doing the bad things'.
> Like, Russia is actually 'doing the bad things'.
Yes, Russia is doing bad things.. But do we really need or want a third World War because of it? It’s not Ukraine’s fault that Russia invaded, but Ukraine bears responsibility for having been so corrupt over the past 20 years and for being irresponsible given its proximity to Russia. We still don’t know how much of the aid sent to Ukraine is being lost to corruption... So I am not willing to fight this War.
You should definitely stay home then. Other people are doing the fighting for you.
For me? Definitely not for me. But my country investing my pension, health infrastructure, education system to support their civilians. Even you and all other Ukraine that spend the day online here, are being paid by us. Still, no reason to Europe to go to war for Ukraine, but instead invest our military budget in our NATO partners and preparing to defend them.
If you ask European military leaders where we should invest and how we should prepare, they'll tell you that strong support of Ukraine is one of the best investments into European defense that you could make at the moment. They calculate that it's better to stop Russia in Ukraine than to face Russia (with additional resources from fully occupied Ukraine) in Poland or elsewhere.
Military leaders are pragmatic people and this is a pragmatic approach. We have a problem. We see that the problem has grown in time and will grow further if ignored. So it's better to deal with the problem now rather than waste valuable time and face an even larger problem in 5 to 8 years.
> Military leaders are pragmatic people and this is a pragmatic approach.
Military leaders are politicians. I am in the Military. The official position, is inline with what the political leaders want. Internally, the same Military leaders disagree with the politicians. Internally all say the same: There is no accountability and responsibility in Ukraine. Better is to concentrate our resources where matters: NATO. Ukraine is necessary strategically to consume Russian men, artillery, etc.. That's the military opinion that we hear internally.
> Military leaders are politicians. I am in the Military. The official position, is inline with what the political leaders want.
That's not the case in countries bordering Russia, starting from Finland and heading south, where military leaders take a lot of pride in being constitutionally independent like supreme court judges. Politicians would very much prefer to hide behind NATO guarantees and pretent that the risk does not exist and that the Americans would come to save us (without specifying any details), whereas military assessments are much more calculated and take into account hard facts like redeployment speed of a brigade or daily ammo expenditure. Assessments from military circles have so far been consistently the closest to how events have actually unfolded.
They case they are presenting is a no-brainer. It is by all measures significantly cheaper - by orders of magnitude - to support Ukraine in halting Russians in Eastern Ukraine than to fight invaders on our home turf.
Exactly. They need Ukraine to keep Russia busy. Other than people try to convince us, Men matter. Every single russian soldier that dies, fighting in Ukraine, is one less potential barbarian in their border, that's all truth, but people should understand, it's not about saving Ukraine, but about protecting themselves.
But that's what military leaders are saying too: by giving Ukraine better weapons to defend their homes, we hit two birds with one stone. Better weapons save Ukrainian lives and do more damage to the resources that threaten us too. Every tank Ukrainians blow up with our advanced missiles is a double win. A win for Ukraine and a win for us.
Even if you don't care one bit about Ukraine, it's still a really smart thing to do for our own sake.
Well, the situation changes really fast. To make Trump's life harder, Biden gave green to Ukraine to use their weapons as they want. This isn't what the countries around the conflict want, because it means eminent scalation to a nuclear war. So the general opinion among the experts (and Finland and Sweden started this week to prepare to War) is "yes, let Ukraine drain Russia's army, but they shouldn't win this War, otherwise it means 3rd World War". I care about Ukraine people and soldiers, but the a scalation in this War, isn't the right decision for both.
What would Reagan have said to this?
"USSR, why bother pushing back, not my problem, can't I just go to the mall and hang out?"
That's not how it goes. We are supporting Ukraine in a level that nobody does. Germany is investing the pension from everyone under 45 years old, education and health system, just to support ukraine. All Ukraine online warriors here in Hackernews, are here being support financially by us. It doesn't mean however we should go to War for it. The online warriors here aren't there too, but here in Germany, "figthing online" with +1 or -1...
Guess I was thinking in terms of 'support'.
During the Cold War, the US and Russia were not 'At War'. But US did financial support a ton of countries, with a lot of money.
So why not do that now? Still fighting Russia. Still not 'head to head', but with Proxies.
This seems like arguing to stop supporting our Proxy and let Russia take them. But there is still an argument to not give up.
Lets say Russia wins, and re-integrates Ukraine.
Now what does the world look like in 20 years when Russia is eye-balling Poland?
> Lets say Russia wins, and re-integrates Ukraine.
It won't happen. If you think so then, you are not well informed about this topic. Russia has no manpower to "re-integrate" the whole Ukraine. Ukraine will always exist, but for the next years, maybe not as big as in 2014. Ukraine can still prepare itself to take the lost area back in the future. That's up to Ukraine, not to Europe.
Said that, one possibility, for now, which is part of the negotiations is Russia keep the conquered land, Ukraine joins EU/NATO. Realistically, it would be Ukraine joins EU and US won't block Ukraine applying to NATO.
> Now what does the world look like in 20 years when Russia is eye-balling Poland?
Poland, other than Ukraine, isn't one of the most corrupt countries in the World, and did their home-work. Beside it, other than Ukraine, Poland is NATO.
This planet voted in UN that Russian Federation is aggressor. Which world you represent?
Maybe he is an Israeli.
They murdered an entire town. Well several. Raped and tortured those they didn't kill. Kidnap children to Russianize them. Torture and kill POWs. The only difference between them and the Germans is that they haven't carried out industrial slaughter of Jews.
And now Germans are paying Ukraine bills. History is much more complicated than we think..
It is easy; nations that attack other nations unprovoked are "evil" (at fault).
Ukraine has never infringed on Russia's sovereignty or territorial integrity before it was attacked. Therefor this war is entirely Russia's fault.
The world is mostly shades of gray. But this case it black and white.
> I wish I lived in a world where it's so easy to know who is good and who is evil
War and killings turn up the contrast, converting shades of gray to black and white, people to friends and enemies.
I rather would live in peacetime, where it’s less obvious who is good and who is bad.
I think most reasonable people realise that was either the US or the UK.
But this person is just speaking the truth - I worked for an ISP with cable landing stations. These cables went down several times a year due to physical damage of non nefarious kinds. It's not obvious that this malicious. It certainly might be but it's not a slam dunk.
Yeah and if you shoot someone and they die it might be an unrelated heart attack.
Do you not understand probability? Or are you just suffering from confirmation bias?
Yeah but in this case, we don't know whether the guy in question actually got shot, only that he died. In that case it's premature to assume "this is murder".
Chinese ship starting from Russian port went to sea, dropped the anchor just before the cables, dragged it over the cables, went away.
Haven't reported anything.
Declined requests to explain themselves.
Sorry but it's bullshit.
> when it's clear who's done it and why.
Is it though? From my understanding it's clearly sabotage, but who's responsible is open to some debate. Compare to NordStream, it's still not officially determined who's responsible.
There has been an arrest warrant for a Ukrainian diver. https://www.heise.de/en/news/Nord-Stream-Arrest-warrant-for-...
It's still not officially made public who's responsible.
> officially determined who's responsible
Becuase they are afraid to figure out the truth. It might not fit the propaganda narrative.
FUD
Same procedure this time
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/chinese-ship-investigat...
the culprits have been getting chased around the north sea for the past two months suspected of attempting to perpetrate the same in other locations.
If this wasn't an accident, given the recent Biden escalation that allows ATACMS strikes in Kursk in could mean two things:
1) Russia hastily retaliated, which is out of character. You can accuse Russia of many things, but not of retaliating instantly (against the West, in Ukraine they probably do).
2) False flag in order to drum up pro-war sentiment in the West.
If Biden escalates in the last weeks of his presidency, presumably to make it more difficult for Trump to negotiate, why would Russia take the bait and escalate? It does not make any sense.
"Escalate"? Allowing Ukraine to use the weapons it has to strike back at an aggressor in order to mitigate or reduce said aggressors ability to continue attacking is ... "escalation"? I don't think so.
If anything artificial limits have been placed on Ukraine that are not placed on other nations (or in some cases proscribed terrorist organisations) purchasing or being "gifted" weapons. Whether those weapons are from the U.S., UK, France, Germany, Russia, RoK, whoever.
Yes. Weapons hitting places deep inside Russia that haven't been hit before is escalation. Whether one favors the act or not isn't how a step is considered as escalation. Now the Russians might or might not take steps that the other side considers escalation.
Ukraine has been hitting targets "deep" inside Russia for a long time now - further than ATACMS or the export Storm Shadow/SCALP-EG can reach. Whether Ukraine use their own weapons or those purchased/gifted from others seems irrelevant. This is Russia saying "we can hit you with weapons provided by other nations, but you cannot be allowed to hit us likewise" - it's pathetic.
As for what Russia may do, they've been told publicly and privately by multiple nations: from the U.S., UK, and France, even China and India to wind their necks in with regard any nuclear escalation. However, they are very adept at asymmetric responses, and Putin has already said he would consider arming groups with anti-"western" sympathies - he probably already has.
Earlier hits were using Ukrainian drones, while the Atacms are reported as needing to be programmed by US military to hit the targets. So while it is Ukraine that supposedly fires them, it is the americans who will reportedly get them to their intended targets. I don't think there is any moral debate in Ukraine hitting Russia with missiles. After all it is a war fought by Russia against an Ukraine which has Nato proxy support. But it is an escalation nevertheless.
It is now up to Russia on how to respond. And as you noted, one scenario being talked about, at least in social media, is some groups houthis, hezbollah or others getting Russian missiles and those being fired at western targets, ships or others. And I assume it would be Russian military who would control the targetting in that case depending on the missiles used. Or the Russians don't go for direct escalation with the intent of not jeopardizing the chances of Trump ending support to Ukraine in few months from now.
But either way Russia's deterrence against Nato has been challenged yet again, and the chances of escalations and counter-escalations going out of hand remains a more nearer scary possibility in the unfolding scenario in process.
We need to make clear we have the cards. Russia invited us to slaughter the forces sent in in 2014 by making them deniable. They backed down when Turkey downed one of their jets. The instant they feel real force they back down.
There are sadly a lot of Chamberlains these days with the wool pulled over their eyes.
> Joint statement by the Foreign Ministers of Finland and Germany on the severed undersea cable in the Baltic Sea
> We are deeply concerned about the severed undersea cable connecting Finland and Germany in the Baltic Sea. The fact that such an incident immediately raises suspicions of intentional damage speaks volumes about the volatility of our times. A thorough investigation is underway. Our European security is not only under threat from Russia‘s war of aggression against Ukraine, but also from hybrid warfare by malicious actors. Safeguarding our shared critical infrastructure is vital to our security and the resilience of our societies.
https://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/en/newsroom/news/-/2685132
And also the cable between Lithuania and Sweden:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/18/telecoms-cable...
And also Ireland escorted a Russian spy ship away from their cables:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/16/russian-spy-sh...
A disruption in communications can mean only one thing: invasion.
It can also mean that Russia is posturing and retaliating for the US's announcement that Ukraine can strike inside Russia with US missiles. This feels more like the same kind of exercise that North Korea does with their missile tests than it does an actual invasion.
I never really liked the whole sabotage is just "posturing" opinion.
Like there's real physical stuff destroyed (or in most circumstances digital stuff). How hard is it to impound ships that break stuff and etc so that the ones responsible are actually punished?
Probably no harder than impounding illegal unsafe unregistered oil shipping transports making their way through the Baltic->Black sea right now, evading sanctions.
Not hard. Not done. Because we're cowards.
Didn't the cable get cut before the announcement regarding Ukraine being able to use U.S. missiles against Russia?
Possibly, but only by hours—the news about the missile announcement was on Sunday afternoon, and the cable was cut Sunday morning. But it's unclear when the policy was actually communicated to Ukraine and Russia almost certainly found out about it immediately after Ukraine did (or even before).
yes. What Russia does currently is probing and testing - what it takes to disrupt all the necessary cables simultaneously to create communication breakdown and a lot of chaos, what resources and time it takes to repair (and thus planning the options on blocking those repair resources, etc.) It takes tanks half-a-day to cross the Baltic states to reach the sea. That is the time Russia wants to buy. Once Russian forces are already in Riga, Tallinn, Vilnus, the NATO will have a decision to make on whether to bomb the Russian forces already placed by that time among the Baltic states population.
> Once Russian forces are already in Riga, Tallinn, Vilnus, the NATO will have a decision to make on whether to bomb the Russian forces already placed by that time among the Baltic states population.
NATO has forward deployed forces to assure that to take Riga, Tallin, and Vilnius, Russia will have to attack and defeat armed forces of the UK, Canada, and Germany respectively. More than that, really, those are just the lead nations in the NATO forward-deployed battlegroups in those countries. There are also five other forward-deployed battlegroups, four of which — as well as reinforcement of the original four in the Baltics + Poland – were deployed in response to the 2022 Russian escalation in Ukraine.
Cutting undersea cables is not going to prevent (or even meaningfully slow) a response given that.
This would be more concerning if Russia had any tanks left.
Are you suggesting Russia has a full invasion force they’re not using in Ukraine? Or to liberate their own occupied territory?
Baltic states have 30K military total combined - Russia loses 20-30K/month in Ukraine. So, with all the respect to the Baltic states military - with them being responsible for the defense of about 700km long strip of land, it isn't about full invasion force, it is about having NATO not responding long enough.
And Russia can’t expel a Ukrainian force smaller than that from less area of their own territory.
You're comparing frontal assault on battle hardened troops vs. potentially highly maneuvering invasion. It is somewhat like comparing Harkiv operation in the Fall 2022 vs. counteroffensive in the South in the Summer 2023.
In Kursk Russian forces can't maneuver much, they have to directly push on Ukrainians. The density of Russian and Ukrainian forces in this war - like ~500K each on the 1000km of the battle lines - is order of magnitude higher than that of the Baltic states militaries. Potential invasion in the low density situation of the Baltic states would make sense by cutting through un/low-defended areas with encircling/etc. of the more fortified areas without direct assault of them, at least initially.
If fighting starts in the Baltics (or Poland) Russia will face the greatest air force in the world fairly quickly. The conventional conflict will be over in a few months. Hopefully it will not escalate into nuclear conflict.
I can't imagine a scenario where the Baltics are invaded without Poland getting involved. And maybe even Germany, Sweden, Finland.
And that is not a fight I think Russia can win and they know that.
I would imagine at least US Air Force getting involved. And that would mean Russia will be pushed out of Baltics fairly quickly (assuming the conflict remains a conventional conflict and does not escalate into nuclear conflict).
I think you're imagining a world without Trump in the presidency.
Trump was the one arming Ukraine, not Obama. Obama sent helmets, MREs, and blankets. Trump sent Javelins.
Trump also got out of the Intermediate Missile treaty - which was beneficial for Russia (and Western Europe) and a non-issue for Americans.
Trump is not the Putin-puppet Hillary made him to be.
Nice try. Almost like the "perfect phone call" never happened. Except it did.
Apparently you haven't seen the map going around with Trump's proposed solution. Ukraine gives up all of what Russia is occupying right now, and doesn't keep Kursk. Ukraine can't join NATO for "20 years" (aka never). "European" troops are supposed to sit on a "DMZ" (which they will never agreed to).
Aka Ukraine surrenders, and Russia will just organize a hybrid-warfare coup to get a Lukashenko-style puppet gov't back in in Ukraine. Or come back in with troops in a few years.
Basically it's crappy bargaining, from a weak president. If you were Putin, and you saw that map... why stop now? You'd be laughing. No consequences.
Trump is a puppet not so much of Putin, but of the oil and gas sector. And Russia is an energy superpower. They both speak on behalf of the same global financial interests. They are very tired of this conflict and care little about Ukraine.
I cannot see Trump playing along with an Article 5 reaction to Russian aggression. And Putin is not stupid enough to use direct conventional warfare against a NATO state anyways. It's just more and more hybrid provocations, to wear down western solidarity, to topple gov'ts or undermine response, and all excused by useful idiots in the west.
Apparently you haven't seen the map going around with Trump's proposed solution.
Because apparently there isn't one. It seems some Republican "strategist" put out a map, but it has since been disavowed by the incoming administration.
I hope to hell you're right and this wasn't just a selective leak.
You are kind of all over the place...
The Trump - Zelensky call was about discrediting Biden not about appeasing Putin. OK, moving on...
Trump is not longer Putin's puppet but the puppet "of the oil and gas sector". OK, moving on...
This thread is about about Russian military invasion in the Baltics and you reply with "And Putin is not stupid enough to use conventional warfare against NATO".OK, moving on....
"topple govt's" - Putin cannot even topple Ukraine...
Today: no In 5-10 years: probably
Maybe, but that's assuming their war economy lasts for that long, that they still have people to run those things, etc. Besides, Europe was caught with its proverbial pants down; in 5-10 years, they will (should) have their military up to speed again, with fresher, better equipped and better trained people than Russia has. The border countries have all upgraded their defenses already, and if they invade a NATO country they suddenly have all of Europe and - if still applicable at the time - the US on their back.
There are no scenarios in which Russia can have any significant victories. The only thing they maybe have is nukes, but nobody wins if those are deployed.
You forgot one thing. Nato has zero combat experience. Its entire economy is not suitable for warfare. Will take a lot longer than 5 years.
Nato has zero combat experience.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NATO_operations
Not a single serious war. A war against Russia will be similar to ww1 and ww2. meaning men from all age groups will die in large masses. Or you believe a war will be similar to sandal terrorists.
Not a single serious war
And you're both changing the goalposts, and setting a ridiculous standard (WWI/WWII) for the minimum standard of what constitutes a "serious" war.
No, they literally make barely any tanks. What they do is refurbish and modernize post-soviet stock.
RF refurbishes about 1300 tanks a year. It's more than enough to conquer part of Europe and then exchange it for Ukraine.
They probably do, but they send them immediately to the frontlines. There are people who track RU storage and refurbishment sites.
https://x.com/Jonpy99/status/1856776568057565284/photo/1
There's no secret real russian army just waiting to invade some another country, or just chilling in Urals. If russia did not have nuclear weapons, road to moscow would be open.
What non-NATO European country are they going to invade (and hold!) as a bargaining chip?
Any how many of those tanks go straight to Ukraine? Do you think Russia can afford to stockpile tanks (and everything else necessary) for several years for an invasion of Europe while simultaneously engaged in the their current war in Ukraine?
Slovakia or Hungary, for example.
They would not need a direct attack. Orban talked about allowing free access to any Russian citizen towards Hungary. We have seen this film yet and is called "green men 2".
They are both in NATO
This doesn't mean that they will invoke Article 5.
Multiple NATO countries should invoke Article 4 of NATO already, but they don't.
They might occupy some area, sure, but if they invade a EU or NATO country they'll get that full force on top of them. And they have a lot of aircraft to deploy too; tanks have zero chance against an airstrike.
NATO cannot stop Russia in Ukraine, even with help of 1 million Ukrainian army. NATO have no enough tanks, shells, soldiers to stop 2 million army in few first weeks, even if Russians will just march with their AK-s in hands. The only thing that will stop Russia for sure is a nuclear strike. Planes are good for strikes, but ground must be captured and hold by soldiers.
> NATO cannot stop Russia in Ukraine, even with help of 1 million Ukrainian army.
I mean, they are doing pretty good for a total NATO deployment of 0 combat forces. Funny to describe the only country with troops involved as “helping” and treating the nonexistent NATO presence as the primary force.
> NATO have no enough tanks, shells, soldiers to stop 2 million army in few first weeks, even if Russians will just march with their AK-s in hands.
In the event of a Russian invasion of Eastern flank NATO members and the NATO forward-deployed battlegroups in those countries, NATO policy, unlike in Ukraine, would not restrict the use of long range weapons against command and control, logistics, and combat aviation facilities in Russia, nor would NATO forces be short on their own combat aviation to use against the invasion itself.
Ukraine isn’t NATO, and while impressive for their conditions, what Ukraine can do is not a model for what NATO can do.
Russia is at war with NATO. Ukraine is invaded because Ukraine wants to join NATO, to make NATO weaker. Same for Georgia. If Ukraine will fall, Russia will win, NATO will lose.
Long range weapons will hit hard for sure, but millions of soldiers still must be defeated in close combat to take ground. Ukraine has western tech, it good, but it not good enough when Ukrainians are outnumbered. To win the war, Ukraine must dominate in the war, but western allies fail to deliver anything that will dominate over Russia.
> Russia is at war with NATO.
No, its not. Russia is at war with Ukraine. No NATO countries are fighting Russia, Russia is fighting no NATO countries.
> Ukraine is invaded because Ukraine wants to join NATO
Even if that was true, invading Ukraine is war with Ukraine, not NATO.
But it is not true, you have cause and effect reversed. Ukraine had a legal dedication to neutrality when Russia invaded in 2014, that provision was eliminated and its pursuit of NATO membership, which had been abandoned years before in favor of neutrality, resumed after the invasion. Ukraine wants to join NATO because Russia invaded it, not vice versa.
Russia is at war with NATO. No NATO countries are fighting Russia. Russia freely perform acts of sabotage in NATO countries.
Have a look at what Israel did to Irans S-300s last month. Ukraine has still only received scraps from NATO
Ukraine destroyed many Russian S300, S400, S500, but Ukrainian planes cannot fly freely over combat area.
None of the western air forces are involved. In the Iraq war most of the Iraqi casualties were due to air force, not ground forces (like Iraq' Highway of Death for example). If US Air Force ever gets involved in this conflict it will be a turkey shot.
F-16 are already in Ukraine. They fail to demonstrate great results, because of Russian air defense. Both RF and Ukraine can launch glide bombs at enemy.
You mean the 6 Ukrainian manned F-16s? Well, 5 now since Ukrainians downed one of their own in friendly fire..
Meanwhile US AirForce has about 900 F-16s... and a whole bunch of F35s. This it not a serious comparison....
Russia had over 1000 of planes, but failed to achieve air superiority in Ukraine. They tried, but they lost about 1/3 of their combat air force.
Eh, western militaries are holding a lot of weaponry back from Ukraine; like the vast majority of it. They have run low in a few areas that have been key in this war, like artillery shells, but that's in part because these countries haven't prioritized that production in recent history in favor of other systems.
I actually do think that the US and Europe should be moving faster to increase their military manufacturing capacity, especially Europe given the situation they are now facing. But to say that NATO countries have been throwing everything they have to Ukraine is wildly off the mark.
Conversely, I have no doubt that Lithuania's armed forces have learned from Ukraine's experience: those Russian tanks would all be destroyed within the first few kilometers.
...and that assumes Russia still has enough tanks to even mount an offensive, in sufficient numbers to capture several capital cities, belonging to nations with a fearsome grudge against them.
(Three years ago, I would have fully agreed with your assessment!)
yes. That is why Russia hasn't yet moved, and still looking for a way to do it. Russia is deliberately stuck in the past where for example the "War scare of 1927" laid ground and provided the excuse for the militarization of and repressions in USSR and ultimately to the USSR starting WWII together with and as ally of Hitler. And the first thing USSR did back then in 1939 was the "solution" of the perceived issues of the 1927 (the issues which there for the last several centuries) - Finland, Poland and the Baltic states. If you look at the current Russian TV, chats, etc. - their thinking and perception are the same as back then. For them it isn't an issue of whether to do it, it is an issue of how to do it. It took 12 years from 1927 to 1939 during which the country got prepared for the war, at least how they perceived the necessary preparations - in particular it was industrialized and the society was militarized and put completely under dictatorship, and i think we see that today too.
The Soviet Union was right to be scared back then. The next invasion from the west happened 1941.
And I guess there is still some paranoia in Russia. The NATO Neocons are busy feeding it.
>The Soviet Union was right to be scared back then. The next invasion from the west happened 1941.
And everyone next to the Soviet Union was right to be scared since Soviet Union invaded Finland and Poland in 1939.
>The Soviet Union was right to be scared back then. The next invasion from the west happened 1941.
Not really. The USSR was scared about what they perceived as Anglo-led forces and so united with Germany against them and attacked them first. The invasion of 1941 came from Germany who was still an ally even just the night before the invasion - Hitler even fed Stalin (and Stalin went for it!) the fake that the German forces got accumulated on the USSR border to mislead Britain into thinking that Germany plans to attack USSR while instead Germany was supposedly preparing to invade Britain.
>And I guess there is still some paranoia in Russia. The NATO Neocons are busy feeding it.
The Russian paranoia hasn't changed much since Ivan The Terrible, long before neocons.
I think "Blood and Ruins" by Richard Overy is a great piece of work and a good account of the confusing history of the 1930s.
Munich was an "alliance" of Great Britain und Germany (and sort of Poland).
Then Germany and the Soviet Union allied against Poland.
Then Great Britain and The Soviet Union allied.
>The Russian paranoia hasn't changed much since Ivan The Terrible, long before neocons.
Prisoners of Geography is pop science but I like the chapter about Russia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoners_of_Geography
https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/106335/blood-and-ruins-by-ov...
>the next invasion from the west
The invasion from Nazi Germany, the USSR's ally in the invasion of Poland, and the one it signed extensive trade agreements with and helped to avoid sanctions.
>It takes tanks half-a-day to cross the Baltic states to reach the sea.
And what happens if they actually go for that distance?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Voznesensk
yes, due to geography, success at Voznesensk basically saved Odessa and the rest of the unoccupied South. That is the point - if Russia took Odessa back then it would basically be game-over. I don't see such strategic points like Voznesensk in the Baltic states though.
There is vast difference between just driving somewhere and actually controlling it. Russia learned that in first month of the invasion. If they weren't stopped at Voznesensk, they would be stopped somewhere else - there was singular BTG driving somewhere deep into hostile territory.
Another example of BTG driving deep and getting decimated: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4g68MmLrGvM
>There is vast difference between just driving somewhere and actually controlling it. Russia learned that in first month of the invasion.
I made such comment here in the first hours of the invasion :)
>If they weren't stopped at Voznesensk, they would be stopped somewhere else
if they were able to take the bridge at Voznesensk, that BTG would keep it, and more forces would come that way.
I don't believe they'd be able to keep and reinforce it, given that they were only able to bypass Mykolaiv due to the early day chaos. And Mykolaiv was giving rest of russian forces there enough problems.
However, at this point it's only speculation, probably not worth getting deeper into it.
There's plenty of alternative communications systems in place and I presume the military does not depend exclusively on one, two, or even three systems, least of all the relatively vulnerable internet cables. NATO, borders, and the Russian invasion response playbooks predate the internet by decades, too.
While theoretically it's possible that Russia would simultaneously dismantle or jam the internet, mobile phones, radio, sattelite, and runners in fast cars, if that does happen it's already red alert everywhere.
> It takes tanks half-a-day to cross the Baltic states to reach the sea
And how long does it take for the F35 to fly across all Baltic States? 30 minutes at max speed. Without air supremacy, Russia would be dead in the water.
> That is the time Russia wants to buy. Once Russian forces are already in Riga, Tallinn, Vilnus, the NATO will have a decision to make on whether to bomb the Russian forces already placed by that time among the Baltic states population.
If you think Poland and Finland would sit on their hands and do nothing, you're being naive.
RF has no air supremacy in Ukraine, so they have high loses, but they advance anyway. Small or large losses will not stop an empire, except Imperial Japan maybe.
Ukraines Air Force is tiny and poorly equipped. Compare it to just the Nordics for example who are soon on hundreds of F-35 and Gripen. Staging any mass movements against that kind of air support will be challenging.
Besides NATO already has a large land based army as well. US, Turkey, Poland , Finland all have large ground forces
As I said, RF has no air supremacy already. They have high loses because of that. They accept their losses and move forward.
Similar tactics was used by communists in Vietnam and Korea.
Calm down with the fanfic.
RU spent months gathering forces on the UA in Jan, Feb 2022. All the while, the US was publicly telling UA the odds of invasion were high.
Moving atoms at that scale doesn’t happen without lots of visible signs. The border nations already know what to look for.
And some border states have already built barriers at the border with RU, notably Poland.
Oh no, if only radio/emergency broadcast television/satellite/alternative cable routes/contingency plans had been invented!
We can look at October 7th in Israel how long, with all the communications and infrastructure working, it took to organize defense in a very technologically developed country which basically had been living in the state of war readiness. Now add broken significant communications, chaos of non-working banks/ATMs, power shut-offs, clogged highways, etc. (don't get me wrong - i'm not saying that Russia can do all that, i'm saying that Russia is actively working on those capabilities, and whether they achieve it to the needed extent is the key to how the events would go in the near future)
I still don’t get how Oct 7 was not an inside job. With mossad crabs everywhere how do you miss such a major plot to attack with so many actors involved?
You're right, but I think there were a lot of other factors involved there unrelated to basic infrastructure. Not to get too in to politics but i think there was a lot of underestimation, dismissal of warning signals (focus was elsewhere, as you can see with how precise intelligence seems to be in Lebanon), and just bad timing for them. I don't think anyone living in Russia's shadow, seeing what is actively happening, will be that unprepared.
These broke cables have not affected daily lives (possibly ISPs had extra work though)
Hey! I woke up at 06:00 to check what was wrong with a service. It turned out, a server in Germany could not reach a server in Finland in the 20" timeout I had set.
You set your timeout in inches? I thought you were all metric over tehre, except for socket drivers which are universally imperial :P
Yes, although miles would be more appropriate! https://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail.html
Just for the record
20": English notation for twenty seconds
Analysis regarding latencies and packet loss due to cut cables:
https://labs.ripe.net/author/emileaben/does-the-internet-rou...
How did you reach the conclusion it was not an inside job? Or an intentional israeli delay so the response was "justified"?
I'm not being snarky, but from what I gather, Isreal could have prevented that.
What?
Still waiting for Russian forces to occupy Kyiv
I suggest you revisit the history of the first days of the invasion, specifically the depth which the ground armored forces reached in the first 2-3 days and what and how they were stopped. The Baltic states "width" is much smaller, and thus there is much less time to organize defense, etc. It is hardly enough time even just for taking the decision to initiate defense. Of course, like in the case with Ukraine, Russia wouldn't succeed if the quick invasion turns instead into a face-to-face war midway. That is why they are looking for a way to create blackout and chaos.
We had plenty of warning they were going to invade. The units didn't just pop out of nowhere.
Any build up on those borders is now going to be interpreted in that way and you'll have a likely reaction from NATO all across the eastern front.
I doubt they would get very far.
Never underestimate the European ability to discuss matters and do absolutely nothing while their beds are burning.
> thus there is much less time to organize defense, etc.
Russia was concentrating troops alongside the border for months. It started on October 2021, invasion began on February 2022.
The invasion started 2014 with Krim and have been ongoing since then (Lost a remote coworker that year). This was just the next logical step.
I’m sure they have a plan to deal with this and loads of NATO troops there armed to the teeth and air superiority so it will be shooting fish in a barrel. We don’t know what will happen but I’m not sure cutting the internet won’t affect Russia pretty badly too - certainly China will not be a fan of the huge disruption it will cause them too.
This isn’t Reddit…
Russia does not have the manpower or logistics to invade anywhere (else). They have spent 2 years tossing meat-waves against Ukraine to grind them down, take a few km a week, and cause demoralization until their stooge could get into the Whitehouse and give it all to them for free.
Invading the Baltics or Poland or Sweden... not on the table.
"Hybrid" warfare, yes. But that's been going on for two decades.
Thing is: cutting people's fiber optic lines isn't going to get them out of this sanction regime.
That‘s one of the cables mentioned in the CNN article.
Substantial Russian activity also near UK, raises concerns that Russia would cut off UK. [0]
Russian ships ‘plotting sabotage in the North Sea’ [1]
[0] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/uk-undersea-...
[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russia-ships...
The Irish just chased away a Russian "research" vessel.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/16/russian-spy-sh...
Interestingly, Ireland is not a NATO member, so it's somewhat surprising Russia is poking around there. Although they're still EU, so maybe that's why.
Are there not cables run through the Channel Tunnel? Seems like a no-brainer.
Yes, there is fiber infrastructure in the Channel Tunnel [0]. I'm pretty sure that while any one good link is vastly better than zero links, no one link is sufficient to carry all traffic from/to the British Isles?
[0] https://www.colt.net/resources/colt-successfully-completes-t...
If you're routing through the Chunnel, I suspect you could fit at least two seperate links.
ok, so a quick check of submarine cable maps shows around two dozen from England across the channel (ignoring those to the Nordics and North America)
Would a pair of cable sets replace all of that? That's a lot of data, routing, and redundancy gone. Sure, if they had to try to make it work, they would.
But you seem to be suggesting that because there's a couple of cables in the tunnel, it's OK if the undersea links all get cut by RU/China? If so, WTAF?; you need to explain that
I mean, the UK has 20+ fibre links to other lands. If one goes down, fine, if a second goes down, it's suspicious. If a third goes down, and there are Russian ships milling about over the location of the.. yes, there goes a fourth, it doesn't take long to realise what's going on.
Now, what the British Navy would do about this I'm not precisely sure. But even to escort the ships away would put a stop to it, and the UK wouldn't be cut off.
The silly thing is they know entirely well that we can do the same to them. The US/UK at least have at least the same capability, if not moreso.
Do these nations not have navies? Can’t they tell the Russian non-combat ships (or pressure them) to get lost?
We do but ocean and air is big :)
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/nato-jets-in...
Also with cables, they can be destroyed with "innocent" ships that have a right to be there actually :)
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65309687
Russia has a programme to sabotage wind farms and communication cables in the North Sea, according to new allegations.
The details come from a joint investigation by public broadcasters in Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland.
It says Russia has a fleet of vessels disguised as fishing trawlers and research vessels in the North Sea.
> Can’t they tell the Russian non-combat ships (or pressure them) to get lost?
Not in international waters, which is where submarine cables are largely located.
And even if they could: The oceans are... kind of big. If it were that easy to "just patrol" shipping lanes/submarine cable tracks etc., why would piracy still be a concern?
Would relatively cheap AI-piloted satellite connected ships with sensor equipment work as a solution?
I doubt it. It seems to be a similar problem to missile defense: When you have a lot of ground to cover and can only be in one place at a time, the defender will always be at a huge cost disadvantage compared to the attacker. That's only in one/two dimensions – add a third (submarines) and the cost imbalance shifts even more.
And even if it works, this will only give attackers pause that are deterred by attribution.
Basically if mass produced something makes defense "cheap" it likely makes offense even cheaper.
Just because it is not publicized does not mean it is not happening. Most military operations do not take along journalists, and are not reported to the press. Some are even secret.
That said, there is a limited amount that can be done in international waters without creating an international incident. Law Of The Seas, Freedom Of Navigation, etc.. It is to our advantage for example, when we want to prevent CCP's from denying access to international waters around Taiwan or Phillipines, but to Russia's advantage when scouting undersea cables in international waters.
They can field more "research" vessels than we'd typically field mil vessels, but I'd bet real money that that ratio just changed a lot in the past few weeks, as it hits the press.
> They can field more "research" vessels than...
Back during the cold war, there was very often a Soviet "fishing boat" trailing after any substantial US Navy fleet. Said fishing boat may have had far more antennas than any fisherman would expect, but far less interest in catching fish.
Fast forward - what would be the cost of having cheap western drones hanging around nearby, when suspected Russian assets were close to undersea cables, pipelines, and such?
Fuel costs I suspect, which is where those continuous flight high altitude solar powered planes NASA was experimenting with really come into play.
That said, satellite tracking shipping is pretty easy - It's interdicting ina timely fashion which is not.
Agreed that interdicting - if that means a naval or coast guard ship, or a submarine - is far more difficult and expensive.
But cheap drones can transmit "don't do that!" warnings. And also video footage of the situation. Which would seriously change both the maritime law and political situations.
>Fast forward - what would be the cost of having cheap western drones hanging around nearby, when suspected Russian assets were close to undersea cables, pipelines, and such?
If the suspicion is high enough, it's pretty standard for a US submarine or surface group to shadow whatever it is. It's free practice for the submarine crew.
This happened when the Russian ships visited cuba earlier this year.
They do: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/16/russian-spy-sh...
However, another one will be along soon.
I'd assume, at the moment, that the primary goal is intimidation rather than anything else.
Who says they don't do that constantly, but missed it this time?
And risk escalation!? /s
So what's the solution ? Assign a surveillance UAV to every Russian ship parked "without a good reason" over a cable ? It would be expensive, but doable, and create a reserve of vehicles for wartime use.
The solution is to project strength and hit them where they don't expect. You are dealing with a thug, not a cost/benefit accountant, as Obama seemed to mistakenly believe. As long as they do things and we respond, nothing good will happen. They have already calculated the response and found it acceptable. Instead of this, go to the mattresses. Oh, your bridge has suddenly exploded? Shame.
"We" won't respond because "we" just elected a Russian asset and he is going to install more in his cabinet.
It's already been settled that the trump dossier from 2016 was a work of fiction.
Why did Putin take crimea under Obama's watch, parts of Ukraine under Biden's watch, but then not make any huge moves like those while his "asset" was in the white house?
Because he needed all that time (2014-2022) to build up his forces and cash reserves.
Also, he needed a green light. Which was provided in the form of the chaotic Afghanistan pullout in 2021. Not that he was counting on it -- but once it went through, it seems very likely that tipped the scales in his mind in favor of deciding to actually go through with the full-scale invasion in 2022.
Doubtful. He needed another 8 years after an annexing Crimea to build up the Russian army? Why would he need cash reserves if he has a toadie in the white house?
Imagine how quickly ukriane would have collapsed if the US was not providing support, and the US was preventing European nations from providing support. And then imagine how well off Russia would be if there were no sanctions placed on it by America. All in all your point doesn't make sense. You don't get an asset sitting in the oval office and then not use them.
Why would he need cash reserves if he has a toadie in the white house?
You may want to think about the chronology again.
And then ask yourself if your statement above still makes sense.
You're saying Russia couldn't have invaded Ukraine successfully in 2018, if the US and Europe were not providing support, and no sanctions were levied on Russia?
In 2019-2021 our president zieliensky - ordered retreat from fortified positions - downsized our army - demined southern and eastern borders
I'll leave out whether this was intentional or because he saw peace in putin's eyes (as he himself claimed).
But yes, russia couldn't successfully invade in 2018.
You're saying Russia couldn't have invaded Ukraine successfully in 2018
They didn't invade successfully in 2022, either. Meaning they were never able to invade successfully at any year before that. The whole war is a gigantic delusion for them, remember.
But as for evidence that they needed about 7-8 years to build their resources to a point where its regime thought they could invade successfully:
One of the pieces of evidence in favor of this view is the graph of the CBRF's (that's the Central Bank of Russia) holdings of foreign cash reserves, over the past 20 years. It shows oscillation or decline up until 2014, and then from 2014-2022, steady increases each year, resulting in a net increase from about $100b to $300b by 2022.
Military analyst say that Russia engaged in similar purchasing patterns internally (building up its reserves of shells and missile stocks, for example).
You're ignoring half of what I'm saying. In 2022, they had to deal with the US and Europe providing aid and arms to Ukraine, and sanctions levied on Russia, because they didn't have their stooge in the White House.
If they invaded in 2018, they wouldn't have had to deal with any of those things. That is, if Trump actually is a Russian agent. So why did they wait until the situation was much worse for them in order to invade?
I'm not ignoring it.
I considered it, but I just don't think it adds up to what you think it does.
> In 2022, they had to deal with the US and Europe providing aid and arms to Ukraine, and sanctions levied on Russia
On top of what the GP listed, there was also the post-pandemic uncertainty, soaring inflation and increase in the support of far-right/isolationist politicians in Europe. The Russians probably expected a slow start from them and a quick takeover of Kyiv[0], which would likely mean game over for a big chunk (if not all) of Ukraine. To be fair, they almost succeeded: it came down to the single battle that saved Kyiv from a quick occupation[1].
Last (but not least), there was the Putin's isolation during the pandemic when he might have read too much of Russian fascism philosophers'[2]. To me, the open all-out invasion at that time seemed very much out of his style as he had always preferred covert probing and sabotage before that.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Antonov_Airport [1]https://kyivindependent.com/opinion-russias-failure-to-take-... [2]https://thebulletin.org/2022/03/inside-putins-head-paranoid-...
Its also been widely reported that when Trump first met Putin he said if he invaded Ukraine, he would turn Moscow and several other cities into a parking lot. Trump in several interviews has said he warned Putin not to do it, that he would pay a very, very heavy cost and he would see to it that he would.
This is all Trump had to do.
He was able to leverage the media's reporting on him that he was reckless, dangerous and prone to rash behavior and they were convinced he was going to start WWIII with? Yeap, you guessed it, the Russians. Putin believed what the media were reporting because Trump himself had verbally warned him.
He didn't need forces and cash. He did what OP recommended, he threatened Putin with force and Putin complied and just waited out Trump. It was a gift that Biden was elected in 2020 and if you go through the news reports, literally months after Biden was elected, Russia started massing troops on the border and readying their troops to invade. Its a strange coincidence that they didn't invade in the four years Trump was in office. He leaves and less than a year later, Russia is preparing to invade? C'mon man.
Your timeline is completely wrong.
- Biden's inauguration took place on January 2021.
- The Russians were amassing troops by December of 2021 (less than a year after he took office).
- The Afghan pullout wasn't until the Summer of 2021
- The Russian officially invaded in February of 2022
The green light wasn't needing forces and cash built up, it was Trump leaving office. The Afghan pullout had no effect on when they were going to invade since they were already massing troops and air support to the border regions where they finally launched their invasion from. Its not like the Russians decided to invade during the Afghan disaster as you insinuated, the invasion plans were already established by then.
Again, the tipping point was Trump leaving office.
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> Its also been widely reported that when Trump first met Putin he said if he invaded Ukraine, he would turn Moscow and several other cities into a parking lot.
Yeah. Trump talks a lot. Like his best friend, Melon.
I am NOT his best friend.
Surely you should be able to provide a source for the claim that Trump threatened Putin over Ukraine.
Here's the man himself claiming this in his inimitably eloquent style:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-putin-no-way-ukraine-mu...
"No way." "Way."
If all we have to go on is the man himself -- that means it's a lie of course, like nearly everything else he says.
Least they posted a source. Credit where it is due.
Here you go:
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/17852964/donald-trump-threaten...
“They're all saying oh he's a nuclear power, it's like they're afraid of him,” Trump said in a recording of the phone conversation with Daly. “You know, he was a friend of mine, I got along great with him. I say, Vladimir, if you do it, we're hitting Moscow. We're going to hit Moscow. And he sort of believed me like 5 per cent, 10 per cent - that's all you need.”
He's also said the same thing in several interview. That he told Putin he would make it very difficult to take Ukraine and it cost them economically and militarily. You can infer that meant could mean several things depending on your point of view.
Not op. But in 2018 Trump did scold live on camera the German leaders for buying gas from Russia. "Germany is completely controlled by Russia".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JpwkeTBwgs
NOTE: I mostly don't like Trump. But the "Russiagate" angle is ridiculous.
This is moving the goalpost a bit.
Trump says that he wants to finish "fundamentally reevaluating NATO's purpose and NATO's mission", and "the greatest threat to Western Civilization today is not Russia. [...] It's the Marxists who would have us become a Godless nation worshipping at the altar of race, and gender, and environment." I take that as a pretty clear stance that he wants to help Russia this term by dismantling or weakening NATO and creating too much infighting within America to worry about defending allies from Russia
Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20240913225017/https://www.donal...
> You are dealing with a thug, not a cost/benefit accountant
Spot on.
"We" already screwed their pipeline, what's left? Provide Ukraine with the means to blow up the Kerch bridge maybe? They're the ones that could legitimately do that sort of escalation.
> what's left?
The other pipelines. Their shadow oil fleet. There are lots of options. But to my knowledge, only the British, French and Americans are capable of the long-range clandestine operations.
Their shadow oil fleet is operated by third parties and shell companies. We are dealing with a mafia state here.
https://windward.ai/knowledge-base/illuminating-russias-shad...
They are planning on this:
> Parliament calls for an EU crackdown on Russia’s ’shadow fleet’
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20241111IP...
> Their shadow oil fleet is operated by third parties and shell companies
Would be a shame if they started having engine troubles in the middle of the ocean.
1. They already do, because those are old, garbage ships
2. It's not exactly in the interests of NATO to have those ships start spilling tons of oil in the North Atlantic
The problem of that "shadow fleet" is precisely that those are old, uninsured vessels that cause environmental risks.
> not exactly in the interests of NATO to have those ships start spilling tons of oil in the North Atlantic
Since when did engine troubles cause an oil spill?
since the times ocean waves decided to wreck ships that can't turn and navigate in storms without their prime mover.
In case of an engine failure, it’s way more easier to tug the boat empty than full.
Ever blown a head gasket?
Bit of a personal question
Oh, its not. Why do you think that?
The "problem" of Western countries is that the political sphere operates under different moral compasses: like taking down a shadow fleet tanker would be a natural disaster... taking down many would mean many disasters.
The real question is, should security and defense concerns be placed on hold? If our basic freedoms and rights are being attacked, how big of a deal would be a shadow fleet tanker catastrophe?
Those ships are going to be transiting somewhere unloaded. That is when you engage them.
That would be in the busiest shipping ports, channels, and anchorages in the entire world. Aka the most bananas place to interdict.
If something bad happened to a mostly empty Russian shadow tanker in the Gulf of Finland, that impact is going to be mostly confined to Russia. i.e. past the major Finnish and Estonian ports.
As long as we're all playing silly only-kinda-deniable games, that's an option on the table.
Except it isn't in the Gulf of Finland but the East Sea or Soth China Sea. Most of these ships are transporting oil to China, India, Singapore, The Middle East. The only allies able to interdict most of these ships are Japan and South Korea. Japan doesn't engage in such activities after WW2 and South Korea is reluctant to because of retaliatory actions from Russia and China. Maybe they'll change course after the DPRK has sent triops into Ukraine, but don't hold your breath.
What exactly do you think we spend all that money on fast attack subs and frigates and destroyers for? Of course the US Navy (and the French and British) can interdict those ships anywhere on the high seas.
https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2024/09/30/7477500/
Plenty of targets in the Gulf of Finland.
That's not where that shadow fleet is operating.
The gas sold by Russia to France, Germany, etc. is transported using normal vessels, AFAIK.
https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2024/09/30/7477500/
Plenty of targets in the Gulf of Finland.
Western countries have intelligence services with sabotage departments and in general are not above blowing up things their leaders don't like.
If the CIA or US Navy don't have the technical means to blow up the Crimea bridge with plausible deniability they haven't been paying attention.
Thry do but it only benefits Ukraine. So they're the ones who should blow it up, preferably with with weapons of their own in order to avoid NATO escalation. Just lke the Moskva sinking.
How does destroying the Crimea bridge not benefit the West? They destroy our infrastructure, we destroy theirs. That's the whole idea.
If Russian leadership doesn't change there's just no chance it will stop at Ukraine. Next those sharing your sentiment will say "it only benefits Poland".
The problem is we (The US) used to swing our """nation building"""/Imperialism dick all around, coup'ing and invading whoever we want, but after Vietnam and wasting trillions bombing sand for 20 years, a lot of us have softened on the idea of forcing our desires through explosions.
Add to that a natural conservative tendency in the US to jump at isolationism whenever there's an easy excuse (the guy you like is doing the "bad thing" so you don't actually want to stop him, the war is literally somewhere else and doesn't exactly involve us)
So it's hard for people like me, who used to be pretty pacifist, to decide that yeah maybe violence is the right option sometimes?
Also, the entire time we are trying to shake off bullshit "Democrats are warhawks" nonsense from the party that did the desert bombing just because Bush wanted to defend his daddy's memory. The same people who call the Dems warhawks spent the 2000s screaming that "you're either with us or against us" and calling anti-war people pussies so I guess they don't have very good memories.
So for various reasons, some good, the US is extremely gunshy right now. Even those of us wholeheartedly in support of Ukraine, wishing we gave them a thousand Bradleys and tanks, feel uncomfortable with the idea of boots on the ground. Meanwhile Europe has forgotten what intervention is, and seems utterly unwilling to do anything, lest they have to get off their holier than thou pedestal.
Appeasement definitely doesn't work, but the middle east is full of examples of "just bomb them all" also not working very well. Everyone is very nervous. It sure seems like Russia won't stop their horseshit until someone makes them stop, but that's going to require a million dead.
They sink just the same.
yeah just count the cases of unprovoked attacks on gazprom-related people by open windows.
> "We" already screwed their pipeline
unfortunately, "we" didnt have to pay a sacrifice to the economy for it, because germany paid it.
The US is too afraid of nukes, and won't escalate. The russians rightly predicted this.
Germany was told to stop buying Russian gas financing the Russian war machine by the previous Trump administration. They were told to pledge 2% of their GDP for defense, contributing more to NATO. They didn't listen. This is what happened: Ukraine got invaded, the pipeline was blown up to ensure compliance, their defense spending reachd 2% this year, more two years too late in a worse economic climate. Next year, the next Trump administration is going to demand more, because 2% is already insufficient.
https://www.dw.com/en/germany-to-hit-nato-budget-goal-for-1s...
Don't forget how Germany's exports of chips and machinery to places like Kyrgyzstan skyrocketed since the invasion.
> Exports of motor vehicles and motor vehicle parts to Kyrgyzstan grew particularly strongly in the first quarter, soaring more than 4,000% from a very small base to over 84 million euros... That came after a six-fold rise in German exports to Kyrgyzstan last year following Russia's February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
https://www.reuters.com/world/german-exports-russias-neighbo...
I know people in Kyrgyzstan, trust me they did not suddenly become industrialized when Russia invaded
Anecdotally, as a Russian, some of my craziest interactions with foreigners who support the thugs in Russian gov, blame US/NATO for Russian aggression and totally buy the propaganda were with Germans. (Not a proper data point, just venting frustration, Germany get your act together...)
With the gov't coalition collapse in germany, there's definitely some voices that oppose western actino against russia (adf is one, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hG4bxFKBNos).
I can't help but suspect that russian influence and covert action behind the scenes, most of which might be decades in the making, is kicking into high gear.
This is my impression, too.
Half of Germany was, for roughly 4 decades, a soviet puppet state. With indoctrination programs, propaganda towards the western part, cadre schools, the whole deal. And even in West Germany the soviets always had a lot of support, especially in the burgeoise (yes, the irony...) upper layers of society. Socialism and communism weren't just invented here out of thin air and such.
This means that a good part of especially the general former East German population as well as the academic and cultural upper class are left-leaning (in USian terms: deep red communists), soviet/russia-supporting and antiamerican by default. This got even stronger the farther we got past the 1990s, because the view back on the communist times naturally lost the memories of the bad parts.
I always ask Germans which side of the wall they are from, it seems like East Germans are a bit more disillusioned or realistic but people from West parts can be ardent supporters of Putin
>who support the thugs in Russian gov
You can't defeat them, the NATO strategy has failed.
I sympathize with the Russian opposition, but I think it is wrong to interfere in Russian domestic politics.
Apart from that, I have always been suspicious of the West's favorite oligarchs.
Calling it "Russian domestic politics" just invalidates in my eyes any other argument you make. Because it is so plainly not
>> what's left?
Cut trade? But everyone likes Russian dirty money too much
NATO filter blockade on Öresund?
The Danish straits is European Waters. We fully control shipping in and out of the Baltic. International law dictates that Denmark cannot prohibit transit passage of foreign vessels unless the vessels appear to be violating the international rules on marine pollution prevention.
So Denmark can start assuming every vessel (or at least more vessels) are in violation. Russia can take that to some international court if they so desire. Inspect every ship. Question the crews. Take plenty of time doing it. Perishable goods on board will perish before reaching St Petersburg and Kaliningrad. Tankers will be refused entry, limiting or delaying export income for Russia.
Make them pay dearly every time there's even reasonable suspicion that Russia has messed with Western/NATO technological infrastructure.
That we still have oligarchs and bratva members walking around on NATO soil in the open this far into things is insane.
There’s loads more we can do but the Russian government might just collapse if they go too far attacking western assets. They know there will be a response “at a time and place of our choosing” and cutting the Internet properly will be extremely expensive for Russia, they will have no banking system at all and we will give Ukraine weapons to attack their oil infrastructure.
What do you mean "pay dearly" Not more violence I hope...
https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/12/11/afghanistan-papers-detai...
Imagine if every bad thing USA did... people want USA to "pay dearly"...
It is not the time to call “but US also did it” card.
When thug attacks, what do you do?
> Imagine if every bad thing USA did... people want USA to "pay dearly"...
First off, whataboutism is a logical fallacy.
Second, Afghanistan is nothing if not a bunch of people who wanted to make the US "pay dearly", even if to their personal and national detriment.
Third, there's a way for the Russians to avoid consequences: stop attacking Western digital infrastructure.
The long term solution is to stop being naive about submarine cables. This is a well-known vulnerability, inevitable, and ignored. There are better alternatives now, and locally this may be temporarily re-routable. But there's no way to protect existing cables on par with something like the Hardened Intersite Cable System (HICS). I'm surprised it hasn't occurred more in the Persian Gulf area. And it could occur in western urban areas with relative ease. Most critical cabling intersect points in the US are unguarded, although may have cameras or other remote monitoring.
Treat it as the act of war that it is, and confiscate or sink the ship involved in it. If it can be done before it reaches a harbor, of course also arrest the crew.
If it happens repeatedly, declare the passage of all Russian ships (or possibly starting with ships of the type involved in the incident, allowing other shipping and giving Russia a chance to stop abusing it) "prejudicial to the peace, good order or security of the coastal State" and deny passage through territorial waters. Extend the territorial waters between Finland and Estonia to the full 12 miles without the current corridor in between.
Russia understands and responds to strength better than to diplomacy and appeasement.
>Treat it as the act of war that it is, and confiscate or sink the ship involved in it. If it can be done before it reaches a harbor, of course also arrest the crew.
The ships involved aren't warships. They're ostensibly civilian vessels. Also other people mention that accidental fiber cuts happen all the time. Are we going to drone strike Russian civilian ships on the off chance is malicious?
>Russia understands and responds to strength better than to diplomacy and appeasement.
The best way to stop someone committing war crimes is... to commit war crimes ourselves?
> The ships involved aren't warships.
That has hardly stopped people before.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Rainbow_Warrior
Is this supposed to be an argument in favor of sinking civilian ships? From the linked article:
>The sinking was a cause of embarrassment to France and President François Mitterrand. They initially denied responsibility, but two French agents were captured by New Zealand Police and charged with arson, conspiracy to commit arson, willful damage, and murder.
It was embarassing because they got caught, it was against Greenpeace, and it was done in an ally's territory.
There's unlikely to be anywhere near as much outcry if Russian trawlers lurking around undersea cables start getting holes in them.
The key word here is "ostentibly".
There seems to be consensus that this was not an accident (politicians have stated as such), and treating it accordingly would show Russia "no, you can't just pretend it was an accident and expect us to do nothing".
On the off chance it actually is an accident at some point - that's the downside (for Russia) of having pretend-accidents too many times.
The alternative is ignoring it "because we can't be sure" until we get to ignore the "little green men" that totally aren't Russian when they come across the border...
That sounds borderline feasible – in a world where submarines don't exist.
I’m certain the sea is as mapped as you can possibly imagine, cutting say 50% of cables would lead to a lot of Russian ships sinking and a ban on them entering western waters. Their equipment is absolutely shit compared to ours and we know exactly where it all is. Surely they have been told this is a declaration of war which clearly they are scared of too.
The russians have been investing heavily and have some very good kit
http://www.hisutton.com/Yantar.html
http://www.hisutton.com/Belgorod-Class-Submarine.html
http://www.hisutton.com/Russian-Spy-Submarine-BS-64e.html
and so on
According to CNN reporting, the US is already keeping track of Russian ships near critical submarine infrastructure. Chances are that they already have a prime suspect as to what ship or ships have been engaged in this.
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/09/06/politics/us-sees-increasi...
The solution is to refuse passage of the ships to\into Russian part of the Baltic. Naval blockade. But it is impossible as so many Russian-backed politicians are elected in EU. And all other doesn't have a strong will or doesn't care about Russian threat. No Churchill\Reagan types are there.
Good times creates weak men.
Good thing we have strong reality tv hosts.
Well, since Russia has nothing to gain from such actions, you might want to assign surveillance on some other parties in case. But yes, I suppose surveillance might act as some form of deterrence.
Maybe a saildrone, that seems feasible with today’s technology.
Why would they use a Russian flagged ship for that?
It's harder to get false identification then people on the internet think.
But also the Russian MO has never been to do things where it's not obvious they did it: the spate of critics of the Russian government dying by falling out of windows isn't because they lack creativity in assassinating people.
You don't need false documents, buying and operating a ship that has no direct ties to Russia and is registered at an other country isn't that hard at all. Of course yeah, if suddenly if cables get cut 10x more often that they used to it be pretty obvious who is behind it regardless.
> has never been to do things where it's not obvious they did
They could still shot them or something like that, the window thing still grants them some plausible deniability. e.g. the ship that (unclear if intentionally) damaged the cables last year was Chinese.
> You don't need false documents, buying and operating a ship that has no direct ties to Russia and is registered at an other country isn't that hard at all
You literally just described a program of falsifying documents! If you're buying and operating a ship, then to have "no ties to Russia" while using Russian money, someone is showing up with forged paperwork or some off-the-books bribes to make that happen.
Drawing down those sorts of sums from a country's treasury isn't something you can actually just "do" - people have to take actions, funds transferred, meetings held and operations authorized.
You are describing a system of resources which likely does exist, but is by no means easy to use or acquire and would not be expended unnecessarily.
Again, I'm not sure getting a ship registered (or just buying one) in a random island country through a shell company would be that hard.
> funds transferred, meetings held and operations authorized.
It's Russia... I doubt there would be a lot oversight. But they might just as well get the money from one of the "private" companies run by Putin's cronies with zero direct involvement by the Russian government.
Anyway, I still think that acquiring the ship itself is still a relatively trivial problem to solve.
>It's harder to get false identification then people on the internet think.
The US can barely enforce its sanctions against Iran. Despite the sanctions, they can still move tens of billions of oil proceeds. What makes you think any country is going to be any more successful at preventing Russia from renting a rogue ship?
https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2024/10/17/i...
https://archive.is/IN5Aj
Dumb question but my assumption is fiber optic cables could be “tapped”? But the disruption would be noticeable when monitoring the cable. Could you just tap it when you cut it and when it hooked back up that’s the new baseline with the tap in place? That would seem more of a logical reason then a country just randomly cutting lines to me?
It’s a message and hybrid warfare.
Hybrid warfare - the infrastructure is offline, and the repair resources are consumed. And you gather intel what the resource impact and offline time is.
Message - we can do this. Now think what else we can do.
Of course the message is also pushing EU closer to war footing. But China and Russia don’t see it that way - they think the lack of popular outcry means weakness.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/07/th...
NSA's OAKSTAR, STORMBREW, BLARNEY and FAIRVIEW
Most/all of the traffic would be encrypted.
That wasn't the case in the past. Events over the past 15 years have resulted in most companies encrypting all traffic between datacenters (due to the perceived risk). TLS between consumers and companies is probably at an all time high though due to a push for end-to-end encryption.
TLS doesn't help here, because state actors (including China, Russia) own trusted root certificates, which allow them to TLS-terminate for _any_ website they choose and silently decrypt/MITM the traffic.
TLS offers quite good protection actually: Anytime they create fraudulent certificates they risk burning their CA. Attacks need to be very targeted to keep risk of detection low. Due to Certificate Transparency, hiding attacks got even harder. And for sites that use cert pinning, the attack doesn't even work in the first place.
And eavesdrop is one thing but I'm not clear how you could MITM an undersea cable without the operators noticing.
>and silently decrypt/MITM the traffic.
Except it's not silent because you need to expose your misissued certificate every time. Sure, the average joe won't spot it, but all it takes is one security researcher to expose the whole thing. AFAIK there are also projects by google and the EFF to monitor certificates, so the chances of you getting caught are really high. Combined with the fact that no such attacks has been discovered, makes me think that it probably doesn't occur in practice, or at least is only used against high value targets rather than for dragnet surveillance.
These things get encrypted at a lower layer, macsec. At the transport layer it's all transparent. No need for TLS between your servers, that's just wasted overhead.
You typically encrypt anyway because you just lease the line and buy the b/w. It's operated by a different company and you share the wire with other customers.
https://www.submarinecablemap.com/submarine-cable/c-lion1 for reference
Hetzner seems unaffected?
Gives me 52ms from Germany which should be about normal?It should be around 25 ms in normal conditions. That's what I got when pinging Hetzner in Germany, from Finland, when the cable was still in use and when using a connection that routes through the cable.
I am don't use Hetzner, but I use ssh between Finland and Germany every day. As a matter of fact even back and forth because of tunneling. After reading the news this morning (Hetzner incident is date 3:30 UTC) I was surpised that I had not noted any lag. It remained very reponsive all day.
I have a persistent VPN tunnel between Finland and Germany and I’ve not noticed really any disruptions. If it had cut out for even a moment, it would’ve interrupted my services (since they don’t recover gracefully at the moment) and I would’ve found out.
Hetzner says they are affected: https://status.hetzner.com/incident/ec8a2f28-e964-46cb-94fa-...
That is a very terse statement all things considered.
It was written in the middle of the night. I expect they'll update it later.
I think it is slightly higher than normal. I remember getting 30-40ms pings to germany in recent years. 45-55ms is around the range it used to be in early 2010's before the direct cable from finland to germany was built.
If you want to know if they are affected, search for "Looking glass hetzner". It will help you better than ICMP PING. See https://bgp.he.net/AS24940 for example.
I'm getting 25ms from my mailserver at hetzner helsinki to amsterdam. Looks more then OK to me.
48ms from England, for whatever that's worth. Would that've used the cable?
It'd be nice to see stories about a western navy or two getting off its butt, and actually trying to discourage "accidents" which damage critical infrastructure.
Alas, some would rather let criminal governments invade sovereign countries, commit acts of global sabotage and murder dissidents all over the world rather than take any action at all to dissuade them. Peace through appeasement is likely to work as well as it has at any other point in history.
Are you referring to the US or Russia here? Hard to tell when you talk in riddles.
Not gonna lie. I thought of US first instead of Russia.
Right? Turns out having a spine is really annoying and inconvenient for the ruling class who now find themselves actually having to fend off interlopers.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65309687
Russia has a programme to sabotage wind farms and communication cables in the North Sea, according to new allegations.
The details come from a joint investigation by public broadcasters in Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland.
It says Russia has a fleet of vessels disguised as fishing trawlers and research vessels in the North Sea.
On the other hand, I'd rather see cables get cut than watch shells get lobbed between world powers.
As the saying goes, who lets others cut cables to have peace deserves neither and will have both taken away.
There are quite a few response levels between "don't even bother monitoring the sabotage" and "start WWIII".
at these points, these cable cuts are more dangerous than actual bombs
I'm not convinced that cutting an internet cable - even a vital one - results in more actual death and human misery than actual bombs falling on urban centers.
There is a point where this kind of aggression, left unchecked, may ultimately lead to actual bombs falling on urban centers. It's already happening in the Ukraine. The global peace we all enjoy in the West is based on the idea that the price of aggression is higher than the benefits.
Also: Internet cables today, essential power distribution cables tomorrow. Infrastructure is fragile, and human lives will eventually be at stake.
I mean, you're not wrong. And in general, this is ... high-stakes bullying. And if you let them get away with this, I agree that they'll keep pushing the boundary, even more than they already have;
There is a point where this kind of aggression, left unchecked, may ultimately lead to actual bombs falling on urban centers. It's already happening in Ukraine. The global peace we all enjoy in the West is based on the idea that the price of aggression is higher than the benefits.
"this kind", "left unchecked", "may ultimately"; that's three levels of maybes used to defend a definitive "are more dangerous" claim, not exactly inspiring rigour.
I'd prefer if the devs added resilience to network outage over having navies fight each other...
Especially as navies are just fundamentally not constructed to defend extended things like a cable: starting a war over them is the best way to ensure every cable is cut.
Like it or not, somebody will have to do something about Russia, sooner or later.
Could you maybe be specific about what you mean by "somebody" doing "something"?
Sure, let me find my crystal ball.
'Somebody' is 'the US' and 'something' is 'extended suicide'.
? Seriously?
Cables getting cut is only dangerous because it’s an escalation that may lead to bombs. There aren’t thousands of civilians dying because Finland doesn’t have high speed fibre to Germany.
They do already, but do need reinforcement.
>>"“We put in place a National Maritime Information Centre in about 2010 and we needed a Joint Maritime Operations Coordination Centre alongside it, because we said very firmly we have to take threats to our territorial seas and exclusive economic zone very, very seriously.
They are now in place, which is good, but they need to be really reinforced and the departments involved need to fully man them, because otherwise we are not going to be able to counter what is a very real and present threat and could cause major major damage to our nation.”" [0]
[0] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/uk-undersea-...
It is time to get off your high horses and realize that western military might doesn't rule the world anymore.
It is really a bad plan to attack that type of infrastructure in the way they are waking up hardcore gamers and other sleeping techies!
if they attacked successfully, the techies and/or gamers wouldn’t be awoken
Looks like a pretty transparent hint on how response to the recent US/UK/France permission to use long-range missiles against the Russian territory could look like. The Nord Stream sabotage has opened Pandora's box almost exactly how it was predicted in Cryptonomicon.
It didn't open a pandoras box, Russians are very creative in the escalation warfare. It was known for quite a bit of time that Russians were mapping these cables out. They are probably, like always, just testing to see the response (rather lack of it).
> The Nord Stream sabotage has opened Pandora's box almost exactly how it was predicted in Cryptonomicon.
Can you elaborate?
“This is the new balance of power, Randy."
"You can't seriously be telling me that governments are threatening to--"
"The Chinese have already done it. They cut an older cable--first-generation optical fiber--joining Korea to Nippon. The cable wasn't that important--they only did it as a warning shot. And what's the rule of thumb about governments cutting submarine cables?"
"That it's like nuclear war," Randy says. "Easy to start. Devastating in its results. So no one does it."
"But if the Chinese have cut a cable, then other governments with a vested interest in throttling information flow can say, 'Hey, the Chinese did it, we need to show that we can retaliate in kind.' "
"Is that actually happening?"
"No, no, no!" Avi says. They've stopped in front of the largest display of needlenose pliers Randy has ever seen. "It's all posturing. It's not aimed at other governments so much as at the entrepreneurs who own and operate the new cables.”
Wow, good catch. Forgot about this part!
https://archive.is/ZucmV
Probably yet another case of fish trawlers or some dumbass freighter captain not reading the sea charts before dropping their anchor.
I'm all for finally showing the Russians a response for their covert warfare... but this is not the right opportunity. This kind of situation happens many times every year (and the causes are almost always the same, with a few cases of submarine landslides or seismic events).
Swedish telco Telia reports that the undersea internet cable between Sweden and Lithuania was also damaged on Sunday: https://www.lrt.lt/en/news-in-english/19/2416006/undersea-ca...
Btw last time they damaged the finnish cables it was a chinese merchant vessel. Not just russians doing sabotage at the baltic sea
Russians could've also been involved in that since Newnew Polar Bear was en route to Russia.
> "it’s obvious this wasn’t an accidental anchor drop.”
If it's "he who shall not be named", gotta admit, that's a clever strategy: ramp up sabotage and see how NATO/EU will feel about their "red lines", and how well does that article 5 really work in practice. Is it worth more than the paper it's printed on? Let's find out!
People have been laughing at the West crossing multiple Russian "red lines" and the Russians not doing anything. So the Russians can follow a similar route: a cable torn here, a warehouse blows up there, maybe a bank website is hacked, water supply or power station company blows up "randomly". Is anyone going to launch nuclear bombs because of that? That's absurd, of course not, yet NATO/EU just looks weak and pathetic in the process.
Ideally, these countries should ramp up similar acts of sabotage on the Russian territory if they confirmed that's exactly who it is. A dam fails in Siberia, maybe the payment system goes down for a week, a submarine catches on fire while in port for repairs. Honestly I don't think they have the guts to do that.
Some regimes only speak the language of power. They have to be believably threatened; calling them on phone to chat and beg for them to behave, is just showing more weakness. Scholz just called Putin. Anyone remember Macron talking with Putin for tens of hours at the start of the war? A lot of good that did. When they see a credible fist in front of their nose, that's the only way they'll stop.
Ask yourself, when was the last time a nation officially declared war?
It doesn't happen anymore for legal reasons.
NATO will 100% not be the first to declare war despite even very serious provocations. Maybe they'll take a leaf out of Russia or Israel's book and declare a 'special' or 'limited' operation though...
> Maybe they'll take a leaf out of Russia or Israel's book
As you yourself just pointed out a few lines line above this, there's no need to take a leaf out of anybody else's book: all the US' and NATO wars of the past decades have been presented as "special operations": e.g. the war against Serbia, the war against Iraq, the war against Afghanistan, etc.
Great successes by the way!
NATO's operation in Serbia actually prevented an imminent genocide in Kosovo. Serbs were emboldened by their "successes" in Croatia and Bosnia, and it took that long for the EU and NATO to finally summon up enough courage to do something proactive.
Comparing Russia to Serbia, the cliff of inaction seems almost insurmountable.
If you want to, I think you can invade Russia without declaring war, because the Korean war is still unresolved, and North Korea's military is active in Russia.
Just claim your advisors to South Korea are taking care of extra-territorial combatants from that war. No reason to declare a war on Russia when it's clearly part of the existing conflict.
> NATO will 100% not be the first to declare war despite even very serious provocations.
But if it doesn't declare war, it now looks weak. That article 5 isn't worth very much all of the sudden. At the same time it's stupid to start WW3 over a village in the Baltics, a town in Romania, a cut cable or a few blown up warehouses. The Russians took the same "red line" idea and are playing it against the NATO and the EU. I can't interpret as any other way. And on one level, it sort of works.
> Maybe they'll take a leaf out of Russia or Israel's book and declare a 'special' or 'limited' operation though...
I'd like to believe. But remembering how much hand wringing was needed to send a few tanks to Ukraine and some F-16. Somehow, I doubt they'll be able to do anything as bold as a "special" military operation against Russia. Heck, they can't even provide air defense for Ukraine's skies. (As in use NATO's own defense systems to stop the Russians destroying apartment buildings). That's the point the Russians are providing. They are destroying NATO's reputation without even trying to too much, and I posit, so far it works.
> But if it doesn't declare war, it now looks weak.
Turns out looks and optics are much less important than money and munitions.
> yet NATO/EU just looks weak and pathetic in the process
Really? Russia, with the 6th largest army in the world, had to pull in Iran and Pyongyang to not get invaded by the 13th largest [1][2].
Moscow is being a nuisance. That doesn't make NATO or Europe look weak, it makes Russia look pathetic.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/13/world/europe/ukraine-russ...
13th largest backed by the whole NATO and other US-aligned countries. They send almost everything they can outside of nuclear weapons, the most cutting edge military tech, and people (well, outside of a limited contingent of "advisors"). Let's be honest, without this backing the war would've ended in the first month as was drafted in Istanbul.
> Let's be honest, without this backing the war would've ended in the first month as was drafted in Istanbul
The West didn't really help Ukraine in the first month [1]. We thought the Russian army was competent and would ride into Ukraine like we did in Iraq. It wasn't until after the weakness was made apparent that aid started dripping in.
Ukraine repelled a Russian invasion on its own. Our generations-old anti-air systems are downing their latest weapons. Meanwhile, our generations-old missiles are taking out their state-of-the-art systems.
To the degree Russia has been able to claim any victory, it's in not being demolished. That's the standard. Not winning. Simply surviving.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_aid_to_Ukrain...
The West was actively supplying Ukraine since 2014, especially after the Debaltsevo embarrassment. Yes, it pales in comparison to the post 2022 levels, but it still was far from insignificant. Even your Wikipedia link lists a lot of pre-2022 aid and I am pretty sure this page is far from being comprehensive.
And it's even without mentioning the direct role of Boris Johnson in tanking the Istanbul accords.
> it still was far from insignificant
Stil far from closing the gap between the 6th and 13th largest armies. Russia invaded an inferior force and got stymied. This would be like America's Vietnam being Cuba, where we fully committed the U.S. military and economy to the task and still continued to fail. The fact that Russia has never even established air superiority knocks it out of the category of running a modern military.
The Russian military doctrine is quite different from the US one. It places far more importance on artillery and anti-air forces than on air superiority. The Russian army clearly sucks at maneuver warfare and together with the unrealistically optimistic views which were prevalent in the Russian government (read Putin), it explains perfectly well the extremely poor performance in the first months. The performance in the recent months shows results of a more "comfortable" for the Russian army mode of warfare.
Also note that the Russian army was not "fully committed", it was not using conscripts (there was a small scale deployment of conscripts, but after the public scandal they were quickly removed from Ukraine) and did not fully pull forces from all its military districts.
Meanwhile Ukraine was fighting in the total war mode from the first days (they do not pull "recruits" from streets in the broad daylight into military buses just for the fun of it) with huge external support. And having the well trained by the West ideologically charged army backbone with 8 years of practical warfare experience has helped immensely in the first months.
> Meanwhile Ukraine was fighting in the total war mode from the first days (they do not pull "recruits" from streets in the broad daylight into military buses just for the fun of it) with huge external support
Did they do that during the first few months of the war? I recall them having more volunteers than they could use in the early days.
At the moment, Russia has fully conquered (and integrated into their nation) 20% of the largest country in Europe. They seem intent on going for about 50% of it.
US cannot claim a single victory in the past 4 decades, it's been debacle after debacle.
> US cannot claim a single victory in the past 4 decades, it's been debacle after debacle
Militarily? You've got to be joking. Russia is still struggling with the military part of the campaign.
Russia's "top of the line" weapons are routinely being potted by decades-old NATO kit. They are a spent force, conventionally. The military turned from a fighting force into a propaganda tool, aimed at projecting masculinity to a domestic audience over maintaining martial capability.
The problem in the West is there are a lot of Soviet-era talking heads who make money when Russia gets attention. There is no money to be made if Russia is a loser. So it's in the interest of that foreign policy wing to trump up Moscow as if it's a competent military versus the dumpster fire that it is without Pyongyang and Tehran.
Looks to me that Russia is winning the war of attrition. Is that view inaccurate?
Is that view inaccurate?
Technically no, but a more forthright assessment would be: "Russia has been winning the war of attrition, but very slowly, and only for the past year. At current rates, it would take several decades to reach Kyiv. Meanwhile, for the sake of these extremely modest gains, it's spending about 10 percent of its GDP."
Context it is everything.
Yes, that's basically accurate. Russia has a huge advantage in manpower and equipment, and has been using that to gradually take more territory. Ukraine will have to achieve about an 8:1 casualty ratio in order to achieve an outright battlefield victory, which they haven't been able to do even with foreign military aid. A more realistic goal is basically to inflict enough Russian casualties that domestic political and economic pressures force a withdrawal from most of the occupied territory. That's not impossible but it's kind of a long shot.
Another approach which is more likely to work is for NATO countries to step up and really hurt Russia through every means short of war. That mainly means finding a way to reduce their fossil fuels export income.
> That mainly means finding a way to reduce their fossil fuels export income
Which is happening now.
EU is about to impose sanctions on the shadow fleet of Russian tankers.
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20241111IP...
I don't remember desert storm being a debacle, but maybe I missed it. Certainly arming Iraq in the 80s and fighting them in the 90s was problematic, but you know things happen.
The 2000s invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were pretty successful. The holding of Afghanistan and Iraq, not so much. Russia doesn't seem to be having nearly the level of success in invading Ukraine (although invading Crimea seemed to be pretty successful).
The direct role of Boris Johnson in tanking the Istanbul accords.
Which is a myth - oft repeated, but with precisely zero substance.
See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41813032
Zero substance? It was reported by Ukrainska Pravda (and Ukraine is far from being famous for its freedom of press) not by some Russian propaganda outlet. It's the same as saying that WSJ citing "sources" has zero substance.
Regardless, you can believe that the West did not provide any assurance to Ukraine during the Istanbul talks and that Russia has blown its own pipeline. It's your right.
It was reported by Ukrainska Pravda
It was speculated as a possibility by that article, but then it was looked into by others, quite thoroughly, and the narrative fell apart. That happens, you know.
The Foreign Affairs article in the aforementioned thread has a pretty good writeup about the whole thing, if you are interested.
You can believe that Russia has blown its own pipeline
You can change the subject as many times as you want, and speculate, falsely, about what you think other people believe about random topics, all day long if you want.
But this has absolutely no bearing on what we were just talking about.
> supplying Ukraine since 2014
You are moving the goalposts, though. Support between 2014 and 2022 wasn't even remotely close to:
> They send almost everything they can outside
Also even now they aren't exactly sending everything they can, rather everything they want to.
> They send almost everything they can outside of nuclear weapons
Equipment from the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s isn't "almost everything they can outside of nuclear weapons."
But you're 100% right, Ukraine should have received more, especially because we asked them to surrender their nuclear deterrence.
There is still a lot of equipment Ukraine could use, like long-range cruise missiles would help them a lot to stop from being attacked by Russia long-range cruise missiles.
> They send almost everything they can outside of nuclear weapons
We are doing no such thing. Unfortunately.
>They send almost everything they can outside of nuclear weapons, the most cutting edge military tech, and people (well, outside of a limited contingent of "advisors")
We sent a couple hundred tanks, out of 8k. We sent a couple hundred Bradleys, out of 6k. We sent literally expiring missiles. We sent the tanks missing it's best armor, because we are squeamish about giving away uranium I guess. We sent a few extremely dated F16s, instead of the thousand F35s we have. One of the main ways things were donated to Ukraine was former Soviet powers donating their old trash and getting IOUs from NATO to replace it.
With this sample platter of western equipment, Ukraine has dragged a supposed bear to its knees. With this smattering of 80s vintage, anti-soviet equipment, Ukraine has forced Russia to massively draw down their old soviet inheritance to replace the 2500 Russian tanks lost (plus several hundred essentially donated to Ukraine a couple years ago) and 1000 AFVs destroyed, and nearly 4000 IFVs destroyed.
Like it's not some bombastic victory of course because both sides are so short on equipment that it's basically 1 million men vs 1 million men, and Russia CAN build artillery shells in quantity, so they are advancing at a snails pace in some areas.
But the insane ROI on vintage NATO equipment is hilarious. The Soviets were always afraid of the West invading them, and it appears their opinion was accurate, they would have had a very very bad time. We built this stuff to mulch soviet equipment, and boy were we good at that.
The Patriot is old enough to have been embarrassed during the first gulf war by a SCUD missile. HIMARS/ATACMS is even older. The tanks and Bradleys we sent are the scraps that didn't get upgraded after Desert Storm.
> They send almost everything they can outside of nuclear weapons
Oh come on now, you know this isn't true. The US and it's allies have a mountain of military tech they haven't sent for a variety of good and bad reasons. Ukraine regularly begs for more and better weapons, if they were "sent almost everything" would they be begging for more?
> Really?
That's exactly how the Russians perceive the EU. They are perceived as weak. There is no way they would have started the invasion if they were afraid of them. They are engaging in asymmetrical warfare because they are convinced they can demonstrate that to the world as well "look what we are doing there and well we get is phone calls form Sholz" [1]
> Scholz condemned the war of aggression against Ukraine
> The German leader called on Putin to withdraw Russian troops from Ukraine ...
[1] https://www.dw.com/en/germanys-scholz-calls-putin-for-first-...
That might look like a "power move" by Germany but it looks absolutely weak in the eyes of Putin.
> That's exactly how the Russians perceive the EU. They are perceived as weak
Europe has been weak. The difference is Russia is weak while trying its hardest. Europe is weak because it can't bother to try.
> That might look like a "power move" by Germany but it looks absolutely weak in the eyes of Putin
Nobody considers condemnations power moves. Also, Putin's track record in reading who's too weak to do what doesn't look too hot right now.
How is it trying its hardest when it hasn’t declared a full scale mobilization, hasn’t closed its borders, or switched to war time economy?
40% of Russian budget is allocated to defense, that's roughly the same level as US during Vietnam war.
Russia is absolutely in a full war time economy at the moment. There's nothing left to squeeze out of it and they're headed for a meltdown in 2025/2026.
> Russia is absolutely in a full war time economy at the moment.
So it would seem.
> There's nothing left to squeeze out of it and they're headed for a meltdown in 2025/2026.
Promises, promises. By the time 2026 rolls around, nobody will remember this comment to tell you how wrong you were.
I mean, you could be right. Who knows. The point is the future is uncertain, and using predictions as proof or arguments is stupid. Nobody knows what's going to happen 2 years out.
Did you know ahead of time they would get NK soldiers, NK artillery ammo, Iranian drones? What if Putin finds some clever ways of compensating for the losses? He's actively trying to improve his situation, not just sitting on his ass watching, as these predictions imply.
And what if an asteroid destroys all the Russian forces..then what?
Current Russian interest rates are 21% on cash, 15% on 10 year bonds[1] and the government is increasing spending on the war.[2]
The wheels aren't going to come off immediately, but they've been reaching the peak of their ability.
Or to put it another way: you're not clever for going "nah uh" and there's no such thing as magic. For the next 3 years Russia's economy is being tossed at the war entirely, and every dollar which is is coming at the expense of everything else.
And this is all based on the heavily massaged Kremlin figures: they're not easy to lie about, but they're certainly also only ever going to be reported to try and shape a message of the type you're now parroting: you can't win so don't even try, Kremlin-strong, authoritarianism is just plain tougher then you decadent westerners.
[1] https://tradingeconomics.com/russia/government-bond-yield
[2] https://cepa.org/article/russia-budgets-for-its-forever-war/
> That might look like a "power move" by Germany but it looks absolutely weak in the eyes of Putin
Calling and talking with Putin as acting as some kind of "power broker" or "decider" (Bush junior's classic). I think that's the context there. That's after years of hand wringing, should we help, or shouldn't help, maybe help, but not too much and so on.
> Europe has been weak. The difference is Russia is weak while trying its hardest. Europe is weak because it can't bother to try
I agree, and I don't know if now it finally woke up or it hasn't yet. It's not over till it's over, as they say.
Poland at least seems awake. They are gobbling up Korean tanks and artillery. Poland has seen this story play out and they are tired of being the butt of the joke.
If Europe won't protect Poland, Poland will defend itself.
That Russian ideology is stuck in 19th century / WWI-era imperial mentality is their own problem. How they "perceive" Europe is their own concern.
Europe mostly learned its lessons after WWII and is more interested in commerce and trade, not in battling over colonial possessions and ethnic partitioning. The games that the US (in Iraq, Syria etc.) and the Russians are playing have had nothing but negative effects on the world. US poked the hornets nest in Iraq/Syria and now Europe has had a refugee crisis for 10+ years. Russia butchering Ukraine the same.
Scholz is a relic from a era that has ended. The new chancellor early next year will likely be much more anti-Russia. Another strategic win?
It looks more like they are just winning their war by the most effective means they have at their disposal.
To say that Russia is just being a nuisance.... They have just won a war. That is clear as day now.
Trump's election is the nail in the coffin. Immediately we saw Schultz call Putin and Zelensky declare that the war will be over early next year - implying a negotiated settlement.
It's done. The Russians won. Exactly what they won is all that is to be decided.
> They have just won a war. That is clear as day now.
Ukraine still holds a part of Kursk region after months of Russia failing to take it back, is that what winning looks like?
Won the war? Putin lost his political goals the first month. Everything since then has just been a very slow (and literal) death animation.
Putin has destroyed Russia's population pyramid and driven away all sensible educated people. Their society is screwed for a generation.
Trump is a wildcard and may try to pressure Putin if he thinks it will get him the Nobel Peace prize he so desperately desires. But even the most conciliatory Trump cannot save Russia now.
Weak?
Macron is rallying for major support.
Poland is building an extremely strong army, and is having none of Russia's BS.
Rutte is head of NATO now, and he has peace as his nr. 1 goal.
There are so many ads for cybersecurity and military on tv here in the Netherlands.
Ukraine received ATACMS (long range missiles) a while ago. This is why they are able to invade Russia back.
We are "weak" because Putin has been destabilising our peaceful politics over the past 20 years.
Russia isn't a fucking bear, it's a drunk wasteland with plenty natural resources, but with fucked up leadership. The Russian oligarchy is desperate, and it's showing.
And yes, I _am_ mad. I am 100% going to protect the EU. What we have and what we had is beautiful, and my Russian friends and my Ukrainian friends deserve better.
I am picking up math, Nix, ML, geopolitics, nature, sports and more because of these idiots in Russia. And I'm exactly what they fear most. A transgender person.
I'm so, so done with Putin and Lukachenko's BS.
EU as a whole has actually been weak in terms of military capability and perhaps also civil defence. The end of the Cold War and the long peace had allowed a lot of us to believe that there wouldn't be a foreseeable risk of military conflict or a need to seriously prepare against aggression. Many European countries cut back significantly on their military spending and capability. And that seemed like a reasonable and popular thing to do given the circumstances. (Countries in Eastern Europe were perhaps the exception and didn't cut back, at least not so much.)
The problem is that defensive capability cannot be just built all of a sudden if it turns out to be needed after all.
Of course the reason that has become a problem is Putin's aggression and authoritarian rule.
But Europe has indeed been weak in the sense of not having maintained defensive capability. Perhaps that is, both fortunately and unfortunately, changing. (Fortunately for obvious reasons, unfortunately because it means significant spending on something that should not be necessary even though it is.)
Hopefully EU societies will remain strong and resilient in the sense they've been strong all along: strong civil society and democracy.
> Many European countries cut back significantly on their military spending and capability.
Not nearly as much as the drop in the Soviet Union / Russia. European military spending is significantly larger than Russia’s.
Exactly!
> Russia isn't a fucking bear, it's a drunk wasteland with plenty natural resources, but with fucked up leadership. The Russian oligarchy is desperate, and it's showing.
It doesn't matter. It attacked one of the largest countries in Europe, captured territory and is still holding it and making progress. Right under EU's nose. It can brutally throw men in the meat grinder and doesn't worry too much about it. Calling Putin like Sholz did or like Macron didn't help. Showing him a fist that's ready to strike, only that works. Anything else is showing weakness.
> We are "weak" because Putin has been destabilising our peaceful politics over the past 20 years.
The weakness is not accidental, they've been weaving in their agents all over the place and shaping public opinion. Now they are engaged in asymmetrical warfare. Germany has been doing deals with the Russians buying gas and oil from them. Merkel laughed at the US for being worried about it:
[1] https://www.ft.com/content/aa2afe9f-0b5d-45b7-a647-cc61f6d01...
> If we’d known then what we know now, we would of course have acted differently
> The weakness is not accidental, they've been weaving their agents and shaping public opinion. Now they are engaged in asymmetrical warfare. Germany has been doing deals with the Russians buying gas and oil from them. Merkel laughed at the US for being worried about it:
Yep.. When Merkel was German chancellor, I thought she was amazing. Not a big fan anymore :(
> It doesn't matter. It attacked one of the largest countries in Europe, captured territory and is still holding it and making progress. Right under EU's nose. It can brutally throw men in the meat grinder and doesn't worry too much about it. Calling Putin like Sholz did or like Macron didn't help. Showing him a fist that's ready to strike, only that works. Anything else is showing weakness.
Yeah. I agree. Putin is not interested in anything but power. And he doesn't listen to anything but power. Europe is slow and timid, but the impacts of ww2 are still deeply embedded in our cultural memory.
Warmongering 101. Ready to protect the EU and drunken wasteland at the same time. The enemy is simultaneously pathetic and an existential threat.
Restraint is not weak and pathetic.
If you accidentally pick a fight with a BJJ fighter, hope they are a black belt instead of a purple.
Or to paraphrase Vladimir Kara-Murza, democracy will come to Russia. So far the west has been better off letting Putin tie his own noose.
> Or to paraphrase Vladimir Kara-Murza, democracy will come to Russia. So far the west has been better off letting Putin tie his own noose.
Unfortunately the noose is a tie and it's soaked in Ukrainian blood so far.
Of course Ukrainians should be grateful for the help they got, and no doubt they are. But they should also be worried about how little they got and based on that rate where this war will eventually end. I am afraid it will end with bleeding all of Ukraine. I wish Western leaders, especially West European leaders were more bold. Where are the Margaret Thatchers, François Mitterrands, and Helmut Kohls of yesteryear. We got milquetoast Sholzs and Macrons instead.
First thing out of that russian "opposition" mouth after exchange was "Ukraine please stop resisting" and "Please stop the sanctions".
There is nobody in russia to make democracy happen. Their "opposition" is just different shades of putinism.
While being a Putin opponent, he is also still Russian politician, and probably doesn't like seeing 1400 Russians killed on the battlefield each day.
Putin would not be where he is without the support of China. And China has plenty of levers that the west can press without needing to do sabotage or war. 15% of China's exports go the US. EU another 15% or so.
The west won the cold war without firing a shot or blowing any bridges or sinking any ships.
I do agree Putin will change course if he feels he can lose power but it's not clear how pressure on Russia leads to that. He holds the country in his iron fist. He's not going to care about losing some ships or bridges as long as he thinks that he can come up ahead in the long run. He'll just use that as motivation to send even more soldiers to Ukraine and ramp up arms productions.
Despite all the shifts in China and in Chinese-Western relations in the last 10 years it remains the fact that the thing China cares about the most is commerce. If the spice stops flowing because of international warfare, China will not be happy.
Which is why I think it's insane that both US political parties have made "trade war with China" a major policy plank. I think the CCP is as awful as the next person, but cutting trade now means cutting leverage later.
China has had to face no consequences for their support of Russia. What I'm saying isn't about trade war with China. It's about world order. Not that the "western" world order is ideal but it's way better than Russia or China's ideas for world order.
If what you say is true then there should be no problem with China to stop supplying Russia in return for the west not cutting a similar amount of trade with them. However I think you'll be surprised to find there are things that China cares about more than commerce.
Sounds very similar to what happened to Nord Stream oil pipelines.
Closing in on at least 3 years of hybrid warfare and yet this is nothing but a "mystery".
As big of a mystery as who poisoned Sergei Skripal or who shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17.
I dislike the immediate jumping to “war, sabotage, destruction!” that happened in this article. Cable breakage happens quite often, and sometimes are caused by such menial things as sea debris, or at times, sharks chewing on them [1].
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/melissacristinamarquez/2020/07/...
If you look at all the oceans as a whole, sure.
Baltic? A tiiny tiny area of water. Critical infrastructure?
It’s sabotage.
Just a little unnerving
Sharks love undersea cables, except the fact that AFAIK there are no sharks in the baltic Sea https://slate.com/technology/2014/08/shark-attacks-threaten-...
I wonder how expensive it would be to bury undersea fiber cables deeper under the seabed to protect them from anchors cutting them. It might be cheaper to just install a second cable far enough away that they are unlikely to be cut at the same time.
Time for Biden to write a bunch of letters of marque, and get Russian ships out of our seas.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/6869
It seems that the obvious solution could be Starlink-style meshes.
Can anybody comment on how fragile the Starlink protocol would be during a war? If its line-of-sight, presumably it would be hard to jam?
Ignoring everything else, C-Lion1 has a bandwidth if 144 Tbit/sec
How much can a constellation offer say between many points in both countries? Seems unlikely it could get close but I would like to know.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-Lion1
Russia already demonstrated that they are able to take down satellites [1] and that they can interfere with Starlink [2]>
1: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/16/world/europe/russia-antis... 2: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/24/technology/ukraine-russia...
The Swedish part of AMPRNet [0] has some ambitions to be a fallback in case of a crisis[1]. It seems cheaper and easier (a bit of an understatement) to deploy and repair, in case it gets attacked.
0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMPRNet
1: https://amprnet.se/images/Kriskommunikation-2014-01-27.pdf
Send some sharpnel on the same orbital altitude as Starlink and the whole constellation disappears.
True, if by "some" you mean a few thousand rocket launches worth of shrapnel.
few dozen crashed satellites quickly become shrapnel on their own, spreading in all directions. not at "shrapnel speed" but nevertheless..
At Starlink altitude there is still operationally significant volumes of air. So much so that Starlinks need to altitude raise regularly. Starlink shrapnel would drop below Starlink orbit almost immediately, and completely deorbit in a month or so.
It's Starlink. It would take an sms from Putin at most for Musk to turn it off.
Oh really
Nuclear detonation(s) in LEO would likely cause significant harm
Did Russia make a threat to Elon Musk at some point that it would take down Starlink satellites?
Sure, let them try down 1700+ satellites, with new being put up multiple times a week by the dozens. Cant't even cause a proper Kessler Syndrome due to the low orbit.
Getting more and more Footfall vibes these days with Spacex already having a full orbital dominance. ;-)
Elon Musk is not someone Europe feels it can rely on in a crisis when Russia attacks
Elon Musk is probably the private individual who has done most for Ukraine.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink_in_the_Russo-Ukrain...
So to keep score, in the last year we've seen cables sabotaged between Finland and Germany, Lithuania and Sweden, Estonia and Sweden, Estonia and Finland. Any others I missed? You might say it's too early to call it sabotage, but the earliest two cable incidents were exactly the same, so it's hardly a coincidence at this point.
Russia warned that they were going to do this last week. I think it's pretty reasonable to conclude that 1) this was sabotage and 2) it was Russia.
> Russia warned that they were going to do this last week
Source?
https://www.newsweek.com/russia-pipeline-gas-patrushev-putin...
I guess they warned in their own way, of "nice cables you've got there, it would be a shame if someone... sabotaged them".
They're constantly saying this about everything.
They also threatened UA with a full scale invasion by doing troop trainings on the border for several years before the real thing.
The point isn't that they don't do things, it's that there are people issuing a constant stream of threats and people doing things, and it's not entirely clear there is even a correlation between the two.
in other words, we need their false negative rate
> we need their false negative rate
We have it. It's almost 100%. They've been threatening WWIII and nuclear armageddon since 2022.
That is not as comforting a comparison as you might think it is.
In my experience, the problem is also that one group of people refuses to act on what the other side actually says (because it’s inconvenient/dangerous).
every once in a while they actually follow through with some. they need some prison mafia credibility to not look like total clowns.
first result: https://www.newsweek.com/russia-pipeline-gas-patrushev-putin...
Hey, hold your horses. Biden also threatened to blow up the Nord-Stream 2 pipeline, yet after the sabotage, everybody said "it was Russia". Now about this incident, to be consistent, I'm inclined to think it was the Americans.
I believe at this point we have a pretty good guess as to who sabotaged the pipeline, and it wasn't the US.
Who is we and please enlighten me.
The rest of the world who aren't mainlining Russian propaganda.
No we do not. Saying it with "confidence" and "authority" doesn't make true either.
Sure we do. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/11/11/...
The article's only sources are "people familiar with the operation". That's a heck of a lot to take on trust, particularly considering the increasingly disjointed relationship between Ukraine and the US, and the increasingly evident reach of the Kremlin's intelligence services and supporting propaganda machinery.
The same article you link only quote "speculation" on the role of Ukraine. There is no detailed evidence of the people involved (and if some certain other agencies are involved in this).
The same article you link only quote "speculation" on the role of Ukraine
It does not, and you're misreading the one sentence in the article where that word appears.
Biden also threatened to blow up the Nord-Stream 2 pipeline,
Nope. He said it would be "ended", meaning the one thing that it obviously means -- that it would be shut off.
everybody said "it was Russia"
Nope -- some people said that.
The reasonable, level-headed people said: "We just don't know yet".
Was probably the ones who didn't want to be on the hook for their end of the contract being violated by not sending resources down the pipeline.
> He said it would be "ended", meaning the one thing that it obviously means -- that it would be shut off.
When Biden said that he was talking next to the person with the power to legally shut it off, the German chancellor. If he and Biden were in agreement on that point, that Nord Stream would be shut off if Russia invaded Ukraine, why did Biden say that explicitly but not Scholz, even after being asked directly by the journalists present? If they were not in agreement on that point, how could Biden promise that they would put an end to it?
> The reasonable, level-headed people said: "We just don't know yet".
Agreed.
If they were not in agreement on that point, how could Biden promise that they would put an end to it?
Typical politician nonsense.
None of which means he was intending, or suggesting the idea of actually blowing it up.
Come on dude. He said "we will bring an end to it", and when the reporter challenged him how he's going to do this given that it's a deal between Germany and Russia, he said "I promise you we will be able to do it."
People have been convicted of murder on less evidence.
The peaceful Russian Baltic research fleet is doing research, nothing to see here.
Between mainland Norway and Svalbard.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40484591
This would be an excellent time for Germany to announce that it is tripling munitions production, and that they’re going to do whatever they have to do to protect the territorial integrity of Europe. But they won’t.
As risky as it may sound, they will triple the depth of concerns.
The Taurus
Our governing coalition just split and there will be early elections (most likely) in February. Nobody has a majority right now, any anmouncement is currently unlikely. In fact our lovely head of the Government just reaffirmed that we won't send taurus to the ukraine.
These long-range missiles are a short-time tactic designed to merely hurt the Russians or prevent them from doing certain actions under threat of pain and not a real strategy. Ukraine hasn’t had any battlefield successes since the Kursk Hail Mary which failed early and is now only maintained with the hope of improving their negotiating position when the time comes.
The approval of long-range strikes by the US & co likely means that Ukraine’s position was getting even worse than expected.
Furthermore, it became clear from the leak of German military communications that it would be German soldiers who would have to operate the weapons.
All in all this seems like a case of Scholz knowing Germany’s capabilities and risks and the public overestimating the former while dismissing the latter.
Increasing armament manufacturing capacity is critical for Germany and European self-defense regardless of whether those shells go to Ukraine or just get stockpiled. Does anyone seriously think that Europe is going to avoid future warfare in a world where Russia achieves its military goals in this conflict? It's madness.
If it were critical, it would have already happened. But Germany and the EU know deep inside that this isn’t about ideology and conquest and Ukraine is a pretty unique case.
On the other hand with Germany and the EU acting so tough, Russia might believe them, so some military investment is probably wise.
There's nothing unique about Ukraine. Russia has already taken action against Georgia, and will continue to destablize the eastern half of Europe. You're either aware of this or you're in denial, which Germany obviously is. (Same people who made themselves dependent on Russian gas right before the Ukraine invasion, despite every warning to the contrary.)
But Germany and the EU know deep inside that this isn’t about ideology and conquest
Looks like an attempt to project your own views onto people you don't know.
Meanwhile, to the extent that we do have a recent, official statement from the European hive mind -- it points in the exact opposite direction of the sentiment you are attempting to assign to it, saying that "Russia is systematically attacking European security architecture". And in terms of ideology, it specifically cites the Russian regime's "reckless revisionism".
See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42182897
Regardless of your other points, I think approval of long range strikes has more to do with Biden doing what he can before leaving office. And leaving a calculus for Trump: keep with the policy and irk Putin and his other patrons, or cancel it and look weak and anti-Ukraine.
This decision might have been made earlier if the election hadn't been in the way.
Meanwhile, in the real world Germany is de-industrializing because of the high energy prices and competition from China and US.
The entire west has been deindustrializing for the last 30 years.
Besides the short-sighted beancounter China outsourcing, Germany had a healthy industry.
That’s notably shrinking with no clear path to recovery.
The constant Russian interference, combined with the regular escalation from the jets patrolling, and the radar jamming, really needs to be dealt with.
We're stuck between having to do timid actions and full NATO escalation. This feels like constant creep.
I have read reams of rhetoric regarding relations with Russia rehashed as "don't poke the bear".
No one ever seems to want to discuss what to do about the bear going around poking everyone else.
The bear metaphore is indeed nonsense. Russia is not a bear, you are dealing with a bunch of state level criminals.
Those stealing, money laundering, killing, trafficking an warring circles of oligarchs are heavily rooted in Intelligence Services, inside and abroad. Some of those oligarchs even have private militaries.Those people primarily care for themselves. They know they can get away with a ton of insane and inhuman shit, as they calculate the other well-behaving party will back off. They however do not want to get nuclear consequences themselves, it is pure bluff.
The "academic" term for Russia's style of governing is a kleptocracy.
Your description is 100% accurate.
Americans are about to get intimately familiar with this mode of governments anyway
Without knowing any of the individuals involve, this intuitively seems like a useful model to predict the actions of the state.
I wonder how effective the technique would be for the US government and our own oligarchs?
> The bear metaphore is indeed nonsense. Russia is not a bear, you are dealing with a bunch of state level criminals
With nukes, which makes them pretty scary.
time to cut its paws off, tbh
Those discussions are had all the time. One of downside of this bear is bear strapped with explosives that could kill us all if bear gets angry enough.
Also, once you are 12 miles offshore, technically you are in international waters and thus cannot be stopped by any Navy except your own unless there is UN Sanctions. If NATO Countries decided to violate that, it obviously opens up massive can of worms that could impact worldwide trade.
You are evidently unaware of UNCLOS and the adoption of many of its provisions into customary international law
I'm completely aware, used to be involved in this stuff. In international waters, these are UNCLOS requirements to board a ship not of your Navy Flag.
(a) the ship is engaged in piracy; (b) the ship is engaged in the slave trade; (c) the ship is engaged in unauthorized broadcasting and the flag State of the warship has jurisdiction under article 109; (d) the ship is without nationality; or (e) though flying a foreign flag or refusing to show its flag, the ship is, in reality, of the same nationality as the warship
Which one would you like to use to board and/or force the ship to depart against Russian cable cutting ships?
To be clear, I am not proposing boarding Russian ships. That is pointless.
But the answer to your question is a. Referring to UNCLOS 101(a)(ii) the cables are "property in a place outside the jurisdiction of any State".
> Which one would you like to use to board and/or force the ship to depart against Russian cable cutting ships?
High seas (which is what that list applies to) is not the EEZ. I don't think anybody could legally argue thar a country wouldn't have the right to board (or fire at, if it didn't comply) a foreign ship from it's coast 24 nautical miles if it suspected it was doing something illegal. Whether that right extends to the entire EEZ isn't exactly clear.
However there are no "high seas" areas in the Baltic so all of the listed items are irrelevant.
Probably don't want to fire at the nuclear powered cargo ship that is suspected.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sevmorput
Unless the reactor is directly hit there shouldn't be any significant problems? It's not a warship so there wouldn't be any need for heavy munitions to force it to surrender.
Of course the Baltic is very shallow so if the reactor started leaking it might be a bit more problematic than if a nuclear ship/sub was sunk in the middle of the ocean.
The EEZ only applies to resource extraction. Otherwise, it is the same as high seas. What lets you board is the territorial sea, and outside that, the contiguous zone. Even then there are limits.
Also the practical reality of countries not giving a shit about any of that when someone starts breaking their shit. There is a reason Russia is knocking out European lines while leaving American ones alone.
> customary international law
If only there was such thing.
High Seas "international water" start at after 200 nautical mile EEZ. There's a few explicit articles dealing with malicious submarine cable damage.
But IIRC the TLDR is it has to do with indemnities and putting a vessel/person up for prosecution after the fact. And it doesn't apply if cable damaged while trying to prevent injury, which RU can always claim.
More broadly I think you're correct on paper... RU damaging subsea infra is under UNCLOS is technically punishable, but after the fact. And they're not going to lol pay damages to countries that sanction them. NATO kinetically trying to prevent RU damaging subsea infra (especially in highseas), in lieu of formal UN policing mission against such acts, is closer to act of war.
NATO kinetically trying to prevent Russia from damaging subsea infrastructure WITH a formal UN policing mission is also an act of war, its just more clearly not an act of aggression.
Of course, that would also be true of NATO doing so as part of a broader collective defense operation reported to the Security Council, directed against Russia and explicitly aimed at rolling back the Russian (UNGA-condemned) aggression in Ukraine under Article 51 of the UN Charter.
Fair distinction.
International law can be selectively applied for different party according to different scenarios (relative to different geopolitical power). NATO triggering art5 (self defense) won't make it valid / feasible to trigger at parallel UN art51. RU using UN art51 to target UKR a soveign territory, is also going to be different than NATO / or NATO country using art51 to do whatever they want on non-soverign / international high seas. All of which is to say while international law doesn't matter much to the motivated, not everyone is powerful enough to normalized/destablize with impunity. NATO might, but not without RU security council (trumps UNGA) approval, of course NATO can supercede from UN Charter framework which IIRC that NATO explicitly states they operate within. But then we have NATO going independant of UN, which goes back barrels of worms.
That’s a good point, there’s no formal mechanism to punish any country that has ‘anchor accidents’ 12.1 nm offshore.
It’s probably not even a de jure crime, so what is there to punish on the record?
In what country is intentional property destruction not a crime? You’re not arguing that it’s really accidental, right?
12.1 nm offshore is not any country, which is the point…The laws of zero countries matter, and only certain multilateral agreements matter, at least on paper.
It’s still a de jure crime on the ship itself, because the laws of the flag country apply there. If the captain of the ship intentionally damaged something in international waters, he still committed a (de jure, which was the question) crime.
No? Why would the laws of the flag country matter for an anchor slowly drifting to the seabed detached from a vessel several km away?
Edit: I’m pretty sure most, if not all, such countries don’t even ascribe any legal status to wrecked and sunken lifeboats, let alone anchors. Probably most countries don’t even have a formal penalty, of any kind, for lifeboats detached and sunken, for any reason, for anyone on the ship.
The „anchor accidents“ with cables are normally when a ship is dragging an anchor over the cable. That’s property damage of someone else’s stuff, which is a crime in pretty much any country. And even if you drop your anchor to intentionally destroy someone else’s property, that would be a crime anywhere. You don’t need a specific law for anchors.
Do you not know how ships typically operate?
Vessel captains drop anchor all the time if they are caught out of port in a stormy area. And if it’s a big enough storm they are quite literally dragged around along with the anchor.
It literally happens every month on Earth.
It just’s implausible that dragging alone would be a crime in any flag country.
Edit: Maybe they can criminalize dragging it for a very long distance, say 10+ km, but I’m pretty sure the most popular flag countries do not, e.g. Liberia.
That's why my first question was
> In what country is intentional property destruction not a crime? You’re not arguing that it’s really accidental, right?
So you are arguing that it's an accident? Do you agree that it would be a crime if it was intentional?
Do you not understand what intentionally anchoring in a place means on a ship?
I’ll repeat as clearly as possible, literally every single month on planet Earth many ship captains are intentionally putting very heavy objects into the water in areas that they know may contain some property that their anchor may hit/drag/snare/etc… on something.
This is usually done when the probability is very low, but in bad enough conditions they may just not care regardless of probability, and anchor anyways.
Ok, so we could have saved 5 comments if you just answered „yes“ to my first question. The cable disruptions most likely aren’t real accidents but sabotage, coupled with plausible deniability explanations of anchor accidents. That’s why I was talking about intentional damage from the start. Read the thread again.
I had assumed you already understood the basics before writing the first comment.
Why do you think your questions or assumptions even make sense?
> technically you are in international waters and thus cannot be stopped by any Navy except your own unless there is UN Sanctions
What? No? How do you think we arraign pirates?
> it obviously opens up massive can of worms that could impact worldwide trade
No? Why? Worst case it would be considered an act of war. Practically, they'd just be arrested.
>What? No? How do you think we arraign pirates?
Because piracy is one of exceptions to "No stopping not your flag ships in international waters."
Here is list of exception: (a) the ship is engaged in piracy; (b) the ship is engaged in the slave trade; (c) the ship is engaged in unauthorized broadcasting and the flag State of the warship has jurisdiction under article 109; (d) the ship is without nationality; or (e) though flying a foreign flag or refusing to show its flag, the ship is, in reality, of the same nationality as the warship.
https://www.un.org/depts/los/convention_agreements/texts/unc...
>No? Why? Worst case it would be considered an act of war. Practically, they'd just be arrested.
So under which clause would you like to stop Russian ships cutting cables in international waters?
UNCLOS does have this provision around submarine cables: Every State shall adopt the laws and regulations necessary to provide that the breaking or injury by a ship flying its flag or by a person subject to its jurisdiction of a submarine cable beneath the high seas done wilfully or through culpable negligence, in such a manner as to be liable to interrupt or obstruct telegraphic or telephonic communications, and similarly the breaking or injury of a submarine pipeline or high-voltage power cable, shall be a punishable offence. This provision shall apply also to conduct calculated or likely to result in such breaking or injury. However, it shall not apply to any break or injury caused by persons who acted merely with the legitimate object of saving their lives or their ships, after having taken all necessary precautions to avoid such break or injury
But Russia is obviously ignoring the rules so now what?
> So under which clause would you like to stop Russian ships cutting cables in international waters?
Piracy. Duh. That or you'd break the treaty. (Like China has been [1].)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_China_Sea_Arbitration
I agree. Do you want to sign up and go fight in a war? Or should other people besides you die? It's easy to say it "needs to be dealt with" but it's not an easy thing to do.
Some of us live close enough that it's not really an option, surrendering to Russians don't work that great if you live in Eastern Europe. I will volunteer first day to join Polish Army.
Ditto. Even though I'm an expat right now if Poland calls to arms I'm coming home and fighting to defend my country.
I can't tell if you guys or the Finns are better at dealing with invaders, but I can't think of a higher compliment on this matter.
> Or should other people besides you die?
Yes. We literally have a country willing to do this for us if we give them the weapons.
Otherwise, a country whose population is unwilling to fight for itself isn't a country, just a convenient demarcation on a map.
Countries don't fight, people do.
So when you say, "country willing to do this for you" (how nice!), what you mean is a bunch of politicians and officers are willing to go in the street and capture random civilians to conscript them. Because that's the reality of how Ukraine is "willing to fight".
I lived in Finland most of my adult life. Gladly. Freedom isn’t free, I understand that
It's never an easy thing to do or one that should come to fruition, but yes, I would contribute to the effort for my country if it was so.
Against Russia? Yes.
My grandfather did it the last time, I'm ready any day for a rematch.
For now I'm hoping that our brothers in Ukraine slap Russia hard enough to deter any invasion plans for a few more decades.
Living in a country next to Russia, it basically feels more and more likely that I will actually have to participate in a war effort. Not really sure how since I have not undergone military training, but it's definitely something to keep in mind these days.
If you would have asked me while I was a young Marine I'd say, "hell yes." I recall the commandant visiting in Afghanistan and Marines were asking him where the next combat zone is because they are eager for more action.
Best course of action at this time would be to properly arm Ukraine.
What exactly would "properly" arming Ukraine look like? The entire Western world doesn't produce enough Patriot missiles to meet Ukraine's air defense needs, just as one critical example. We are aiming for a global production target of 750 missiles/year ( https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/15354795 ).... Russia has fired about 6,000 missiles and large drones per year ( https://kyivindependent.com/defense-ministry-over-2-000-russ... ).
You can send Ukraine all of the F-16s in the world, it won't matter if there aren't enough Ukrainian pilots with the linguistic skills to get them through the Western training pipelines.
The reality is that the West can't make the math work at a level of commitment/investment that it is willing to accept. To say nothing of the steadily-worsening problem of "lack of living, breathing Ukrainian men willing to do the fighting in the first place"...
> What exactly would "properly" arming Ukraine look like?
More long-range offensive weapons and clearance to hit sites in Russia. Let Israel know that we wouldn't mind them taking out the Iranian drone factories supplying Russia.
It must be nice starting yet another world conflict from the comfort of a leather chair, in a bank in New York...
"Go on my little goyim, go spill your blood so we can invest in a free Ukraine!"
I won't criticize the Pentagon. They're taking orders from higher up who's waiting for Russia to escalate in order to respond. The ballistic missile strike on Dnipro is a new devlopment: "This could have been a strategic nuclear strike, but it's a Russian PR statement instead". I wonder what South Korea is waiting for, Kim getting proper ICBM tech from Russia?
Even the pentagons own assessments say this won’t make much difference.
The Pentagon made a number of flawed assessments, each one upended by Ukraine's determined actions.
And let's use some Feynman-style common sense: taking out airfields, ammunition depots, and logistics WILL help Ukraine's defense immensely.
I would go further and question which clowns are running the show in the Pentagon, but maybe I should keep my cool over that matter.
> would go further and question which clowns are running the show in the Pentagon, but maybe I should keep my cool over that matter
They’re not incompetent. But they do serve at the pleasure of the President. That makes their public communications political.
> Even the pentagons own assessments say this won’t make much difference
I mean yes, it’s also what the press secretary has been saying. They’ve been wrong at every step to date because Biden has been wrong about this.
Take 100 NATO F-16 pilots and grant them Ukrainian citizenship.
Who would want Ukrainian citizenship? Nobody. Certainly not experienced aviators who already hold more valuable/useful passports, and are probably on a career track that leads to them becoming airline pilots and making very nice salaries.
Gonky and Mover, two veteran US fighter pilots on YT, had a video segment discussing foreign pilots flying for Ukraine....they both totally shit on the idea. The risks are too high and the potential compensation is too low. These guys have no desire to tangle with Su-35s and MiG-31s chucking R-37M missiles, likely from beyond the effective engagement range of the F-16 + AIM-120 combo.
https://www.eurasiantimes.com/mig-31-and-vympel-r-37m-a-form...
https://warriormaven.com/russia-ukraine/upgraded-russian-mig...
Can’t believe I had to scroll so for the first comment based on reality and not wishful thinking.
The large drones (if you mean Shahed by that) absolutely don't need a Patriot response. More Gepards would help with those OTOH.
The West could definitely manufacture enough counter to the ballistic missile menace.
It's the right thing to do anyway, but especially as a way to respond to Russia.
Which happened and kept happening for a long time now, including the US sending billions of dollars and weapons (among other things). That did not help, did it?
> Which happened and kept happening for a long time now
We've been drip feeding and hand tying Ukraine. Practically every military expert has said this is not the way to win a war.
No, but it's a good way to put some fear in our NATO allies and it is a good way to waste a bunch of Russian resources.
I heard US sent so many weapons that even US' supply of weapons were running low if and when it came to defending themselves. Is it true? I have no clue.
> heard US sent so many weapons that even US' supply of weapons were running low if and when it came to defending themselves. Is it true? I have no clue.
No, it's not. For small-scale war, we are amply stocked. For large-scale war, stocks don't matter, production does.
Surely if the US was actually in a situation where it was attacked and had to defend itself, they’d be able to do that. If nothing else, the civilians have a whole lot of guns too and attacks on the US (think Pearl Harbor, 911) have a massive rallying effect. As far as I know, the biggest thing preventing a civilian semi-automatic from being converted to an automatic firearm is the risk of a long prison stint.
The USA is a giant ocean away in any direction from any meaningful threat. No-one is invading the USA. Everyone will be nuked to oblivion before that would ever come to pass.
It is not true.
The US has THOUSANDS of tanks and THOUSANDS of Bradleys. We have sent Ukraine 32 Abrams and 300 Bradleys. For reference, Australia was able to swing sending Ukraine 50 Abrams. The US has THOUSANDS of F16s, and is starting to build up thousands of F35s. We have full munition stockpiles for all missions for both platforms. We gave Ukraine about 1000 various "armored vehicles", like hundreds of M113s which are nearly useless on a modern battlefield except as glorified trucks. We sent Ukraine 200 "Strykers" that we considered a failure in the middle east. We sent a few hundred MRAPs. We sent 20 HIMARs systems, out of over 600 built. The US sent only a single patriot battery.
I encourage you to go look at the numbers the US put together for the various gulf wars. We sent a trickle of supplies.
The only substantial supply we offered was 3 million 155mm artillery rounds, which is a large fraction of our stockpile but the US (before Ukraine) did not care for tube artillery, preferring instead to lob JDAMs and other air launched munitions. This is also only a problem because American Industry refuses to invest in increasing production capacity unless we bribe them, you know, just like capitalism says it should work.
The people who said we were harming our weapons stocks were lying. Reconsider who shared that information with you.
> That did not help, did it?
I'm sorry, but this is the type of claim of someone who gets news from the Joe Rogan podcast.
Ukraine managed to defend its capital from annexation, liberated thousands of miles of territory, and managed to improve its protection of civilians thanks to air defense systems, has lower casualty rates than Russia, and now is starting to create a buffer zone into Russian territory.
How isn't this a sign that it didn't help?
Now... could, and should, Ukraine receive way more help, on time to help them even more? Of course. The drip feed has been one of the worse strategic decisions in this conflict, almost like there's no strategy in place.
But Ukraine needs to develop its deterrence.
>But Ukraine needs to develop its deterrence.
The failure to protect Ukraine without it needing to develop nukes is the end of nuclear non-proliferation.
You either have nukes, or Russia will make up some bullshit to invade you.
I do not get news from Joe Rogan podcasts, and as such, it is unnecessary and inappropriate to claim so.
Something that people seem to not realize is that the Minsk Agreements refer to two accords (Minsk I in 2014 and Minsk II in 2015) aimed at ending the conflict in eastern Ukraine, specifically in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, where pro-Russian separatists had declared independence with alleged support from Russia.
That said, while Russia claimed that Ukraine failed to implement the Minsk Agreements, this does not justify a military invasion. Diplomatic mechanisms were available to resolve disputes, and both sides bore some responsibility for the lack of progress on Minsk. It can be attributed to challenges and shortcomings on all sides involved. With the election of Donald Trump, there may be an increased opportunity to revive diplomatic efforts and achieve meaningful progress, given his emphasis on unconventional approaches to negotiation and relationships with key stakeholders, potentially (and hopefully) providing a better opportunity to bring an end to the long-stalemated conflict.
> Now... could, and should, Ukraine receive way more help, on time to help them even more? Of course.
I am sorry but providing additional aid at this stage would likely prolong the war rather than bring about a resolution. This protracted conflict has already pushed global economies toward collapse, with ordinary taxpayers shouldering the financial burden of a war they never chose to participate in. It is irrational to continue pouring taxpayer money into a long-stalemated conflict without a clear path to peace or resolution, particularly when domestic priorities are being neglected in the process.
> I am sorry but providing additional aid at this stage would likely prolong the war rather than bring about a resolution.
That would only give Putin time to replenish his forces and attack again. The time to act is now.
If the Russians lose, we might be looking at another USSR style dissolution of Russia: more breakaway Central Asian and Caucasus republics and maybe a break from Russian interference. Make no mistake, these are the people that Putin is grinding in this war.
This is a good opportunity for the US to weaken Russia without firing a shot and consolidate its power in Eastern Europe with reliable allies.
> This is a good opportunity for the US to weaken Russia
Have you ever considered that US giving Ukraine lots of money & weapons weaken the US, too? <conspiracy theory> Imagine if Ukraine and Russia worked together to achieve it. </conspiracy theory>
> I do not get news from Joe Rogan podcasts, and as such, it is unnecessary and inappropriate to claim so.
I simply stated that's the same level of shallow analysis and severe lack of understanding of what's at play, sprinkled with mystical thinking and conspiracy theories, which is prevalent in the right-wing media and amplified by Russian propaganda. I don't think it's inappropriate, it might just be a coincidence.
> (...) where pro-Russian separatists had declared independence with alleged support from Russia. That said, while Russia claimed that Ukraine failed to implement the Minsk Agreements, this does not justify a military invasion. Diplomatic mechanisms were available to resolve disputes, and both sides bore some responsibility for the lack of progress on Minsk. It can be attributed to challenges and shortcomings on all sides involved
Just to point out two red flags here:
- The separatists didn't have alleged support from Russia, there were Russian troops in both Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk. By the way, those regions were at peace until Russia sent "little green men"[0]. The same happened in Georgia by the way, in 2008. Where do you think "separatists" got a Buk 9M38 to shoot down a commercial airliner killing 300 people? [1]
- Russia did not just claim that Ukraine failed to implement UNCONSTITUTIONAL parts of the Minsk agreement, Russia itself failed to comply with the agreement - and they were the ones on sovereign Ukrainian territory, killing Ukrainians. An agreement goes both ways, so the general sense was that Russia never looked to abide by the agreement, just gradually turning Ukraine ungovernable with cancer from within, by subverting the Ukrainian constitution.
From the words of Macron in the talk with Putin before the escalation of 2022:
"They are in front of my eyes! It clearly states that Ukraineʼs proposal should be agreed with representatives of certain districts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions in a trilateral meeting. This is exactly what we propose to do. So I donʼt know where your lawyer studied law. I just look at these texts and try to apply them! And I donʼt know which lawyer could tell you that in a sovereign state, the texts of laws are made up of separatist groups, not democratically elected authorities."[2]
> With the election of Donald Trump, there may be an increased opportunity to revive diplomatic efforts and achieve meaningful progress
So your idea of a diplomatic effort is to appease a dictator with the subversion of Ukraine, a sovereign country of 40 million people, and target of genocide, that was at peace and posed a threat to no one. To the point of surrendering their nuclear arsenal in exchange for the guarantee of their sovereignty - with the signature of the USA representatives.
> It is irrational to continue pouring taxpayer money into a long-stalemated conflict without a clear path to peace or resolution, particularly when domestic priorities are being neglected in the process.
The only irrational thing is to push the Russian narrative that Ukraine should be left on its own, for the illusion of internal stability that stems mainly from propaganda.
Again, this just confirms the same ill-informed narrative Joe Rogan-type podcasts are pushing around, some of these podcasts being funded by Russia Today operations.[3] I won't claim its deliberate, but as time passes it increasingly looks like so.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_green_men_(Russo-Ukrain...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_17
[2] https://babel.ua/en/news/80618-bloodbath-and-involved-zelens...
[3] https://apnews.com/article/russian-interference-presidential...
It all began with pro-Russian Ukrainians fighting against the Ukrainian government though...
Are you in support of Israel too, by any chance?
Wrong.
It all began when President Yanukovych rejected an agreement he promised to sign with the EU (which was, and is, a public document with known the terms) in exchange for a deal with Russia, of unknown terms and vague promises, and framed with threats.
This was a 180 turn that led to the Maidan Revolution and the impeachment of the president. It was the decision of the President against the will of the majority of Ukrainians who voted to elect Yanukovych, who promised close ties with the EU including signing the Association Agreement.
This was followed by Russia invading Ukraine in late 2013/early 2014 with "separatists"/"little green men".
By the way - "pro-Russian" Ukrainians didn't revolt against the EU Association Agreement, it got Yanukovych elected.
So again, you have strong misinformed opinions aligned with the Russian narrative, of a subject you don't seem to know that much about. That happens to be oddly aligned with some alternative media like The Rubin Report, Tim Pool, etc.
> After the 2014 Ukrainian Revolution and the ousting of President Viktor Yanukovych, a divide between pro-European and pro-Russian factions in Ukraine became more pronounced.
> In the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, many residents harbored pro-Russian sentiments due to historical, linguistic, and cultural ties to Russia.
> Following Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014, separatist groups in Donetsk and Luhansk, supported by local pro-Russian factions, declared independence from Ukraine.
These statements are false?
> aligned with the Russian narrative
That is merely coincidental.
That is merely coincidental.
What matters is that it's a false and misleading narrative.
These statements are false?
Yup - either false, or misleading/irrelevant. Time is short so we'll just go over 2 of them for now:
> In the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, many residents harbored pro-Russian sentiments due to historical, linguistic, and cultural ties to Russia.
True, but irrelevant. Simply put, that wasn't was caused hostilities to happen.
> Following Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014, separatist groups in Donetsk and Luhansk, supported by local pro-Russian factions, declared independence from Ukraine.
Except there were no indigenous "separatist groups" driving the action. It was entirely coordinated by Russia from the very start.
In other words: a foreign invasion.
> What matters is that it's a false and misleading narrative.
Whether or not it aligns with whatever you say it does, does not necessarily make it right or wrong.
"It is pro-Russian, therefore it is wrong" is wrong.
I do not dismiss you because your views align with the pro-Ukrainian narrative, nor do I claim that you are wrong.
In fact, I do not even claim that I am right. How would I really know? It is mostly hearsay.
Whether or not it aligns with whatever you say it does
It's wrong on its own merits, not on the basis of anything I say.
How would I really know? It is mostly hearsay.
Actually it's not. It's actually pretty easy to get a good sense of what's going on, just by reading whatever sources one does read with a reasonably critical eye. And if one is really bold, by taking the care to read diverse sources. What brought me to respond to you in this case is that you seemed be echoing talking points you had heard or read somewhere, but which were just not grounded in the basic reality of the situation.
Talking to people actually from the region (actual real, regular people) can be very helpful, also.
In fact to make this very simple for you: just completely forget everything you've read on the internet -- and just talk to people actually affected by the situation for a while. You'll definitely start to get a sense of what's hearsay and what's fact, very very quickly.
> you had heard or read somewhere
I wish I could provide specific sources, but my information comes partly from Wikipedia and partly from conversations with others, most of whom hold pro-Ukrainian perspectives. There is significant sentiment against Russia and China in general, and I understand why (I am pretty much in the anti-China camp myself and I admittedly hold a bias against China). I have not even heard of "The Rubin Report" or "Tim Pool". I am somewhat familiar with Joe Rogan, but I have only watched one of his popular podcasts, the one featuring Elon Musk.
As you like, and what you're telling me about your information sources is quite helpful.
The additional context I've provided (in regard to the initial causes of the conflict) is intended to be helpful, also.
> In fact to make this very simple for you: just completely forget everything you've read on the internet -- and just talk to people actually affected by the situation for a while. You'll definitely start to get a sense of what's hearsay and what's fact, very very quickly.
Where can I find people who have lived through that situation as it unfolded? Are you one of those people by any chance?
Talking to people from the region may indeed provide valuable insights and perspective that might not come through in articles, reports, or podcasts, but it is important to remember that personal experiences, while genuine, are often shaped by individual perspectives, biases, and incomplete information. We know that people living through a situation may not have access to all the facts, may interpret events differently, or may even unknowingly perpetuate misinformation they have encountered. Even those directly affected by events might be influenced by propaganda, local media narratives, or their own personal hardships, which can influence their understanding. This does not mean their accounts are worthless, however. We need to cross-check details, separate fact from emotion-driven narratives as much as possible.
I believe it can be valuable for me to hear your personal perspective, for example.
First, if you ever get a chance to travel to Eastern Europe, you'll be very glad you did. Western Ukraine itself is actually reasonably safe (compared to many large cities in the world), though you should definitely do some research on your own (and have at least a few local contacts) before going over there.
Most large cities in the West by now have substantial Ukrainian expat/refugee communities. In general they're pretty easy to find, and are quite friendly. Talking with people from other Eastern European countries (especially Poland and the Baltics) can be very helpful, also. As with people anywhere, some will be a bit nationalistic or have other axes to grind. But proportionally they are small in number. The vast majority are just regular people trying to get on with their lives, and make sense of the current insanity just as you and I.
Are you one of those people by any chance?
My own background is unimportant, but I will offer that I've spent significant amounts of time in countries affected by both Hitlerian and Stalinist (and other) dictatorships, and have had all kinds of conversations with people about these topics. Hearing personal stories about what their families went through in those years (virtually none were not affected in some way) really helps to size things up in the bigger picture, and avoid the charms and traps of highly ideological narratives.
Finally, any amount of serious reading about pre-1999 (that is, pre-Putin) Cold War history, preferably by hard-nosed academic historians (and not pundits like Mearsheimer, Sachs et all; and unfortunately I have to say Chomsky also) can be very helpful also. (Technically the Cold War ended in by 1991, but another view is that it's still ongoing).
I believe it can be valuable for me to hear your personal perspective, for example.
I apprecite your forthrightness, and if I came across as browbeating or arrogant, I take it back and apologize.
> My own background is unimportant, but I will offer that I've spent significant amounts of time in countries affected by both Hitlerian and Stalinist (and other) dictatorships, and have had all kinds of conversations with people about these topics. Hearing personal stories about what their families went through in those years (virtually none were not affected in some way) really helps to size things up in the bigger picture, and avoid the charms and traps of highly ideological narratives.
This reminds me of videos from "Bald and Bankrupt" where people in villages have said that life was better under communism.
> I apprecite your forthrightness, and if I came across as browbeating or arrogant, I take it back and apologize.
No hard feelings. :) I did not read any arrogance into your comments. Thank you for your replies, I really appreciate them! I will need some time to reflect on them and delve deeper into what has been said.
> This reminds me of videos from "Bald and Bankrupt" where people in villages have said that life was better under communism.
It's part of the post-WW2 generation inductrinated by state propaganda who had access to food and gov't services through a network of connections doing each other mutual favours or poor people who were confortable with the state providing (job, living spaces) for them in exchange for doing what they were told. The other part which resonates well with Western culture and private enterprise absolutely hates communism, the USSR and Putin's Russia because they suffered under the communist regime. To them Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan are heroes.
Try this.
https://understandingwar.org/
> These statements are false?
Yes. The "separatists" were entirely a fiction created by Russian armed forces as a cover and pretext for their invasion. The lengthy verdict by the European Court of Human Rights[1] lays it all out and concludes that there is no reason to consider "separatists" anything less than unmarked members of Russian armed forces or security services. The entire story about ethnic tensions that resulted in "pro-Russian Ukrainians rising up against Kyiv government" and Russia coming to their support is a total bunk, a manufactured lie trying to misrepresent an unprovoked invasion by a foreign country as a stereotypical third world civil war that western audiences are accustomed to. Russians are playing directly into your stereotypes to erode support for Ukraine.
[1] https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng#{%22itemid%22:[%22001-222889%...}
> After the 2014 Ukrainian Revolution and the ousting of President Viktor Yanukovych, a divide between pro-European and pro-Russian factions in Ukraine became more pronounced.
This is a broad irrelevant statement. The signing of the EU Association Agreement was part of Yanukovych's campaign, and Ukrainians elected him. The "pro-russia factions" is a Russian construction.
A small fraction of the Ukrainians might have disagreed with the impeachment, but it was THEIR ELECTED OFFICIALS in the parliament that impeached the president - BY MAJORITY VOTE[0]. So the elected deputies did what they believed was in the interest of those who elected them.
That's democracy, and Ukraine is a democracy. Those who were unhappy could change their vote to elect other deputies on the following elections.
No Ukrainians wanted their families killed, and cities occupied and razed by Russia.
That's yet again, another Russian narrative spin, along with the "Ukrainians don't have agency/will of its own" implication.
> In the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, many residents harbored pro-Russian sentiments due to historical, linguistic, and cultural ties to Russia.
Ukraine was a former soviet state, where many Ukrainians have family in both Ukraine and Russia. I don't get the point you're trying to make from "sentiments" to a war of occupation with +1.000.000 casualties, 10.000.000 refugees, +25.000 kidnapped children.
> Following Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014, separatist groups in Donetsk and Luhansk, supported by local pro-Russian factions, declared independence from Ukraine.
Yes, there was a theatrical display of claims of independence, and Russia did some more of it in 2022 with the "referendums" of occupied territory - which of course no sovereign country recognized, except for Syria, and North Korea. What's your point here and why do you stand with Syria and North Korea in these recognitions?
----
So, overall those statements are decontextualized, rendering some of them wrong or irrelevant/misleading. If you were trying to make some point here, I don't see it, just confirms what I said before.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeachment_in_Ukraine
I am not trying to make a point; I am simply exploring, exchanging ideas, and sharing thoughts that provoke a response, allowing me to hear another's perspective on the matter. :)
I may be wrong, and I want to get an understanding as to why that may be the case.
I just think it's regrettable to have strong confident opinions with a shallow understanding of probably the most important event since WW2, Russia is trying to annex a democratic sovereign country of 40 million people. It's an attempt at mass-scale genocide.
That is the type of opinion is passed on by the vast majority of alternative media podcasts - it's shallow entertaining stories that give the illusion of understanding a subject.
The invasion of Ukraine is probably the most documented war in History, and you can get a very good understanding of the event in a short time with little effort. You can even access original documents, yet you prefer a low-resolution misinformed version of it.
I must say that my comments do not necessarily reflect my own opinions. In retrospect I can see why it might have given that impression, as I may have phrased my sentences in that way.
(FWIW you know "entertaining" is debatable, and I personally do not find either position entertaining).
To clarify, the entertaining part doesn't come from the subject but from the perception of having an insight and opinion about a subject, which most of the time is someone else's idea built on top of another shallow notion.
It's fun to believe you have an understanding of reality, that didn't require much effort to understand.
This is the main problem we're facing at the moment with regard to information: people mistake a thin veneer of anecdotes and stories, for knowledge with some depth, but they don't care because it feels nice to know a lot of shallow things.
The result is a wrong understanding of reality.
Just for you to understand, your current stance - I want peace so we can focus on our "internal problems", let Russia keep what they stole and Ukraine needs to figure it out on their own - will make a direct conflict with China inevitable, and that will be a war where you won't be sending just weapons.
> let Russia keep what they stole and Ukraine needs to figure it out on their own
What do you think would be a strategically wise course of action? Should we consider peace talks, take drastic military action like using nuclear weapons on Russia or Ukraine, or explore other alternatives? I apologize for being so extreme, but I struggle to see how simply providing financial aid and weapons - which are finite resources - will effectively resolve the situation. Should we attempt to drain Russia's resources[1]? Is it even possible to achieve this without risking the weakening of the defense capabilities of the countries supplying the aid?
[1] Let us not forget history here though.
> What do you think would be a strategically wise course of action? Should we consider peace talks, take drastic military action like using nuclear weapons on Russia or Ukraine, or explore other alternatives?
How do you go from peace talks to nuking Russia? What is the goal of nuking Russia? Do you want to go in and occupy the Russian Federation?
Ukraine is a sovereign country with borders recognized by 193 countries in the UN - including Russia by the way. No one, except Syria and North Korea recognizes occupied territory as being part of Russia.
The reasons are self-evident: if this precedent is opened, then it means we're back to pre-UN times where the strong can annex smaller countries. Countries might as well each get their own nuclear deterrence, and then you'll have nuclear proliferation. Which in case you might not be aware, was a victory to be able to prevent countries from pursuing this avenue.
What's wrong about giving Ukraine what it needs to defend itself, as we promised with the Budapest Memorandum?
They're not asking for nukes, they're not asking for troops on the ground, they just ask to be supplied with what they need on time. Don't make a theatrical display of it, don't drip feed it, just do what was done when we helped the Soviets win against the Nazis, but on a much smaller scale.
Providing financial aid and weapons is a small price when compared to the collapse of a global order that was won after WW2. Especially when you're giving them equipment that won't be used by the US and would be decommissioned - it's probably costlier to dispose of it than to give it to Ukraine.
> Is it even possible to achieve this without risking the weakening of the defense capabilities of the countries supplying the aid?
We can mobilize a global industry to produce mRNA vaccines in a short period of time, that requires specialized resources, we boast about being able to land rockets upright... somehow you think we cannot produce 155mm shells?
> They're not asking for nukes
Are they asking for the means to achieve victory? If so, what does that entail specifically? When and under what circumstances would it be considered a victory for Ukraine? How much aid would Ukraine require for this to succeed? Would it be sufficient to deter Russia? Is Russia's production capacity worse?
> Are they asking for the means to achieve victory?
Yes, and victory for them isn't taking over Moscow but guarantees their sovereignty, independence, and security.
That entails:
- reducing the capacity for Russia to strike Ukraine with long-range missiles;
- the capacity to disrupt supply lines and push them back into Russian territory;
- the capacity to strike air defense systems so Ukraine can secure its air space;
- the capacity to defend unoccupied territory;
- be part of a defensive alliance that guarantees Ukraine's defense in case of a future invasion;
- be part of an economic alliance that will allow Ukraine to rebuild and thrive;
> When and under what circumstances would it be considered a victory for Ukraine?
Victory will be achieved when their citizens can go back to their homes knowing they won't ever have to deal with a genocidal hoard that thinks Ukrainians don't exist.
> How much aid would Ukraine require for this to succeed?
As much as necessary, and I think Western allies and partners can sustain this - if Russia can, the largest economies surely can too.
> Would it be sufficient to deter Russia?
Russia is already paying a high cost in human lives, the economy and culture, they're on a self-destructive path - so just let them do their thing, continue to accelerate this path, and keep supporting Ukraine.
> Is Russia's production capacity worse?
There is a shortage of labor in Russia, with the unemployment rate extremely low, they reached a cap. Now they're trying to outsource production to North Korea.
In conclusion, so you have a historical framing: you'd be in the group of Nazi Germany appeasers, and we saw where that led the world to - WW2. I'm not saying you're a Nazi sympathizer, or anything like that, far from it. I'm saying that you're misinformed to the point that you prefer to sacrifice a country of 40 million people that represents democratic values (even if they're in their infancy), that wants to protect it and be aligned with us... and that won't impact the privilege US has in the global stage.
In exchange for the illusion that... companies that increase consumer prices will drop prices? That housing will suddenly pop out of the sky... housing that migrants mainly build? That the multibillionaires will start to pay more income now that they're part of the government?
That's all to blame on Ukraine aid receiving old military equipment meant to be discontinued and decommissioned, right?
> I'm saying that you're misinformed to the point that you prefer to sacrifice a country of 40 million people that represents democratic values
I did not intend to say that we should sacrifice a country.
What would happen if Ukraine "peacefully" would give that region to Russia? I am not saying they should, I am asking what would happen, considering it may not lead to more bloodshed and it may not mean "sacrifice" either, as long as they can continue living there, just under a different rule. Is this not an option? If not, why not?
> What would happen if Ukraine "peacefully" would give that region to Russia? I am not saying they should, I am asking what would happen, considering it may not lead to more bloodshed and it may not mean "sacrifice" either, as long as they can continue living there, just under a different rule. Is this not an option? If not, why not?
The easiest answer would be "Look at the History of XIX and XX centuries", in reality, you don't need to go that far:
What happened when Russia occupied Moldova territory in the 90's and we did nothing?
What happened when Russia occupied Georgia territory in 08 and we did nothing?
What happened when Russia occupied Ukrainian territory in 2014 and we did nothing?
Now they're making veil threats to Kahzkstan.
So the most important question is, in light of Russia constantly invading and occupying and oppressing sovereigns that were at peace, what do YOU think will happen?
No, it began with Russia's regime sending paid mercenaries (to the Donbas) and regular troops (to the Crima) in March-April of 2014. There was no indigenous revolt of any significance before this happened. Even pro-Russian sources acknowledge this fact.
Billions of dollars worth of Gulf War era weapons some of which they need to replenish anyway. It actually did help a lot but it's apparently still not enough to win this war. I beleieve that the US strategy is to slowly grind the Russians, supplying Ukraine with just enough weapons so that both sides are fighting a positional warfare. The trouble is this strategy is not working and Russia has already escalated by involving DPRK troops.
> really needs to be dealt with.
Ignoring the passive voice, who do you suggest should deal with that, more precisely? And how do you suggest "dealing" with one of the two nuclear hyper-powers in existence? (the other one being the Americans)
Maybe I should clarify that I am not in charge of any executive or military branch in the EU or NATO. I express my frustration with our leadership.
If you're interested in how I think it should be sorted: the cables are between Finland and Germany. I think we start with Finland and Germany: - stepping updiplomatic pressure. - Expulsion of Russian and Belarusian diplomats. - Confiscation of Russian owned properties. - Freezing bank accounts. - Increasing tariffs on their goods - Reducing overall trade. - Increasing spending on national defense - And weapons production. - Increasing aid to Ukraine.
The military leadership is seriously considering that Russia might push for the Baltics (meaning, the EU) within 4 years. The EU is not at peace with Russia. They are biding time for a war they need to prepare for.
From history: "Flexible Response" was a policy implemented by JFK in 1961, in response to previous administration's over-reliance on massive retaliation.
Of course, it dragged the United States into Vietnam as things slowly escalated.
IMO the right action is to counterattack with equal force, ideally in the same way. So cut one of their undersea cabals, fly jets near or over their airspace, etc.
That way, there's a clear line for what NATO will and won't do that Russia can understand. If attacks escalate it will be Russia that escalated every time. If Russia feels it's threatened, all they have to do is stop the attacks and NATO will stop. If Russia is going to nuclear warfare over not being able to unevenly harass NATO, because we can't read Putin and the oligarchs' minds, and what objective measure would allow that but not allow Russia to go nuclear warfare over not enslaving all of NATO, or claiming they can/others can't do everything not written unambiguously in a treaty (which would extend to new technologies like partitioning the solar system that we couldn't have thought ahead-of-time)?
But I'm no diplomat, so maybe I'm wrong and my idea would be catastrophic.
>fly jets near
It's regularly done by both sides. And not only with jets, but also with nuclear-capable strategic bombers.
>over their airspace
Shooting it down will be a no-brainer for Russia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1960_U-2_incident
>If attacks escalate it will be Russia that escalated every time.
So sending jets into their airspace is not an escalation, but shooting down the plain is? Yeap, you are not a diplomat.
Should I remind you how US reacted to the Soviet military presence in Cuba? On the US scale Ukraine is somewhere between Mexico and Texas in importance for Russia from the military point of view.
I don't know whether Russia is flying jets over NATO airspace. If they're not then NATO shouldn't be flying them over Russia.
In my idea it would be essential to confirm Russia is responsible for anything before the even counterattack. If there's an attack NATO can't confirm, the only thing they would do is defend and monitor more closely in case Russia tries the same attack in the future. Only the things that the Russian government definitely does to NATO, NATO would do to them.
So according to this principle, Russia can send military aid to the Syrian government to strike the US military bases on its territory and the US should not be able to retaliate?
In that case the US would be allowed to send aid to some other government to strike Russia (they're currently doing this with Ukraine but for a separate reason, for Ukraine's self-defense...)
Or in an ideal world, the US pays Syria more to not attack them, maybe even gets them to sign a treaty and commits to building Syria's economy and protecting them so they don't feel compelled to take Russian bribes. Although, it's certainly not so straightforward, prior US involvements in foreign countries have been disasters so it would have to be different somehow...
There are many other ways Russia could attack NATO that would be very hard to prove or evenly-counter. Russia could create a culture of NATO hatred and aggression, then set up "rewards" that are given out for obscure reasons, to get Russian NGOs and citizens to attack NATO in their own will. Then NATO can only encourage citizens to attack Russia, which I don't think any treaties forbid anyways, and creating a culture of hate is bad for other reasons. It's not a foolproof system.
But like for this event, there's evidence beyond reasonable doubt that the Russian government is directly involved (https://www.newsweek.com/russia-pipeline-gas-patrushev-putin...). And there are other ways NATO can weaken Russia's influence without even attacking them, like not trading with them, and (indirectly, by having a more liberal government) encouraging Russian citizens to emigrate.
So you do understand that the world can not work according to your simple tit-for-tat principle of "counterattack with equal force". It's a multi-dimensional game where each player has its own fairly opaque "reward function". "Equal force" from one point of view can become "disproportionate escalation" from another. This is where a proper understanding of your opponent becomes important.
Even worse, inside US and Russian governments there are groups with their own interests and agendas. The military-industrial complex can be interested in further escalation and fearmongering (i.e. "good war"), while civilian industry would prefer some kind of compromise as soon as possible (i.e. "poor peace").
Or station nukes in Venezuela
That would happen under Trump, and make Trump and Rubio look particularly weak at diplomacy.
> We're stuck between having to do timid actions and full NATO escalation
If only there were someone applying pressure to Russia we could have fight for us!
So sacrifice more Ukrainian men for the meat grinder? What has that accomplished so far?
> sacrifice more Ukrainian men for the meat grinder?
To the extent there's a meat grinder, it's of Russians [1].
> What has that accomplished so far?
Russia's disqualifying itself as a conventional military threat for at least a generation. It's not yet there yet, largely because Ukraine has been unable to target its war marchine. But the startling inefficacy of its army and technology has been made clear. Moreover, the front line has been maintained in Ukraine: that keeps them further from NATO and thus American and European boys at home.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Russo-Ukrain...
>To the extent there's a meat grinder, it's of Russians
It's of both. Why deny the fact Ukrainian men are dying in droves? This is disrespectful of those that paid the ultimate sacrifice. Pretending this is not extremely costly to Ukraine in manpower is denying reality. They have been increasing the age of conscripts as they're running out of young men.
> Why deny the fact Ukrainian men are dying in droves?
Nobody is. Meat grinder means excessive loss relative to necessity. The Ukranians are being slaughtered, but not mindlessly. They're fighting efficiently in respect of manpower.
Also, had we given Ukraine all the weapons it asked for in 2022, we probably wouldn't have had a meat grinder.
And, hence, we should give them all the arms and tools they need and the freedom to use them to end it quickly. The dithering on behalf of Biden and Scholz is what's prolonging this.
To the extent there's a meat grinder, it's of Russians.
That seems unfair. It's more of a meat grinder for the aggressor, but it's also one for the Ukrainians, by all indications.
1. Ukrainian borders are closed from day one. 2. Russian borders are open from day one. 3. Ukrainian conscription is keeping on going from day one, taking radical form in recent year or so (men being violently dragged from streets) 4. Russia has had a single conscription which lasted 3 months. 5. Ukrainians are risking their lives fleeing the country via rivers and mountains. Many escapers were found shot. 6. You can take a plane and emigrate from Russia. No obstacles.
Yet you insist there are much more casualties in Russia. Where’s the logic here?
Russia has a 3x larger population and so far has had the luxury of being able to pay (relatively) extremely high wages to entice people to go.
Military wages are more or less the same. Russia has 3x more population but we're told that Russia suffers many times bigger losses vs ukrainian.
Given that Russia is invading them and that they are showing no reluctance to stand up to them, yes? Arm them, give them everything they need without restriction and Russia will be sent home to their borders, bloodied and cowed.
What business is that of ours? It's up to the Ukrainians what they are willing to do in defense of their country.
>we could have fight for us
C'mon. Their funding is entirely US dependent. What business is that of ours? We are enabling it. How could you possibly ask the question "what business is that of ours"? Explain yourself, that question is absurd.
> What business is that of ours? We are enabling it.
They clearly want to fight! This is like arguing giving someone chemo is enabling their cancer.
Who is "they" and what is "clearly"? They are running out of men they can find to fight, and for quite a while the government and military used very aggressive methods to force men into service. There is a huge desertion problem, in the military and the country itself. A whole lot of Ukrainians do not want to fight.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/ukraine-running-out-s...
> Who is "they" and what is "clearly"?
Who do you think?
> A whole lot of Ukrainians do not want to fight
Yes, there is not unanimous agreement on a big political question. Shocking. By this measure, nobody should ever fight for everything.
I guess you're right. Ukraine should let Russia exterminate the Ukrainians. 3 times as many people will die as died in the German extermination regime, but it's worth it to avoid conscription, right?
A whole lot of Ukrainians do not want to fight.
A whole lot of people don't want to fight in any war.
What matters is the relative portion. Though they my differ in the views as to whether the lost regions can be regained, or on what terms a cease-fire may be acceptable -- by all indications, a very solid majority of the society in non-occupied Ukraine supports the fight.
Who is "they" and what is "clearly"?
About 60-80 percent of the population. "Clearly" as in according to reliable polling data I can pull up later. Or by spending any amount of time talking to Ukrainians.
There is a huge desertion problem,
It is obviously a significant problem, but a better source is needed on the "huge" part. The link you provided does not support that view.
If I hear "desertion is a huge problem", what comes to mind it the situation in Afghanstan after the notorious Trump-Biden pullout. The situation in Ukraine is nothing like that, not even remotely.
Exactly because Ukrainians want to fight their borders are closed from the day one. Because the people that want to fight should be kept in their country by force, North Korea style. I’m not sure how it works, but well.
This perspective on conscription is odd to me. Countries do conscription during existential wars. The Allies used conscription in WW2. Was that wrong?
>C'mon. Their funding is entirely US dependent.
I believe you're misinformed about that.
While the US is largest donor by country, the EU as a whole has contributed more than the US.[1] Which is unsurprising, given the circumstances.So no. Ukraine funding is not entirely dependent on the US. Not even close.
[0] https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/these-co...
[1] https://www.ifw-kiel.de/topics/war-against-ukraine/ukraine-s...
Right... but the EU is acting as US' proxy; the EU only threw all that money at the Ukraine (destroying itself economically in the process!) because of US "influence".
Many EU countries are now little more than US vassals.
Many EU countries are now little more than US vassals
They're nothing of the sort. Your perspective is seriously out of touch with reality.
Well currently ensuring happy holidays for the western-er part of Europe.
I keep wondering if that scale of operation that we are witnessing is their "testing the waters" phase and it is 1% of their true capability, of if what we're seeing is already their full-steam operational pace.
They do a good job of instilling fear, but we've learned from Ukraine that there are a lot of paper Tigers in that army that aren't as capable in a real fight as they are in a demonstration.
How much of this is news and how much of it is normal occurrences due to shipping or fishing?
I've found this example of a proven sabotage: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-21963100 which involved a few guys caught in the act less than 1 km from shore, then there are a lot of "suspicious" events where intention is never publicly proven.
Thanks. I was trying to figure out if the news is reporting on every little anchor snag or if it is an abnormal occurrence.
Well, it's a major cable and entirely unoperational at the moment, so newsworthy irrespective of the reason.
Yeah, people seem to agree that [maybe](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42176108) latency has been affected!
Nord Stream Part II
No. Nord Stream seem more and more having been an Ukrainian action. Maybe not official government, but obviously more in Ukrainian interest than in Russian.
I can't see any Ukrainian interest an cutting internet between two of their supporters. Whether the support has been sufficient can be debated, but both are supporters. Germany among the top in absolute terms, Finland among the top relative to their own size. Yes among, there are stronger supporters in both categories.
It could be argued that it was more in US interests than Ukrainian... And, of course, the US was better resourced to carry out such an operation.
It will end up in the need to destroy Russian saboteur boats on sight. Putin is a moron if he thinks piracy methods will help him.
It's not about "winning" it's about flooding the information space with doubt and crazy and fear.
Sure, but this ends up being like the boy who cried wolf. When this happens for so long, everyone stops caring about Putin's saber rattling except his puppets whom he already controls.
But damage to communications is a tangible thing, so if this is going to get worse, Putin's boats will be just sunk in such areas as a preventive measure. And Putin will do nada about it despite all this threats, except may be looking for other places to cut cables and engage in similar trash behavior until he is chased out of there too.
Sinking of his ships is something he very quickly understands, since he practically can't make new ones.
It's just practice. Locate the cables, establish a means of damaging them, deploy the means as a test and a show of force.
The western economy is almost completely built using off-prem in Cloud PaaS environments. It should be pretty fun when WW3 starts and not a single hospital, school, laboratory, or factory can operate.
It also sends two messages: "We can do this to any of your cables", and "we're willing to" – with an implied "we could easily do it to all of them at the same time".
And the last scenario is the real problem: While there are enough cable repair ships to continuously handle a normal rate of simultaneous peak failures, fixing multiple cuts can quickly exceed their capacity. (There's nothing that says an attacker can only cut the same cable in one spot!)
[flagged]
Ok, but please don't post unsubstantive comments to Hacker News.
The Russian oligarchs have no say in any of this, they never have, people in the West still repeating this mantra almost 3 years since the war in Ukraine has started for good is a big part of the reason why the same West is close to military defeat there, they just refuse to acknowledge how Russia really operates.
>acknowledge how Russia really operates.
Enlighten us then. How would suggest Russia should be treated?
Treated by whom?
> a big part of the reason why the same West is close to military defeat there
3 years of stalemate war right next door is not impressive at all - how far can Russia really project its power ?
The "never have" part certainly isn't true.
For a certain period of time, they definitely had significant influence.
They just refuse to acknowledge how Russia really operates.
By and large they have, actually, which is why one seldom hears the "oligarchs" mantra these days.
In other words -- though you're correct in response to the flagged commment, in the bigger-picture sense, you're railing against a straw man.
In military/strategic issues they certainly never had anything to say, not even during the dreadful ‘90s.
while outages definitely cause big problems in hospitals and schools, neither are completely dependent on connectivity in the short term. most hospitals are required to be able to operate critical services in an outage. even a full power outage. Schools will definitely be fine. they just may have a serious backlog of entering grades, absences, and payroll once things get back online.
> once things get back online.
That would be like trying to cold start a power plant without any power.
I think you're missing my point. I'm trying to point out that there are 3 "infrastructure providers" that our economy CANNOT live without. In a world war situation, these 3 organizations are going to be the biggest targets. They are literally our crown jewels.
They will be under continuous attack from all angles. As we know with security, it is a game of time. Even the strongest bank safe has a rating in hours that it can resist direct tampering. Beyond that time rating the safe offers little to no protection. It is the layers of security that keep the safe from being tampered with beyond its rating.
What I'm saying is, no target can be secured with 100% security guarantee. Even the most secure systems will fail if met with a concerted attacker with unlimited resources.
If WW3 starts, we will lose Azure, AWS, and GCP within 5 days and it will be more or less completely destroyed within 30 days. They won't survive concerted attacks from nation state actors during war time.
Even if they can't be hacked, they will be physically destroyed with kinetic weapons. There is no Bitdefender plan that will save them from warheads.
> If WW3 starts, we will lose Azure, AWS, and GCP within 5 days and it will be more or less completely destroyed within 30 days. They won't survive concerted attacks from nation state actors during war time.
The same probably applies to moist mainstream (public) datacenters. Only ones that will be safe-ish would be something like Scaleway's underground nuclear bunker/datacenter.
What a moist data center might look like: https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/5uvvnrHCuRmzZzyLZUQXNU-970...
Actually seems like a hardish target.
Worry more about the power grid.
> The western economy is almost completely built using off-prem in Cloud PaaS environments
US and lesser extent UK. Companies in France, Germany, Spain, Italy are much less likely to use public cloud providers, especially for critical (customer data, critical for the business, etc.) services. Not that it doesn't exist, one of the premier health tech startups in Europe, Doctolib, is full AWS; but it's rarer and much less prevalent.
Source: I work in a US tech company and cover EMEA, and compare notes with American colleagues.
Right but how much of that is cloud shit hosted on a different continent?
> It should be pretty fun when WW3 starts ...
Which may happen as some people just got Biden to authorize (honestly I don't think he can do that by himself), without congress approval, the use of long range missiles by Ukraine.
Some people are really hard at work trying to start WWIII.
I don't think it's the russian who severed those cables.
Russia knows that if WWIII doesn't start until a few more weeks, Trump is probably going to stop the US aiding Ukraine and stop the US giving its approval for total nonsense (like allowing these long range missiles weeks before handing over the presidency).
So why would Russia severe those cable?
I think there's a very high probability the bad actors here are the same that used Biden as a puppet to give Ukraine the greenlight to fire long range missile on to Russia.
> honestly I don't think he can do that by himself
Why not? They're not restrictions instituted by Congress. They were restrictions instituted by this and previous Presidents.
Looks like Russia preparing another warcrime invasion
Predictable blowback and it's only going to get worse.
It's like 3rd or 4th submission of this news today? One of the previous discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42175676
Thanks! We've merged that thread hither.
Discussion (44 points, 5 hours ago, 43 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42172565
It's a different cable, even though they were close together.
CNN and Bloomberg mention both cables (although both articles have update times)
It seems very likely to be the same incident.
Merged hither. Thanks!
[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42172565
Merged hither. Thanks!
sharks. maybe even Russian sharks.
Root cause is known and obvious; Minuteman III is a solution, to moderate bully you need 10x response
So blowing up North Stream was fun, but this somewhy isn’t. I’m very often puzzled by the logic and morale in the West.
> So blowing up North Stream was fun, but this somewhy isn’t. I’m very often puzzled by the logic and morale in the West.
North Stream was blown up by the desperate defender in a war of aggression.
These undersea cables were (likely) severed by the aggressor in the same war.
Are you less puzzled now?
All media coverage after Nord Stream was blown did say that Russia did it (just because it's evil, no real reasoning was presented). So, was it really Russia that destroyed German infrastructure? Or was it someone else?
North Stream was a existential threat to the EU, especially the Baltic states and Poland have no interest in being sandwiched between Russia and Germany again. Many German politicians are directly or indirectly bought by Russia, the most notable example being: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerhard_Schr%C3%B6der As Germany was so stupid to close down their nuclear installations and coal mines at more or less at the same time without investing in enough backbone and LNG installations; rising parties such as the AFD would rather side with Russia and get cheap gas instead of helping Ukraine and the rest of Europe. This is why more or less everyone could have done it. I would have done it myself if i was living in eastern Europe. Matter of survival.
So I'm sure these Internet cables were also an existential threat to an unknown country. There are a lot of countries who would have done that. Case solved, everything's fine.
Low hanging fruit. Part of a game involving the adversary to weaponize the stupidity of the crowd. That's us. Easy targets. We only see and know the tip of the iceberg if lucky. Those cables however, that's critical infrastructure. So there is professionals working on it. They don't need our "help". We don't need to worry, so yes - everything is fine.
I'm surprised there's such a cable in the first place, it seems it would be easier to go on land through Denmark and Sweden. Is it for some reason easier to have an undersea cable than a land one?
You can see an undersea cable map here. I don't know about cables specifically but:
1. Anything sea based tends to be cheaper than land based, both in terms of sea transport and also lack of other interfering infrastructure, homes etc along the way
2. Shorter distance means lower latency
3. There surely is a land cable too. There's a lot of redunancy in the system
https://www.submarinecablemap.com/
Just a note: The map doesn't even show all the cables. There are some missing, there are a lot of these cables lying around.
It's much easier to lay a cable on the bottom of the sea. There's nothing interfering there, you don't have to dig, you don't have to put up poles. If you give it some thought, you'll realize how much easier it is to have an undersea cable.
We can put atomic mines every yard along the cable ... or explode completely this planet.
At the time there will be no more Earth, they will be no more problem with human.
I do not support the war, or violence in general.
But EU & NATO ante engaged in a hybrid war with Russia.
- It actively supports a military which is engaged with Russian forces
- It has seized Russian financial assets
- I doubt that attacks on Russian infrastructure are perpetuated (planned & executed) just buy Ukrainian forces
I do not try to support any side by this statement. My point is that by any rational account is a “hybrid involvement”. EU & NATO are part of an active conflict.
This makes them targets for symmetrical actions — economic warfare by means of sabotage.
Russia has been involved in sabotage, shooting down planes with Europeans (MH17), killing people they don't like in EU/UK for years now. If anything EU is extremely timid and does not retaliate.
I am not endorsing Russia.
- shooting down civilians planes is something quite common in military operations (see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libyan_Arab_Airlines_Flight_... ). A bunch of 20 somethings handling equipment designed for mass murder. What could possibly go wrong?
- extra judicial killings on foreign soil are more common than you expect (remember the Saudis ? Or the Indian assassinated in Canada recently)
Russia is an authoritarian system by any account it holds responsibility for repulsive acts. But the current narrative is at best naive.
I look forward to everybody completely missing the resolution to this mystery when it turns out it was something like a Danish sailing boat that got unlucky with their anchor...
How does the saying go? Once [1] is happenstance, twice [2] is coincidence, but thrice [3]...
[1] https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/finnish-governme...
[2] https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/sweden-says-telecom-cab...
[3] https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/18/europe/undersea-cable-disrupt...
Wrong thrice, the third thing NewNew Polar Bear destroyed that day was a Russian telecoms cable: https://www.marinelink.com/news/russian-firm-says-baltic-tel...
Also a Russian spy ship was escorted out of Irish waters a few days ago:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/16/russian-spy-sh...
A Danish sailing boat with 460 meters of anchor chain? Really?