Sweden has just asked China to cooperate in the investigation.
Its not clear what form exactly this will take, or what has been asked, but I could guess that they've asked that the ship sail into Swedish territorial waters.
The article cites Russian involvement again, followed by mentioning the Yi Peng 3 anchor-dragging accusations.
It seems unlikely that the Chinese would get involved at the behest of the Russians. Russia depends on China now and not vice versa.
We see right now what an actual Russian retaliation for ATACMS strikes looks like: Oreshnik, taking out energy infrastructure in Ukraine, etc. Certainly the visual effects of Oreshnik were greater than a cable cut that just reduces gamer latency in Finland for a couple of days.
One plausible explanation is straightforward corruption. The captain was paid to do this. Its easy to imagine him being approached when in port in Russia. And he was prepared to do it in part because of feeling secure in being Chinese flagged so there would be no repercussions.
Russian ships got away with doing the anchor drag sabotage multiple times already such as in Norway in 2021 on a remote research station
https://youtu.be/pw2lO4sxZn8
There was a NYTimes article that said Russian GRU agency has turned to recruiting petty criminals to do arson and shootings across Europe because most of their spies have been kicked out. And the main side effect is they are sloppy and easy to catch unlike professionals.
Honestly, I'm not finding it very easy to imagine a Chinese captain speaking Russian, nor that said captain would think its perfectly normal to encounter a Chinese speaking Russian.
And what is the pitch? "Hey, how about committing a very visible crime you will get caught doing and will risk your ability to ever captain again?" Oh yes, very enticing.
>Certainly the visual effects of Oreshnik were greater than a cable cut that just reduces gamer latency in Finland for a couple of days.
The Russians are testing our response and response times. They do it like this by cutting cables, they sail ships close to the border, they cross into our airspace.
Remember, in the 80s a Soviet submarine ""accidentally"" ran aground in southern Sweden. (Totally not spying on us btw)
Well Yi Peng 3 recently changed operating only between Chinese ports to operating only outside China and mostly to Russian ports. Current actual owner is probably some Russian oligarch.
Oreshnik does not register for the people living around the Baltic sea. We have seen big explosions in Ukraine for years now, its not going to move any discourse in northen europe by now. Not saying that the cable cut will, but it has a better chance.
Well, the "big explosions" have led Sweden and Finland to apply for Nato membership (and actually get it after various delays caused by Putin's allies) after staying neutral for almost 75 years. And everyone knows that Russia has missiles, so Oreshnik only demonstrated that they actually work (which I think no one seriously doubted either). The question is just whether Russia is willing to use these missiles (and maybe worse) against other targets too...
> Oreshnik only demonstrated that they actually work (which I think no one seriously doubted either)
Actually, many people started to seriously doubt anything that Russia says, especially concerning their military power in the light of their spectacular failures especially at the beginning of the war.
Regarding their nuclear arsenal from Soviet times, we are right to doubt in what shape it is and whether it could pose more damage to other countries or Russia itself.
As for Oreshnik, we have no idea how many copies they actually have, but at least the USA have practiced successfully intercepting hypersonic missiles already several years ago. I doubt they would export the tech to Ukraine, though.
We were told that the Iron Dome works, yet the relatively slow Iranian ballistic missiles got through in large numbers.
Now the U.S. ships a small number of THAAD missiles to Israel, presumably in the hope of testing THAAD under real world conditions.
Patriot missiles in Ukraine do not have a 100% intercept rate. What is the new miracle weapon that is supposed to intercept 18 hypersonic MIRVS in a single IRBM?
Perhaps withdrawing from the INF treaty in 2018 wasn't such a great idea. Perhaps reverting to SS20/PershingII times is not such a great idea. Back then the German Green Party owed much of its existence to protesting both. Now it is an obedient war party.
Since the U.S. wants to station IRBMs in Germany, thereby making it the primary nuclear playground again while being safe itself: Will Germany also get these anti-IRBM wonder weapons and will they actually work?
> The article cites Russian involvement again, followed by mentioning the Yi Peng 3 anchor-dragging accusations.
> It seems unlikely that the Chinese would get involved at the behest of the Russians. Russia depends on China now and not vice versa
1. Russia still has significant autonomy and is not a "client state" yet.
The Russia-Ukraine War itself was a major blow for Chinese ambitions - much of China's naval (eg. Aircraft carriers [0]) and aerospace technology (eg. Turbofan Jet Engines [1]) exists thanks to Ukraine's defense industry in the 2000s and 2010s. Ukraine was also one of China's largest Belt and Road Initiative (BRI/OBOR) partners in Europe [7], which has all now gone to smoke.
Russia's rapprochement with NK is also worrisome for China, as China is trying to negotiate a three-way free trade agreement [2] with South Korea and Japan which collapsed as both view North Korea as an existential threat [3], and North Korea has pivoted towards Russia for military cooperation because China has also unofficially committed to North Korean denuclearization in order to unblock the China-South Korea-Japan FTA [4]
2. The crew on the ship were Russian nationals. The ship was China flagged, and realistically this was probably a Russian operation. This fiasco came at a horrible time, as European policymakers are in the process of adding additional tarriffs on China and de-coupling from China, and this fiasco only proved that point.
3. Even Russia doesn't want to become a client state of China. This is why Russia has been wooing North Korea as leverage as NK has become increasingly anti-China [5], and diversifying trade relations by leveraging India, especially because it was Russia that mediated between China and India during the 2020 Galwan Crisis which almost became a China-India War [6]
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All in all, the Russia-Ukraine War was a massive failure for Chinese ambitions, and treating Russia and China as part of a single axis doesn't make sense.
Citation needed. The sources I can find (e.g. [1]) claim that the vessel "is captained by a Chinese national and includes a Russian sailor". The first part can be verified by the strong accent of the radio operator [2].
Good point. I think I am conflating this event with the Oct 2023 event, which was done by a Chinese flagged ship owned by Torgmoll [0] - the Russian operated that manages Russia-China export logistics [1]
It's a Chinese-flagged ship, not a ship operating at the direction of the PRC. While one doesn't want to assign guilt too quickly, it's extremely reasonable that they just took a contract to sail a bunch of Russian around and not ask questions. Or even to rent out the whole ship to a Russian crew
I mean, this is spy stuff here. It strains reason to expect that Russia would use only clearly identified Russian government vessels for its clandestine sabotage operations.
I think it's less of a matter if Russia can get China involved in its sabotage operations and more if they can get a handful Chinese citizens involved in its sabotage operations.
It's the Nord Stream even a topic anymore? It was a shameful project from the start with the involvement of corrupted politicians like Schroeder (the guy had the balls to sue the Bundestag after all this...). It's an embarrassement for everyone and it's good it's gone.
I hope one day after Putin dies Russia becomes a free country and at that point we could consider using this pipeline - or even build more! But now it's just an infamous piece of infra nobody wants to deal with.
In Finnish news currently whenever anything bad happens, the first suspicion is a conspiracy throry about Russian involvement. The press is in sort of a war propaganda mode.
And if you mention this, you're an instant suspect of taking part in a Russian disinformation campaign.
The closest what I can call it is whataboutism. Russia is actively trying to provoke the West in various ways. The most that West is doing is helping Ukraine to defend itself. We are not gathering poor immigrants into planes and transporting them to borders with Finland, Poland etc. instructing them to push their way to the other side. We are not sending inflammable materials via commercial airplanes. And we are not killing Russian spies in Moscow like they did with Lytvynenko.
As for Putin being upset with the West helping Ukraine: they can stop it at any moment. It's enough they stop attacking Ukraine and go home, as simple as that.
Exactly comrade, same when a personality that opposes Putin is assassinated on Putin's birthday all non Russians start with conspiracies when the FSB clearly told us it is a coincidence. Same when critics f Putin die from falling from windows, or when people Putin named traitors get posissoned with nerve gas, tons of consp[conspiracies.
Can;t it be just a coincidence that all this people die and Putin is not a giant criminal? Russians do not like criminals, they would not worship criminals like Stalin, Putin, the Wagner guy
Everything gets blamed on Russia now. The press and politicians tells us Russia is both incompetent and omnipotent. "Normal" people on Twitter will accuse you of being a "Russian bot" if you have a slightly different opinion. We blamed the Russians for blowing up their own pipeline for no reason in particular. It's crazy.
Is this a meta-attack from Russia to flood the information space so that blaming Russia becomes something people ignore? Hmmm....
Not only.. hacker news actively censors any opinion which their llm bot (or an equivalent) judges to come from Russian people (unless these Russians are themselves Russia haters).
Paying the captain of a cargo vessel to damage an undersea cable by dragging his anchor for 160km isn't exactly a conspiracy theory that requires Russian "omnipotence".
Most people I know think the Ukrainians blew up Nordstream.
Will they make the Chinese ship company pay for the reparations and big fine on top of that for cutting cable? Because if not then it will happen again and again.
Turning the Baltic into a "NATO lake" by controlling the Finland-Estonia strait would be an interesting idea, especially now with Finland and Sweden in the alliance. Effectively limiting Russian naval access from St. Petersburg (except for civilian traffic, subject to inspection) would certainly boost regional security.
Russia has already anticipated this problem and updated their nuclear doctrine to include nuclear first use also against countries that would "isolate" Russian territory (Presumably thinking of Crimea and Kaliningrad).
Edit: Not sure what the downvote is. It's factually true. I don't think that necessarily means it's a bad idea or that it's a red line that should be observed when all other red lines are obviously illusions.
Russian nuclear doctorine is just words on paper and doesn't mean anything. Their nuclear doctorine already allows them to nuke any NATO country at will because "any attack by a non-nuclear power (Ukraine) supported by a nuclear power (US, UK, France) would be considered a joint attack" and "any attack by one member of a military bloc would be considered an attack by the entire alliance". And even if they didn't, there's no actual opposition that could prevent changing the doctorine as they wish.
It feels really meaningless to talk about "Russia" like this when in reality it's just Putin and his personal discretion, not "Russian nuclear doctrine". It's a dictatorship not a republic.
The same could be said for the Soviet Union as well. The nuclear doctrine is just Putin trying to point out that he is frustrated. Luckily nuclear deterrence in general is useless in deterring anything except nuclear attack.
Russia is an oligarchic republic. It's neither a dictatorship nor a liberal democracy. And regardless of the power he has, Putin is still a product of the system. His eventual successor will quite likely be another similar leader.
I know it's a mental shortcut and if we wanted to be precise it would quickly become unwieldy so just a quick note, also to self, that the Russians I know don't have and don't want to have anything to do with this, are fed up with what is going on and just want to live in peace.
As a Pole by birth, I'm undoubtedly biased. However, it's not as simple as "Putin wants war, despite opposition from most Russians." Living near the USSR border and within the Soviet sphere of influence taught me that a vast majority of Russians prioritize a strong, assertive nation, often placing societal and economic development lower on their list of needs. If that means occasional invasions and killings, it's part of the game.
Putin may achieve 80%+ support through rigged elections, but even without rigging, it's likely 60%+. So, it's not a simple dichotomy of the Russian people versus Putin - it's more complex.
That said, I also have Russian friends (many now former Russians) who passionately hate the current government and condemn its actions.
It would be good to hear how many that were in favor of ending the war because it's the right thing to do. Because it's unjust. Because it's an invasion of a sovereign nation. Not just "Because the sanctions make my butter too expensive".
The difference being that if the former number is over 50% that might mean the people would be for change, for new leadership and direction. If the latter is above 50 that just means people want cheaper butter. Perhaps wait a bit and try invading later. Or invade some weaker nation.
Its not clear what form exactly this will take, or what has been asked, but I could guess that they've asked that the ship sail into Swedish territorial waters.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c748210k82wo
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