[HN Gopher] Yi Peng 3 crossed both cables C-Lion 1 and BSC at ti...
___________________________________________________________________
Yi Peng 3 crossed both cables C-Lion 1 and BSC at times matching
when they broke
Author : perihelions
Score : 430 points
Date : 2024-11-20 06:56 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (bsky.app)
(TXT) w3m dump (bsky.app)
| 01100011 wrote:
| Title could be a lot more descriptive. Your average reader might
| scroll on by because that title makes no sense without context.
| Hamuko wrote:
| Yi Peng 3 has been stopped in the Kattegat with Danish navy ships
| around it for about 11 hours now. Currently HDMS Soloven is
| anchored right next to it. HDMS Hvidbjornen was also not too far
| away before its signal went dark.
| nik_alberta wrote:
| YI PENG 3 (IMO: 9224984) is a Bulk Carrier and is sailing under
| the flag of China. Her length overall (LOA) is 225 meters and her
| width is 32.3 meters. Source:
| https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/shipid:21...
| nabla9 wrote:
| October 2023 there was similar incident where Chinese cargo ship
| cut Balticonnector cable and EE-S1 cable. Chip named 'Newnew
| Polar Bear' under Chinese flag and Chinese company Hainan Xin Xin
| Yang Shipping Co, Ltd. (aka Torgmoll) with CEO named Yelena V.
| Maksimova, drags anchor in the seabed cutting cables. Chinese
| investigation claims storm was the reason, but there was no
| storm, just normal windy autumn weather. The ship just lowered
| one anchor and dragged it with engines running long time across
| the seabed until the anchor broke.
|
| These things happen sometimes, ship anchors sometimes damage
| cables, but not this often and without serious problems in the
| ship. Russians are attempting plausible deniability.
| spongebobstoes wrote:
| What are some concrete reasons why someone would want to damage
| these cables? Who benefits?
| Mistletoe wrote:
| It doesn't even really stop anything right? Communications
| just have to route around it and use other cables and
| satellites. It just seems like Russia wants to be annoying.
| Hamuko wrote:
| Destroying the gas pipeline between Estonia and Finland did
| take it out for like six months. I think it may have had
| some negative impact on Estonian electricity prices during
| that time.
| threeseed wrote:
| When Trump becomes President next year he is expected to
| demand that Ukraine settle the war with Russia or risk losing
| US aid and military support. It is why Russia is throwing
| everything at re-taking Kursk and US is now allowing long
| range strikes.
|
| If the EU decides to join the US the war is over and Russia
| will keep the occupied lands. If the EU decides to support
| Ukraine then because of the devastating sanctions there is a
| strong chance Russia loses.
|
| So it's in Russia's interest to make life as difficult as
| possible for Europe over the coming months in order to
| convince them that ending the war is in their best interest.
| paganel wrote:
| Russia will not stop taking its land in Kursk back because
| the Americans tell them to do so, this is just Western
| delusion, and, as I've said before on this forum, a
| complete misunderstanding coming from the Westerners on how
| Russia operates.
|
| > devastating sanctions
|
| Devastating for Europe, you mean.
| raverbashing wrote:
| Neither will Ukraine try to take their territory back as
| much as sycophants and dictator-appeasers think Ukraine
| have no agency
| suraci wrote:
| I'm very curious, can any European here, or perhaps a
| German for specificity, tell me whether they believe
| these sanctions have harmed Russia more than Europe?
|
| Also it would be better if any Russians here could answer
| a similar question
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| These consumer side sanctions are idiotic. When a Russian
| buys a European beer, he spends money which goes from
| Russia to Europe, and in addition he damages his health.
|
| On the other side, Europe buys billions of dollars of oil
| and gas from Russia. That money goes in the opposite
| direction, from Europe to Russia, and is used toward
| soldier salaries, Iran drones and North Korean
| mercenaries.
| viraptor wrote:
| Has this been a recent change? In 2023 NL announced
| they're not dependent on Russian energy anymore
| https://nltimes.nl/2023/02/10/netherlands-longer-
| dependent-r...
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| $1.7b in August 2024 + $2.3B exports to Turkey, much of
| which is just transshipment to Europe.
|
| https://energyandcleanair.org/august-2024-monthly-
| analysis-o...
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| Maybe true for the Netherlands, I apologize, I meant all
| of EU.
| brazzy wrote:
| German here. Yes, it seems pretty obvious these sanctions
| have harmed Russia more than Europe.
|
| Russia: inflation around 8-9%.
|
| EU: inflation around 2%.
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| That's not a result of sanction, simply Russia spends 40%
| of its budget on the war, and Europe spends nothing.
| suraci wrote:
| Thank you for the information. I believe that only those
| who are there can truly describe the situation there,
| beyond what I read in the media
|
| Recently, a professor I know wrote an article about his
| impressions of Russia and Germany when he attended
| meetings in both countries.
|
| Can you help to check what he said?
|
| > Macroeconomic data indicates that the European economy
| is not doing well, but the economic conditions I
| experienced during my days in Berlin could be described
| as depression. What surprised me the most was that there
| were not many people or cars on the streets of Berlin
| during the daytime on weekdays. Berlin in early October
| is not yet cold, but the desolate feeling on the streets
| does not match the image of the capital of Europe's
| largest economy. Europe's inflation, which started later
| than in the United States, has also clearly hurt the
| lives of the people, which was my perception from
| conversations with taxi drivers during my rides.
| suraci wrote:
| Also, here's the sections about Russia, hope any locals
| can help to check this
|
| > (In Vladivostok) War typically leads to a rise in
| prices. Several Russian sources have reported that
| compared to two and a half years ago, current prices have
| roughly doubled, and housing prices have also increased
| significantly. However, it is somewhat comforting that
| the wages of most people have also increased
| proportionally, so people's lives have not been greatly
| affected so far. The supply of goods on the market is
| still quite abundant. Due to financial sanctions from the
| US and Europe, as well as multinational corporations,
| many brands' products and services are no longer
| available in the Russian market. Nevertheless, this does
| not prevent Russian citizens from drinking cola or eating
| American fast food. It is said that these brands have
| localized, but the products remain essentially unchanged:
| for example, the taste of Russian cola is not
| significantly different from Coca-Cola, as they can
| purchase the concentrate from third countries and mix it
| themselves.
|
| > The official unemployment rate published by Russia is
| only 2%, and I believe this data is likely accurate. The
| reasons are not only because the war itself requires the
| hiring of a large number of young people, but also due to
| the wealth redistribution, increased consumption, and
| robust production that the war has brought about. Russia
| is a country with severe wealth disparity, where the
| lower classes traditionally lack money for consumption.
| This war has provided an opportunity for lower-income
| families to obtain cash flow: by sending their sons or
| husbands to the battlefield, families can receive a one-
| time subsidy of nearly 500,000 yuan. Even prisoners in
| jail can receive this benefit. This sum of money,
| equivalent to targeted transfer payments and proactive
| fiscal policies aimed at the poor, has given lower- and
| middle-income families a chance to gamble their lives for
| money. This has led to cases where some people join the
| military to escape punishment and receive subsidies,
| serve for a year, return home, and then reoffend and go
| to jail again, relying on a second enlistment to escape
| punishment and receive another subsidy.
|
| > The increased cash flow among the lower-income
| population has led to a surge in consumer demand, and the
| robust production of military goods has also stimulated
| employment, income, and consumption. While the products
| of military industry are indeed consumed on the
| battlefield, for the macroeconomy, what matters is the
| flow rather than the stock; production and consumption
| are meaningful in themselves. As for whether the produced
| goods are expended as shells and missiles on the
| battlefield or become paper wealth on the other side of
| the ocean as export commodities, there is no fundamental
| difference for the current macroeconomic operation.
|
| There are rumors circulating on Chinese self-media about
| how much the ruble has depreciated on the black market in
| Russia. I specifically went to restaurants and other
| consumer venues in Vladivostok to test for any
| significant difference between the official and black
| market exchange rates by using US dollars and Chinese
| yuan for payment. However, neither Russian-run nor
| Chinese-run restaurants offered discounts for payment in
| US dollars or Chinese yuan cash. This phenomenon is
| usually sufficient to debunk rumors about the Russian
| ruble black market.
|
| The current social mood in Russia is relatively stable,
| which may be due not only to a decent economic foundation
| but also to strict control over public opinion. According
| to our research feedback, even in private settings, if
| colleagues or neighbors make remarks against Putin or the
| war, and are reported, those who oppose the war or Putin
| may face legal troubles.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Did the source also mention that the low unemployment is
| in no small part due to the would-be workforce going to
| the frontlines, and also a huge initial wave of
| emigration to other countries among those privileged
| enough to own a passport.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| > the European economy
|
| Any time you see "European" used in an argument... run
| away. Europe is a continent. It is _huge_ and varied.
| There are 27 countries in the EU and further 23 more
| countries in the European continent. It is very, very
| hard to generalise about "Europe". Albania and Norway
| are both in Europe, and, yet, they could not be further
| apart in terms of human and economic development.
| brazzy wrote:
| Yes, inflation was pretty high in 22 and 23, that hurt a
| lot of people.
|
| But his claim of a "desolate feeling on the streets"
| being an indication of "economic conditions ... could be
| described as depression" read like badly written
| propaganda. There's nothing to be checked there, just
| some vague feelings. Berlin isn't as crowded as he
| expected, so the only explanation is that nobody can
| afford a car and half the population is sitting at home
| wallowing in misery due to economic depression? Really?
| rksbank wrote:
| The professor is correct.
| rksbank wrote:
| As a European, I can say that the sanctions did harm
| European economies, which is reflected in various
| political Eu government crises.
|
| It is hard to know how much Russia has been harmed,
| because both sides probably exaggerate the figures.
|
| I wonder whether "more harm" is the right question. The
| question should be whether the sanctions have any impact
| on Russia's war economy, which they do not. If anything,
| they make Russia more independent and strengthen Russian
| ties with China and India.
|
| This is all to the detriment of the EU, the only one here
| who profits is the U.S. by making the EU more dependent.
| sekai wrote:
| > It is hard to know how much Russia has been harmed,
| because both sides probably exaggerate the figures.
|
| > The question should be whether the sanctions have any
| impact on Russia's war economy, which they do not
|
| Ruble is below a single penny.
|
| Interest rates are at 21%, highest since 2003.
|
| Inflation is out of control.
|
| > they make Russia more independent and strengthen
| Russian ties with China and India.
|
| ah, so that's why Putin went to North Korea to beg for
| troops and ammunition?
| thalsand wrote:
| According to the IWF, 2024 inflation is 7.9% and GDP
| growth 3.6%:
|
| https://www.imf.org/en/Countries/RUS
|
| Germany has 2.4% inflation and 0% growth:
|
| https://www.imf.org/en/Countries/DEU
|
| I do not believe the German inflation numbers. Health
| care got 30% more expensive with more hikes coming, rents
| are exploding, groceries are 20% higher since 2022.
| chinathrow wrote:
| It would be so nice to not be dragged into this war by the
| aggressor. Russia is playing a very stupid game here.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Russia is playing a very stupid game here.
|
| They are not, if you take the larger context into account
| - and that is China and their saber rattling not just
| against Taiwan but also against everyone else in what
| China thinks is "their" influence sphere such as the
| Philippines.
|
| Russia's warmongering (not just in Ukraine, but also via
| Syria, Iran and Yemen!) is breaking apart both the US and
| EU internally - recent elections have shown that both
| populations are pretty much fed up with the wars and
| their consequences, and once enough countries either fall
| to Putin's 5th column outright or their governments pull
| a Chamberlain, China can be relatively certain no one
| will intervene too much when they decide that now is the
| best time to annex other countries.
| chinathrow wrote:
| Sure, but I am commenting from a non-military, non-
| geopolitics, non-strategy related background: It's a
| stupid game. Stupid in the sense of: I don't like it, I
| don't want to play it, thus it's stupid.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| Well the result of China's 5d chess has been to install a
| leader in the US that is likely to escalate a trade war
| with china when with an impending demographic crisis they
| most need someone to stop the trade war. Sheer genius!
| mschuster91 wrote:
| The problem with dictators of all kinds is that their
| personal concerns (say, appearing before the local
| populace as "the one who re-unified China") can and will
| trump over what makes sense for the country long-term.
|
| Of course that can and does also happen in democracies,
| but at least most reasonable democracies have some sort
| of "checks and balances" that at least prevents open war
| from breaking out.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| The world will be looking to China as a stable partner
| while the US voluntarily dismantles its economy and very
| possibly its political system.
|
| So yeah, the US absolutely got outplayed here.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| The us is currently one of the most stable economies, so
| there's a long way to go.
|
| I think it's unlikely that the world will pick an
| economic partner that:
|
| - builds 90% of the new coal fired plants while the rest
| of the world (including the US) is decarbonizing
|
| - has 280+% debt to GDP ratio
|
| - has capital controls on its currency (the real exchange
| rate could change suddenly at the drop of a hat)
| llamaimperative wrote:
| Well... that stuff will be easier to overlook when the US
| deploys its military to deport millions of people
| operating the most foundational portions of its economy
| like agriculture and construction.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| OK this is some sort of "America bad" fever dream. Listen
| America isn't perfect or anything, but you're basically
| looking down the barrel of crazy if you ignore the steel
| advantages that the US has, and the history and pattern
| of US recovery from crises
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > and the history and pattern of US recovery from crises
|
| Well at least in prior crises, the US had sensible
| leadership on both sides that was willing to put country
| before party.
|
| The 47th however? Not just the man himself but especially
| the cabinet picks are an utter joke. None of the
| currently known picks are known for any kind of
| competence or even experience in their respective fields,
| and there are ideas floating to have the Senate go into
| recess so the 47th can appoint them without the usual
| review process - astonishing in itself given that the
| Republicans control the full Congress, they shouldn't
| have to fear any of their candidates not getting past the
| Senate. What politics they want to follow is just as
| dangerous - Musk and DOGE slashing 2 trillion $ from
| government expenditure for example, large parts of the
| government will literally be unable to do their job
| (which is, among others, to handle crises).
| llamaimperative wrote:
| It isn't "America bad" at all! I believe America is the
| greatest country in the world, its economy is _clearly_
| second to none, and it 's clearly the best trading
| partner for the vast majorities of nations. I also
| believe America will almost certainly recover from
| whatever dark period it's (probably) about to endure.
|
| But I'm also well aware of the fact the US has gone
| through extremely dark periods and its past success is
| not a _promise_ of future success. At the end of the day
| a country very possibly plunged into Great Depression II
| and almost certainly with trade policy changing by the
| day is not a good trading partner.
|
| There is a very real possibility that we deport our way
| into a famine. The US economy _cannot possibly_ sustain
| the type of deportations that have been promised and are
| already being put into motion by the incoming
| administration.
| dark_glass wrote:
| This was also said about slavery and the economy
| prospered post-slavery. The US economy is absolutely
| sustainable by paying citizens legal wages. In fact, it
| is unsustainable to encourage illegal labor and
| immigration.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| I didn't say anything about long-term viability. I am
| talking about near-term shocks and then questioning how
| long a recovery would take. The south's economy was _in
| ruins_ post-Civil War and only revitalized through
| _immense_ subsidy, aid, and debt programs. Broadly
| speaking, the South was in deep, destitute poverty until
| the New Deal (that is more than _sixty years_ for anyone
| counting at home!).
|
| Obviously most of that devastation was from the war
| itself, but if every enslaved person in the country were
| shipped back to Africa (as many proposed at the time), it
| absolutely would've had deeply negative _near-term_
| consequences. To suggest otherwise is to suggest that
| economies don 't _actually_ depend on labor. Dismissible
| on its face! And to be explicit: those near-term
| consequences were morally necessary to bear anyway.
|
| > In fact, it is unsustainable to encourage illegal labor
| and immigration.
|
| Not sure what this is responding to, tbh
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > > In fact, it is unsustainable to encourage illegal
| labor and immigration.
|
| > Not sure what this is responding to, tbh
|
| I think this is related to this here:
|
| > The US economy is absolutely sustainable by paying
| citizens legal wages.
|
| They do have a point there - their argument (as I read
| it) is that the widespread use of undocumented/illegal
| labor and the exploitation of these laborers in
| agriculture has led to an economic gridlock situation:
| employers make big bucks by not paying their fair share
| in social security and taxes, fair employers have a hard
| time competing on price because the cost of fair, legal
| labor is too high, and they cannot raise prices to a
| sustainable level because the consumers have no money to
| pay for that because they themselves don't get paid
| fairly.
|
| The associated economic theory is commonly associated
| with the economic effects of minimum wage hikes - these
| lead (despite all the Corporate Whining) to economic
| growth because the lowest rungs of society, those
| actually living on minimum wage, go and immediately spend
| their additional money, similar to what happened with the
| Covid stimulus checks, while the upper levels of society
| hoard additional income and do not directly contribute to
| economic growth.
| tzs wrote:
| China is building new coal plants but the their
| utilization rate is going down and is expected to
| continue to go down because of all the solar, hydro, and
| nuclear plants they are building.
|
| As far as stability goes, the comment above you talked
| about a stable trading partner, not a stable economy.
| China is probably more stable as a trading partner than
| the US is. The US changes trade policy too often.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Ah yes, Trump famously hates china,
|
| How well did that trade war go last time he was in
| office? Trick question, farmers got fucked, and rational
| minds agree that _the US lost_.
|
| >Initiating steel and aluminium tariff actions in March
| 2018, Trump said "trade wars are good, and easy to
| win,"[54] but as the conflict continued to escalate
| through August 2019, Trump stated, "I never said China
| was going to be easy."
|
| It doesn't matter what you claim to want to do or who you
| claim to "hate" if your sheer incompetence prevents you
| from accomplishing your desire.
|
| Maybe putting a serial business failure in charge of a
| trade war isn't very effective?
|
| Biden didn't get rid of them, because it's basically
| impossible to unwind a trade war, and then put some more
| limitations on solar panels. I don't think there is a
| clear answer yet on Biden's addition to the trade war.
| Probably will be "meh".
|
| A trade war between the US and China is almost always
| going to be extremely negative sum. Both of our countries
| rely on each other for prosperity and nice shit.
| justin66 wrote:
| I wonder if anyone thinks this seems likely:
|
| American Secretary of Defense: "Mr. President, the
| Chinese just destroyed our Naval base in the Philippines,
| killing hundreds of US servicemen. As part of a plan to
| annex the country or something."
|
| American president: "Let's not intervene too much."
| mschuster91 wrote:
| I don't think the Chinese will attack _US_ infrastructure
| or vessels directly, they are not _that_ stupid - but
| they _did_ attack Philippine ships in what is widely
| recognized Philippine territory [1] or fish illegally in
| Philippine territory [2].
|
| The only response the entire West was able to give in
| years of Chinese transgressions were strong words, about
| as effective as "thoughts and prayers". China is a bully
| that escalates continuously (similar to Russia's behavior
| in Syria with the countless "red lines" that were
| crossed, eventually including chemical weapons) and needs
| to be brought to its knees _before_ they one day trigger
| WW3 by accident.
|
| [1] https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/chinese-
| coast-gua...
|
| [2] https://maritime-executive.com/article/philippine-
| official-a...
| bdndndndbve wrote:
| Putin and Xi's big advantage over the US is that American
| presidents get elected every 4 years. If they gradually
| encroach on their neighbors and make intervention
| unpopular in the US via propaganda they don't need to
| attack a US base.
| mindslight wrote:
| The other big issue is US adventurism in Iraq (and to a
| lesser extent Afghanistan) has made US citizens wary of
| _any_ international actions, no matter the details. It 's
| especially galling how many of the same people who were
| cheering on the direct military conquering of Iraq are
| now against supporting Ukraine at an arms length. "Can't
| get fooled again", indeed.
| justin66 wrote:
| > The other big issue is US adventurism in Iraq (and to a
| lesser extent Afghanistan) has made US citizens wary of
| any international actions, no matter the details.
|
| That this is not as big a deal as you think was the
| reason for my grandparent post. The "US citizens wary"
| thing can reverse itself the moment Americans are killed
| by a hostile adversary.
| jacknews wrote:
| Plausible.
|
| But alternatively, it is the outgoing Biden administration
| that do not want a freeze, and are escalating their
| involvement in the war, by giving permission to use their
| long-range missiles to attack inside Russia, in order to
| derail any potential 'agreement'.
|
| And they are now sewing the press with 'hybrid war' mania.
| I see news sites are now plastered with fearmongering
| stories about embassies being closed in Kyiv, that Ukraine
| front might collapse without aid, and so on and on. Note
| that none of it is actual Russian attacks or any actual
| events, just fear of them. It looks very much like a media
| campaign to me.
|
| edit: oh dear, a few people on HN really do not like this
| take, without offering any take-down, which just makes me
| think there's probably something to it.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Russia has been striking civilian targets throughout
| Ukraine with ballistic missiles since the beginning of
| the war.
|
| How is allowing Ukraine to use ATACMS on military targets
| in Russia an escalation?
| jacknews wrote:
| That's beside the point.
|
| It is a very clear escalation in US/European involvement.
| Ukraine were prohibited from using long-range western
| weapons to attack targets inside Russia up until now.
|
| I'm not saying if it's right or wrong.
|
| But it's a very clear escalation in western
| 'participation'. Russia have for a long time been saying
| that such action would be tantamount to a NATO attack,
| and so everyone involved surely understands that this is
| an escalation in the NATO-Russia face-off.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Russia have for a long time been saying that such
| action would be tantamount to a NATO attack
|
| They say this every time. When Obama sent non-lethal aid,
| they used the same line.
| jacknews wrote:
| none-the-less, it is a clear escalation ON THE
| INVOLVEMENT OF EUROPE AND THE US in the war.
|
| It is not that Ukraine are escalating the war by using
| long-range missiles. Of course Russia have been using
| them all along.
|
| But it is a clear escalation in western 'participation'
| in the war.
| soco wrote:
| So "finally replying to constant attacks" gets redefined
| by putin as escalation, no surprise here. Or is there any
| other argument I'm missing?
| valval wrote:
| Well the somewhat obvious thing you're missing is that
| Russia is waging a war against Ukraine, not the US or
| NATO.
|
| From that follows the logical conclusion that it's not
| the US' or NATO's job to "reply to constant attacks", and
| instead getting involved in the conflict is just that --
| waging war against Russia.
| mapt wrote:
| That is a very particular use of the term 'escalation'
| which is bound to mislead people.
|
| Normally, if we show up at the flagpole at noon to
| confront each other, and you throw a punch, you have
| escalated things to a fistfight, and then my return punch
| is not an escalation. If I pull a knife, I have escalated
| things to a knife fight. We escalate from fist to knife
| to gun. Reciprocation - self defense - does not count.
|
| The only way to _torture_ the term into contextual use is
| to suggest that Russia is not firing rockets at NATO
| because Ukraine is not NATO, but NATO is firing rockets
| at Russia because all these missile systems are not
| Ukrainian, but NATO. This is Putin 's framing, and it
| incorporates the idea that the missile systems are
| actually being manned but US & EU soldiers.
|
| If you are not adopting that frame, "escalation" only
| really works if you explicitly define the context as a
| Great Powers proxy war with a potential nuclear endpoint,
| where Ukraine is stipulated for the sake of argument to
| have no agency.
| sabbaticaldev wrote:
| Right. URSS putting nuclear missiles in Cuba was not an
| escalation then.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| I only learned about this a few years ago. Before the
| Cuban Missile Crisis (where Russia installed nuclear
| missiles in Cuba), the US installed nukes in Italy and
| Turkey. This made USSR very upset. Plus, the US was
| heavily meddling in Cuban domestic affairs. The first two
| paragraphs are very instructive here:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis
|
| My point: I think USSR (and Cuba) had a good reason to
| install those missiles. It wasn't an unprovoked action.
| tmnvix wrote:
| And as I understand it, part of the solution to the Cuban
| Missile Crisis involved the US quietly agreeing to
| abandon the placement of nukes in Turkey.
|
| There is _some_ analogy here for the Ukraine NATO
| situation.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Definitely! I think the obvious quid-pro-quo would be if
| Russia and Ukraine _both_ agree to stop targeting
| anything behind the current front lines.
|
| Arguably, this would even be in Russia's favor, given its
| manpower advantage. But Ukraine might agree to it to stop
| civilian terror and power infrastructure attacks.
| jacknews wrote:
| Ukraine is very clearly a proxy war between NATO and
| Russia, merely framed as a plucky country defending it's
| sovereignty, though it is that too, of course.
|
| With all the backlash here, I feel like some kind of
| radical, but here is a BBC article from 2 DAYS AGO that
| basically says what I'm saying:
| https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2nrlq1840o
|
| Although they miss out the bit about a media campaign,
| and so on, of course.
|
| This is the BBC, pretty much the mouthpiece of the UK
| government.
|
| And although they frame recent actions as trying to give
| Ukraine an advantage in any Trump negotiations with
| Russia, the truth is that these missiles will probably
| not advance Ukraine's military position, but will
| certainly change Europe and America's standing, possibly
| to the point of derailing any possibility of negotiation.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Your link backs up what people here are trying to get
| across to you:
|
| > Russia has set out "red lines" before. Some, including
| providing modern battle tanks and fighter jets to
| Ukraine, have since been crossed without triggering a
| direct war between Russia and Nato.
|
| This is the latest of a long list of small, slow,
| racheting-up responses to unilateral Russian aggression.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_lines_in_the_Russo-
| Ukraini...
| jacknews wrote:
| no.
|
| And no-one has been 'getting anything across to me',
| inferring that I'm 'not getting it'. They've been
| throwing incomplete or irrational arguments, like yours,
| or simply downvoting.
|
| Sure there have been 'red lines' by Russia, and the US
| has continuously pushed across them.
|
| But this one was also a US 'red line'. Consistent with
| keeping a proxy-war in-theater.
|
| Why have they crossed it, now?
|
| What do they hope it will achieve?
|
| Most likely very little militarily.
|
| But maybe quite a lot in shaping or constraining future
| US policy.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > But this one was also a US 'red line'. Consistent with
| keeping a proxy-war in-theater. Why have they crossed it,
| now?
|
| For the same reason they crossed all the others -
| continued Russian aggression.
|
| Each expansion of US aid or reduction in restrictions on
| how that aid is utilized has followed logically from
| Russian actions. Obama started with non-lethal aid; we've
| initially balked at every single step since that before
| eventually going "ok, now it's warranted".
|
| It's very clear the US is keeping responses small and
| incremental to take the wind out of Russian bluster about
| nuclear holocaust if they do _this_ one more little thing
| to piss Putin off. It 's also very clear the Russian "no
| don't send
| Javelins/HIMARS/Patriots/Abrams/MiGs/F-16s/ATACMS, we'll
| be very mad" has lost a lot of its potency.
| jacknews wrote:
| So what, would you say, triggered the US to cross their
| own red line, and a rather obvious principle of proxy
| warfare?
|
| And, backtracking, how aware have you been about the
| situation in Ukraine, or baltic sea infrastructure, in
| the past few months (even year), compared to the last
| week? Just a marginal increment, no doubt.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > So what, would you say, triggered the US to cross their
| own red line...
|
| I'd first reject the use of the term "red line" entirely
| for the ATACMS situation.
|
| "No, not ever" is a red line. The Russians love issuing
| these for other people, but it's embarassing when they're
| crossed without significant consequence.
|
| "No, not now" is not a red line. The US tends to shy away
| from issuing them - one of Obama's biggest mistakes was
| proclaiming one in Syria and then looking a bit feckless
| when they violated it.
| (https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/the-
| president-bli...)
|
| Letting Ukraine hit Russian territory with ATACMS is like
| the fourth or fifth expansion of how they're permitted to
| use that weapons system so far, as was giving them ATACMS
| in the first place after HIMARS (which saw a similar set
| of gradually reduced limitations;
| https://www.defensenews.com/land/2022/07/08/us-to-send-
| more-...).
|
| > And, backtracking, how aware have you been about the
| situation in Ukraine, or baltic sea infrastructure, in
| the past few months (even year), compared to the last
| week? Just a marginal increment, no doubt.
|
| I've closely followed the situation in Ukraine since
| Euromaidan.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| > _though [Ukraine] is [a plucky country defending it 's
| sovereignty] too, of course_
|
| No "too"
|
| It is _only_ that.
|
| If Russia retreated behind its internationally recognized
| borders and returned Crimea today, Ukraine would stop
| attacking it today.
|
| That tells you everything you need to know about who the
| aggressor _and_ escalator is in this conflict.
|
| Anything else is a Russian talking point in service to
| their trying to lose fewer troops while invading a
| neighboring country.
| aguaviva wrote:
| _Here is a BBC article from 2 DAYS AGO that basically
| says what I 'm saying_
|
| Which says nothing at all about the conflict being "a
| proxy war".
| jacknews wrote:
| nitpick.
|
| It exactly states that Biden might be stirring things up
| in anticipation of Trump sueing for a freeze.
| aguaviva wrote:
| Which still says nothing about the conflict being
| fundamentally a proxy war.
| honzabe wrote:
| > That is a very particular use of the term 'escalation'
| which is bound to mislead people.
|
| I am not the OP, but I think your interpretation is not
| as obvious as you make it to be. This often leads to
| misunderstandings.
|
| AFAIK military analysts use the term escalation as a
| morally neutral term. Escalation is anything that goes up
| on the 'scala' (= "ladder", the Latin root of the word).
| In this interpretation, D-Day would be an e_scala_tion
| (climbing up the ladder) simply because opening a new
| front means number_of_fronts_today >
| number_of_fronts_yesterday. In this interpretation, self-
| defense and escalation are not mutually exclusive.
|
| Apparently, the term changed meaning. Many people now
| treat it the way you do (if I understand you correctly)
| as something associated with aggression. Therefore, they
| assume that when someone labels something like an
| escalation, they mean it is an act of aggression,
| unjustified, something you should not be allowed to do,
| and not morally neutral.
|
| I am not saying you are wrong. I am just pointing out
| that when people talk about escalation, it is worth
| checking whether they mean the same escalation.
| mistercheph wrote:
| If a robber is holding an innocent at gunpoint and the
| innocent pulls out a gun and starts pointing it at the
| robber, has the situation escalated?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I mean, maybe. If the robber is using a replica firearm,
| the innocent may have successfully _deescalated_ the
| situation.
|
| The question in this thread is more along the lines of
| "if the robber shouts 'fighting back is a red line!',
| should we avoid fighting back?"
| mistercheph wrote:
| Whether or not the innocent should avoid fighting back
| and whether or not fighting back would result in an
| escalation are two separate questions
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Only sorta; they've heavily linked.
|
| The current war in Ukraine is a direct result of the
| international community not making much fuss when Russia,
| largely unopposed, took chunks of Moldova, Georgia, and
| Ukraine over the last few decades.
|
| As with appeasing Hitler, we prioritized short-term quiet
| for longer-term encouragement of aggression.
| Symbiote wrote:
| The USA, UK and France approving the use of the long-
| range missiles was described as a response to Russia
| using North Korean soldiers.
| jacknews wrote:
| A fair point, but described by who?
|
| And was this just a post-hoc justification, or had the
| western powers declared that they would retaliate if
| Russia involved other armies?
|
| In any case, surely the 'punishment' should be directed
| at North Korea?
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Why should it be directed at North Korea?
|
| North Korean troops are helping Russia invade Ukraine (by
| freeing up Russian garrison troops to participate in
| their offensive).
|
| Ergo, redress is something that helps Ukraine resist the
| military advantage North Korean involvement gives Russia
| -- e.g. being able to target Russian military targets
| supporting the invasion, in Russia.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > In any case, surely the 'punishment' should be directed
| at North Korea?
|
| The problem is at least as much Russia inviting NK as
| North Korea positively responding, aiding Ukraine works
| against all the belligerents aligned against it, NK as
| well as Russia, and the North Koreans in Russia are not
| protected by the Armistice the way North Koreans on the
| Korean peninsula are.
| no_exit wrote:
| North Korean soldiers that mysteriously have yet to
| materialize in a fashion that isn't blatant propaganda.
| preisschild wrote:
| > are escalating the war (they started, with the long-
| range missiles),
|
| Wrong. Using long range missiles is not an escalation.
| Russia has been using them against Ukrainian lands for
| years now. Why shouldn't Ukraine be allowed to use them
| against Russian land?
| jacknews wrote:
| No, you are wrong.
|
| Russia are at war with Ukraine, so they are bombing them.
| Ukraine have every right to reply with their own long
| range weapons too, and that would indeed not be an
| escalation in the fighting itself.
|
| But, the west clearly prohibited the use of their donated
| long range weapons in direct attacks on Russia, in order
| to limit their liability, responsibility, 'participation'
| or whatever, until now.
|
| Russia have been very clear that such permission would
| constitute an escalation OF WESTERN 'PARTICIPATION' in
| the war, and even be tantamount to a direct NATO attack,
| and so it is at least an escalation.
|
| Whether it is right or wrong is not the point, it is a
| clear change in the depth of western involvement.
| close04 wrote:
| > right to reply with their own
|
| This seems like an arbitrary line [0] drawn exactly where
| it suits your argument. How does having North Korean
| soldiers fighting for Russia stay on the right side of
| that line? What about any components that originated
| outside of Russia but are employed in Russian weaponry or
| equipment (for example chips)? The information war is a
| part of "the war", is an "official" non-Russian hacker or
| troll crossing the line? Or a non-Russian boat or crew
| employed for acts of sabotage.
|
| [0] It can be fair to draw an arbitrary line, at least
| you know it's straight and will intersect whatever is
| unfortunate to be in its way regardless of the side you
| prefer. But you're trying to draw tiny arbitrary circles
| around whatever you don't like and that's feeble.
| jacknews wrote:
| The line is clear, that western, or US-supplied long-
| range missiles should not be used to attack targets
| inside Russia, and it was drawn both by the US (fearing
| that they'd be 'drawn into the war') and by Russia who
| clearly stated this as a 'red line'. You can argue about
| the arbitrariness, but it was clearly understood on both
| sides.
|
| Ukraine is quite obviously not just a plucky country
| defending it's sovereignty (though it is that too), but
| the theater of a great-power proxy war.
|
| The rules of that game are that you keep the conflict
| within the theater, or risk a world war.
|
| That was already breached by Ukrainian incursions into
| Russia, armed to some extent with western weapons, but
| this is much more direct, and a clear escalation of US
| participation in the conflict.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > The rules of that game are that you keep the conflict
| within the theater, or risk a world war. That was already
| breached by Ukrainian incursions into Russia...
|
| In what insane alternate Marvel universe is Russia not
| part of the Russo-Ukrainian War theater?
| zdp7 wrote:
| The line isn't clear, because there is no line. These
| lines you keep bringing up are just gamesmanship. Nothing
| changes because any of them are crossed. The war was
| fully escalated when they invaded. Ukraine has every
| right to attack targets in Russia. Russia and everyone
| else is just posturing to hopefully extract advantages.
| Everybody is trying to figure out what they can get away
| with that doesn't negatively impact them. When Trump won
| the situation changed for the current administration. Do
| you believe Russia wouldn't use nukes if it would
| strengthen Russia? Do you believe Europe and the US
| wouldn't have immediately shut down the invasion if
| Russia wasn't a nuclear power.
| sekai wrote:
| > Russia have been very clear that such permission would
| constitute an escalation OF WESTERN 'PARTICIPATION' in
| the war, and even be tantamount to a direct NATO attack,
| and so it is at least an escalation.
|
| Since the war started, Russia has moved their red lines
| dozens of times. The "escalation" argument lost it's
| meaning.
| thaklea wrote:
| Public opinion is being manipulated hard, the U.S. just
| closed down its embassy in Kyiv:
|
| https://www.newsweek.com/russia-ukraine-war-latest-us-
| shuts-...
|
| The current U.S. administration wants to make the most
| out of the remaining 60 days. Perhaps they have a little
| help:
|
| https://www.wired.com/story/inside-the-77th-brigade-
| britains...
| ssijak wrote:
| "If the EU decides to support Ukraine then because of the
| devastating sanctions there is a strong chance Russia
| loses."
|
| How did that not work then yet?
| justin66 wrote:
| They question you're really asking is "why is the war
| taking so long?"
|
| Because it's a war.
| sabbaticaldev wrote:
| look, if someone looks like they are losing a war in the
| beginning, middle and the end act of it, I wouldn't have
| much faith that extending it is the best solution to
| finally win.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| Tautological
|
| The Nazis were mopping the floor with Europe until they
| weren't. The Japanese were conquering Asia until they
| weren't.
| lukan wrote:
| But obligatory reminder, that back then there were no
| nukes. So it is not exactly the same situation.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Neither is now the situation exactly that having nukes,
| means you can tell everyone to back down and do exactly
| as you say _or else_.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| Eh, MAD brings us back to equilibrium. It's a
| significantly more dangerous equilibrium, for sure, but
| we should be _much_ more afraid of a nuclear _accident_
| (not reactor meltdowns but accidental weapon launch) than
| of purposeful use of a nuclear weapon.
| lukan wrote:
| Well, the result is the same, no? If one rocket flies,
| chances are, they will all fly.
| lpcvoid wrote:
| Russia will not use nukes. If you believe they will, then
| they have you exactly where they want you to be.
| lukan wrote:
| So how do you know that?
|
| Why wouldn't russia use a tactical nuke in west Ukraine
| to destroy tank factories? They already are a
| international Pariah, that is why they align with North
| Korea.
|
| The only answer is - to remain the last standing they
| have. But at some point, they might not care. It is
| dangerous to put someone with nukes in a desperate
| position. Putin would not survive retreating from Ukraine
| - he would be in a desperate position if the odds of war
| are against him - currently they ain't.
| aguaviva wrote:
| _Why wouldn 't russia use a tactical nuke in west Ukraine
| to destroy tank factories?_
|
| Because the Biden administration communicated to its
| regime (in late 2022) that this would definitely trigger
| a massive kinetic response. In particular it indicated
| that its ground forces in Ukraine would be utterly
| destroyed (as Putin knows it is very much capable of
| doing).
| lukan wrote:
| Talking and doing are not the same thing. Geopolitics is
| like Poker, who is bluffing and who is calling it. You
| are saying only Putin is bluffing - well, I do read
| russian military blogs/telegram chats. Spoiler: they also
| think Biden is bluffing.
|
| Don't you see, how this can turn out wrong?
| aguaviva wrote:
| Anything can happen, and people say all sorts of stuff
| online.
|
| But from the fact that the warning was expresed
| _privately_ , and using carefully chosen language (unlike
| Putin's warnings, which are generally aimed at the public
| sphere, and are full of bluster) -- and considering,
| again, that the US is fully capable of carrying through
| with its promise in this regard -- it seems likely the
| message was received as intended.
|
| Could still go wrong, but the likelihood of things going
| wrong by not promising any sufficiently serious
| consequences at all to Russia's regime if it actually
| deploys nukes seems to be (unequivocally) far greater.
| lukan wrote:
| If the warning would have been really private, you would
| not know about it. Since you know about it - it was
| apparently rather a public statement as well. We both
| don't know about the real backroom deals and what exact
| words are used there. What are the real red lines that
| are communicated behind the curtains - most of those
| statements are just show. Part of the game. I am pretty
| sure, that Putin would like to remain in power and not
| radiated. But I would not bet on it. There are rumors he
| is sick - and sacrifice and suffering is somehow part of
| the russian mentality.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| The threat is public so people like you can go and sow
| fear because Russia itself has been revealed as a paper
| tiger. Kleptocracy can only take a modern civilization so
| far.
| lukan wrote:
| "because Russia itself has been revealed as a paper
| tiger."
|
| I see, you have personally checked the russian nukes and
| found they are all worthless? Or have access to top
| secret informations confirming that?
|
| Otherwise it seems a bit out of this world, to claim the
| country with the most nukes on earth is a paper tiger.
|
| And the russian conventional military is far from a paper
| tiger as well. That tale comes from the fantasy, that
| Ukraine is facing russia alone. But the whole NATO is
| supporting it. Without NATOs weapons and money, Ukraine
| would have been russian since over 2 years.
|
| But yes, I do have fear. But more from people like you,
| who look at reality in a way, that fits their ideology.
|
| Just assume for a moment, you are wrong. What would
| happen as a result, if the people in command would think
| like you?
| meiraleal wrote:
| The nazis won many wars even tho they lost the big one.
| Will NATO win against Russia? Who knows. But in the
| showdown NATO/Ukraine vs Russia, they lost.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| "NATO/Ukraine"? I am literally giggling at the absurdity
| :D Get a grip.
|
| _Russia_ is getting bombed every day and doesn't even
| hold all of its initial territory. It is not clear who
| will win this.
|
| It is extremely obvious that Russia would be crushed
| within days by a confrontation with NATO (but this
| conflict almost certainly wouldn't materialize due to
| nuclear weapons).
| justin66 wrote:
| > It is extremely obvious that Russia would be crushed
| within days by a confrontation with NATO (but this
| conflict almost certainly wouldn't materialize due to
| nuclear weapons).
|
| It's interesting the extent to which people haven't
| internalized this. Russia's industry has really ramped up
| on military production in the past two years, and their
| military will eventually get to the point where it can
| cause tremendous damage against a poorly-equipped
| Ukraine, through attrition. But the invasion revealed how
| far behind they are technologically, and a combined NATO
| force would turn off their entire military's command and
| control on day one of a real conflict.
|
| It's an inversion of the situation forty or fifty years
| ago, when Europe had to rely on the the nuclear threat
| because the Russian conventional forces were considered
| to be overwhelming.
| misja111 wrote:
| I think he is asking how well the devastating sanctions
| have been working so far. Which is a retorical question
| of course, because obviously they haven't harmed Russia
| all that much. Actually, they are hurting the EU as well
| because of the risen energy prices.
| sekai wrote:
| > haven't harmed Russia all that much
|
| Ruble is below a single penny.
|
| Interest rates are at 21%, highest since 2003.
|
| Inflation is out of control.
|
| Not really all that rosy.
| diggan wrote:
| > If the EU decides to join the US the war is over and
| Russia will keep the occupied lands.
|
| As a European, I'd say there is just about 0 chance of the
| EU unilaterally supporting Russian taken any occupied areas
| to themselves and Ukraine surrendering. Not only would it
| signal to Russia that they can take European land without
| consequences, but public opinion is very much against any
| sort of cessation of defenses. In my ~30 years I've never
| seen as strong NATO support from the common man in
| countries like Sweden and Spain as there is today.
| bananapub wrote:
| > As a European, I'd say there is just about 0 chance of
| the EU unilaterally supporting Russian taken any occupied
| areas to themselves
|
| I agree, but it's not about accepting or saying it's a
| good idea, it's about whether European countries can
| replace the US support enough that Ukraine can reasonably
| keep defending themselves.
| diggan wrote:
| I don't know if EU would be able to match the current
| support the US gives to Ukraine (maybe it already does?
| Or maybe it exceeds? I don't know either way) but what
| I'm sure off is that Europe won't stop trying even if it
| wouldn't be enough.
| sabbaticaldev wrote:
| how sure are you? I think the economic struggles + losing
| US support would make every incumbent leader lose their
| jobs until UE is full of Trump supporters
| diggan wrote:
| Fairly confident, at least for the countries I frequent
| and have friends in. As an example, public opinion of
| NATO in Sweden was really negative up until ~2013 (Crimea
| occupation) where it kind of was equally
| positive/negative and then fast forward to today where
| it's at 64% positive. https://www.gu.se/en/news/opinion-
| on-nato-record-shift-betwe...
|
| Being a Swede myself, and knowing how apathetic Swedish
| people are about basically anything, something having
| that large of support is pretty uncommon and signal a
| strong will to make NATO and EU defenses stronger, if
| anything.
|
| Even people I know who been historically anti-"anything
| military" in the country have quickly turned into "We
| need to defend our Nordic brothers and sisters against
| the Russians" which kind of took me by surprise.
|
| > UE is full of Trump supporters
|
| That won't ever happen. Even right-wingers (Europe right,
| not US right) are laughing at Trump and the Republicans.
| adriand wrote:
| If you add up all the aid from the US and compare it to
| aid from the EU plus European nations, I think the share
| of contributions is roughly equal. But if that's right
| (and I did the math in my head while scrolling a huge
| spreadsheet on my phone), then the loss of support from
| the US is significant. The US ability to produce
| armaments is also unparalleled in the West, so a loss of
| that supply is also a huge issue. Then you have the loss
| of the US as a military backer which may free Putin to be
| more aggressive - dirty bombs, tactical nukes, blowing up
| a nuclear reactor, assassinating Ukrainian leadership,
| who knows what. It's a huge problem for Ukraine if they
| lose the US. But will they? It's hard to know for
| certain.
| diggan wrote:
| Thanks a lot for doing that, even thought kind of ad-hoc
| :) Some data for guesses is better than none!
|
| I'm guessing that if US pulls their support, EU will try
| to add as much to cover up for it as humanly possible, as
| most compatriots see Ukraine as the frontline of
| something that can grow much, much bigger which because
| of remembering history, we'd obviously like to avoid.
| bluGill wrote:
| Europe is great at producing armaments as well - but
| there are a lot of useful armaments that are only
| produced in the US. If you had to choose either EU or US
| support, the US is the better option as they can give you
| things that the EU cannot even though the EU has more
| people than the US and a good economy.
|
| The Patriot system is one the of best examples. EU
| doesn't really have anything in this space, but Ukraine
| needs more of it yesterday.
| diggan wrote:
| > The Patriot system is one the of best examples. EU
| doesn't really have anything in this space, but Ukraine
| needs more of it yesterday.
|
| Are you talking about SAM capabilities or something else?
| Because there are plenty of SAMs produced by European
| countries; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_surface-
| to-air_missile...
| bluGill wrote:
| The full setup for missile defense. This includes radar,
| computers and so on.
| apelapan wrote:
| The European system often contain some American
| components. Perhaps the French a bit less so.
|
| This has turned out to be a major problem, as the US has
| used their re-export restrictions on components to block
| very significant parts of planned European military aid
| to Ukraine.
|
| I speculate that there will be (already is) some
| extremely heavy investments in military tech R&D to
| remove/reduce dependence on American components going
| forward. As a continent, we can't have our hands tied
| like this in future conflicts.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| > it's about whether European countries can replace the
| US support enough that Ukraine can reasonably keep
| defending themselves.
|
| Your economy is nearly 10 times the size of Russia.
|
| If Russia can continue, then you can almost 10 times more
| easily.
|
| It's not a "can" issue. It's a "are you willing to do
| more than absolute minimum?" issue.
| danielovichdk wrote:
| Would be an economical win for Europe if the US drew their
| aid. The amount of money needed to be spent in military aid
| across Europe would create markets within the region that
| would in the longer run create good wealth.
|
| Alone from that reason, USA will not pull their aid. USA
| cannot afford losing Europe as an arms client
| pvaldes wrote:
| > So it's in Russia's interest to make life as difficult as
| possible for Europe over the coming months
|
| Unsurprisingly this week after Macron speech, "French"
| farmers decided to organize again on groups directed by
| leaders and block and destroy Spanish cargo trucks at the
| frontier, without any policemen to be found at place.
|
| Is obvious that somebody is trying again the old trick to
| confront and divide in the EU. We had seen the same before
| in Poland, etc.
|
| But a trick overused can became counterproductive. I'm sure
| that Macron and other in EU can sum deux and deux and
| understand that surrender is not an option anymore. Is not
| just Ukraine but also their own political survival what is
| at stake. If they let this agents roam free and grow, they
| will lose gradually the power.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| Assuming it was intentional, just trying the waters. Testing
| what the response is, who actually responds versus who's
| willing to sweep the incident under the carpet, how hard any
| response is and how quickly it happens, how much of the
| internet infrastructure is affected for how long, etc...
| etc... that's a lot of useful information as preparation for
| an actual attack.
| eric-hu wrote:
| This is really interesting how you've explained it.
|
| In many professional fights the competitors start matches
| with light, quick jabs to probe their opponents defense.
|
| This feels just like that now that you put it this way. I
| never connected those dots though.
| diggan wrote:
| Maybe it's because I'm Swedish and we've experienced
| Russia's "probing defenses" tactic for a very long time
| (mainly "breaking" into Swedish airspace with airplanes,
| and discovering submarines at the Swedish shores), but I
| always thought this was common knowledge, always
| interesting to learn it isn't for everyone :)
| lifestyleguru wrote:
| The situation escalated beyond probing, this is tit for
| tat response for Ukraine getting and launching US
| tactical missiles. Russia seems to be now aggressively
| monitoring and raiding the submarine pipes and cables.
| Blowing up of Nord Stream made Russia go ballistic.
| diggan wrote:
| > The situation escalated beyond probing
|
| Not sure we understand "probing" differently. Russian
| currently is at the edges, testing the responses from
| things like cutting cables and otherwise interfering with
| the infrastructure. This is what "probing" means for me.
| "Beyond probing" would be actually launching attacks one
| way or another, which we haven't seen yet (except of
| course, for the Ukraine invasion).
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _" Beyond probing" would be actually launching attacks
| one way or another, which we haven't seen yet_
|
| he's saying "this was not a probe, this was an actually
| launched attack"
| euroderf wrote:
| A next step for them might be to disable/poison something
| like an entire urban water distribution system. But come
| to think of it, the US et al. might be able to do the
| same back to Russia. Because, you see, there is a whole
| 'nother ladder of escalation to explore.
|
| A submarine cable is an attractive target for Russia
| because Russia doesn't have cables of their own exposed:
| Russia is a continental power, not a maritime alliance. A
| cable attack is an asymmetric attack, difficult to
| respond to appropriately.
| mongol wrote:
| I recently saw a cable from St Petersburg to Kaliningrad
| at one of these maps.
| jajko wrote:
| It would be a shame if somebody dragged a massive ship
| anchor over it by accident. Through potato field.
| Terr_ wrote:
| Again? [0]
|
| > The 1,000 kilometre (620 miles) Baltika cable belonging
| to state-owned Rostelecom runs from the region of St.
| Petersburg to the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad on the
| southern Baltic Sea.
|
| > A gas pipeline linking Finland and Estonia and two
| other telecoms cables, connecting Estonia to Finland and
| Sweden, were also damaged last month. Finnish police
| believe damage to the Baltic connector gas pipeline was
| caused by a Chinese container ship dragging its anchor
| along the seabed but have not concluded whether this was
| an accident or a deliberate act.
|
| > The Finnish coast guard said the Russian outage may be
| linked to the previously reported damage.
|
| [0] https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/finland-says-
| russian-ba...
| onlypassingthru wrote:
| > actually launching attacks one way or another, which we
| haven't seen yet
|
| On the contrary. The attacks have been ongoing for years
| now. You're looking for the tanks and missiles when the
| attack is actually happening right under your feet. Rot
| and corruption are more powerful than any bullets or
| missiles.
| lifestyleguru wrote:
| > Rot and corruption are more powerful than any bullets
| or missiles.
|
| The developed world knows this even better. Offering
| yachts, real estate, supercars, prostitutes, and other
| luxuries to oligarchs. Thanks to this their military is
| rather in shambles right now.
| Terr_ wrote:
| ... Wow, this must be peak Kremlin shilling: Blaming
| _other countries_ for Russia 's decades of kleptocratic
| leadership and endemic corruption at all levels.
|
| It's historically, financially, and strategically
| incoherent. Trying to bribe people who are already rich
| with hard-to-hide things, just to make them _extra_
| -corrupt in the vague hope that it _somehow_ results in
| pilfered AK-47s being sold on the black market?
|
| Sorry, but no: Being shaken down by Russian traffic cops
| for bribes every week is a domestic problem.
| onlypassingthru wrote:
| Does it? You think Russia can't corrupt a German
| Chancellor or a US President? Boy have I got news for
| you!
| llamaimperative wrote:
| No, decades of rampant kleptocracy and alcoholism made
| Russia go ballistic
| snapcaster wrote:
| so i guess you've got russia all figured out. what's your
| excuse for the staggering amounts of violence and
| invasions from americans?
| llamaimperative wrote:
| A savior complex that's sometimes misled, sometimes
| absolutely warranted.
| WalterSear wrote:
| Decades? I suppose that 40 decades is still decades.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vK7l55ZOVIc
| drtgh wrote:
| > Blowing up of Nord Stream made Russia go ballistic
|
| Russia started invading Ukraine six months before Nord
| Stream blow up. Previously Russia invaded Crimea in 2014.
|
| The next invaded country, will be also an escalation?
|
| All of this is about a few psychopaths filling their
| pockets with the money that generates the corpses of
| their criminal business, some encouraging the production
| of war, others encouraging the waging of war.
|
| Why are these psychopaths and their "business" not
| prosecuted?
| Numerlor wrote:
| Because their prosecution means going to war. I don't
| know about you but as someone living less than 30 minutes
| from Ukraine I don't want my country to go to war.
| wbl wrote:
| Si vis pacem, para bellum.
| dgfitz wrote:
| > If you want peace, prepare for war
| jyounker wrote:
| If Ukraine falls, the war is coming whether we like it or
| not.
| mediaman wrote:
| Who are you referring to? Putin and Russian oligarchs? If
| so, how would you imagine the mechanics of prosecuting
| them to work?
| lifestyleguru wrote:
| German political and industrial elite with their former
| chancellor are within the reach of Western jurisdiction.
| They were smirking at Trump when he was exactly pointing
| out their dependency on Russian gas so.... who knows...
| Gud wrote:
| Not just Russian. Even NATO aircraft were rejected
| frequently, though not anymore for obvious reasons.
|
| https://youtu.be/Z_EnkvE6LZA
| eric-hu wrote:
| I lived in Taiwan for a while and China does this to
| Taiwan often. Flying planes into Taiwan's air defense
| identification zone, sailing warships through the strait.
| It's portrayed in (US, TW) media as war preparations, but
| some locals assume it's all bark with no bite. How are
| those Russian actions portrayed in Swedish media?
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >This feels just like that now that you put it this way.
| I never connected those dots though.
|
| Boxers learned from the art of war, not the other way
| around.
|
| "Probing attacks" are a standard doctrine. It's not
| always a clear signal of intent to increase hostilities
| because it's also just useful as an intelligence
| gathering exercise.
| viraptor wrote:
| That's very similar to how the "accidental" flights over
| neighbouring territory works as far as I understand. This
| happens regularly between many countries. Just far enough
| to get some response, but not enough to get shot down
| immediately.
| diggan wrote:
| > This happens regularly between many countries.
|
| I cannot find any lists (either in English or Swedish)
| but I remember Russia has been accidentally breaking into
| Swedish airspace like once a year for as long as I can
| remember. Submarines also sometimes "accidentally" end up
| close to Swedish shores.
|
| It'd be interesting to see some total numbers, and
| compare other countries with how often it happens between
| Sweden/Russia.
| pantalaimon wrote:
| > but not enough to get shot down
|
| Doesn't always work
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Russian_Sukhoi_Su-24_s
| hoo...
| krisbolton wrote:
| While not directly addressing undersea cable sabotage this is
| a comprehensive open access article with case studies on
| 'hybrid warfare' which provides context to these types of
| actions. 'Shadows of power beneath the threshold: where
| covert action, organized crime and irregular warfare
| converge' - https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0268
| 4527.2024.2...
| lifestyleguru wrote:
| This is basically Russian retaliation for US providing
| Ukraine with ATACMS and first Ukrainian attack using ATACMS.
| tauntz wrote:
| The "retaliation" against US is to disrupt communications
| between.. Finland and Germany?
|
| Applying the same logic, Ukraine should retaliate against
| Russia for bombing their hospitals with an attack on..
| Iranian civilian infrastructure? Did I get that right?
| lifestyleguru wrote:
| Russia is fighting "Western fascists" and NATO. Don't try
| to understand this.
| aguaviva wrote:
| Russia's regime _pretends_ to be fighting those entities.
| It 's real enemy is simply independent Ukraine with its
| currently recognized borders.
|
| This is entirely straighforward. Nothing that requires
| any struggle to understand.
| benterix wrote:
| The ship was sailing from Russia and the captain is Russian.
| Using a Chinese ship is a good trick from Putin.
|
| As for the core of your question: there is no benefit, it's
| just his mentality. "The West" supports Ukraine so let's just
| do some harm, retaliate in some way. Burn some buildings here
| and there, plants some inflammable materials on airplanes
| etc. Pointless for you and me, meaningful for that guy.
| viraptor wrote:
| Does "Chinese ship" really mean anything here? As far as I
| understand the ship official registration is a very vague
| concept https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_convenience
| emmelaich wrote:
| and according this tweet https://x.com/erikkannike/status
| /1858883945607094541/history
|
| " _So - according to Russian federal port records, the
| Chinese ship suspected of cutting the communications
| cables in the Baltic Sea was captained by a Russian
| citizen (one Stechentsev A.E.). Interestingly Yui Peng 3
| was only transferred to its current owner in China
| earlier this month.
|
| The ship is carrying goods/oil from Ust-Luga in Russia,
| to Port Said in Egypt. Same captain also comandeered
| URSUS ARCTOS also carrying goods from Ust-Luga to Egypt.
| Mapped using @SensusQ . _"
| bluGill wrote:
| Hard to say. They will claim this is only Flag of
| convenience as they are caught. However China still has
| the opportunity to say that this is something for their
| law enforcement to take care of not international, and
| then give the captain "a slap on the wrist".
|
| What we don't know is if China knew they were going to
| try this beforehand or not. Flag of Convenience is common
| enough that we can't be sure. This could have been
| planned on the high level from China and we would never
| know - something conspiracy theorists will run with! If
| China knew they would probably give the crew a sever
| punishment, but unofficially it is for getting caught and
| not doing the act. Most likely though China didn't know
| before hand.
| aguaviva wrote:
| Tit-for-tat response to the NS2 bombing.
|
| Assuming it bears out that the Russian state is the
| perpetrator.
| nabla9 wrote:
| Russia wants to end NATO without going to war with NATO.
|
| NATO's political unity and ability to respond is tested with
| these attacks. Russia does them one after another gradually
| escalating. Russia maintains plausible deniability or does so
| small operations that they can always walk them back.
|
| Eventually, some country invokes Article 4 or 5
| consultations. Russia hopes that US, Hungary, or Germany
| waters down NATO response. The conflict continues, but
| between individual countries not under NATO. NATOs as a
| organization may continue, but raison d'etre is gone.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Russia and these NATO countries being probed are like the
| two siblings in the back seat. Mom, he's touching me. Stop
| touching your brother. Mom, he's holding his finger right
| next to me. Dad eventually says, don't make me pull this
| car over and start a global thermonuclear war
| callc wrote:
| Humorous yet concerning that our governments act like
| children.
| wbl wrote:
| Except its always Russia instigating. We never sent
| someone to look at the spire of Saint Basil (the pathetic
| excuse offered for explaining the presence of GRU
| officers in Salisbury carrying out chemical warfare), or
| really struck at their weak points.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Are you actually saying the US has never engaged in
| propaganda within another country or attempted to
| influence the outcomes of their elections or influence
| their populace to rise up against their leaders?
|
| You cannot be serious with that kind of belief
| wbl wrote:
| But of a jump from that to spraying poison all over the
| place.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Not really sure what you're referring. The US has most
| definitely sprayed poison all over the place in South
| America with cocoa plant eradication efforts. Or Agent
| Orange in South East Asia.
|
| If you mean poison as in disinformation, then you'd be
| wrong there as well. We literally "bombed" Iraq with
| pamphlets from airplanes encouraging them to rise up
| against Suddam and we'd be there to support them; we
| didn't.
| Sabinus wrote:
| No, the GP means literal poison. Neurotoxin,
| specifically.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Sergei_and_Yul
| ia_...
| exceptione wrote:
| Not quite. Be careful, Russia invests a lot in
| disinformation campaigns and spreading (conflicting, but
| that is part of their doctrine) narratives. Bothsidisms
| and False Equivalency are some of the common tools in
| muddying the information sphere.
|
| NATO and Europe did quite a lot to normalize relations
| with Russia. Russia was invited and became participant of
| the NATO program Partnership For Peace [0].
| The program contains 6 areas of cooperation, which aims
| to build relationships with partners through military-to-
| military cooperation on training, exercises, disaster
| planning and response, science and environmental issues,
| professionalization, policy planning, and relations with
| civilian government
|
| Very nice, but the secret services that took over the
| empire did and does not fancy a rule-based, harmonious
| order based on mutual relations, human rights, freedom of
| press etc. As any autocracy or kleptocracy understands,
| that is very much a threat to their power, beacuse
| - Population will demand political influence.
| - Mindset. A criminal thinks in terms of I win, you lose.
| Might makes right. Complete opposite of what makes up the
| dna of the free world.
|
| The imperative is on us to understand that message really
| well. It goes slowly unfortunately. It is hard for us to
| grok.
|
| Notice how on our part, helped via tech oligarchs, there
| is an incessant bombardment to undermine support for
| those values. Kremlin troll factories are a thing, but
| the Chinese are speading up rapidly in the information
| sphere too. Especially youngsters are targeted.
|
| The war has already begun, but we don't want to see it.
| And _that_ is dangerous.
|
| ___
|
| 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partnership_for_Peace
| trehnert wrote:
| These anti disinformation posts are quite peculiar. I'd
| advise anyone who wants to dig deeper to listen to West
| Point graduate Mearsheimer:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4
|
| It takes one hour to listen. Take notes and verify the
| facts afterwards. No disinformation there, much less
| Russian.
| exceptione wrote:
| Mearsheimer has been debunked many a times and his theory
| just doesn't hold up with reality. I am not going to
| debunk it, because I will repeat what other really
| respectable people have said about the subject.
|
| Just one rebuttal, but there are many more to be found on
| the internet.
|
| https://euideas.eui.eu/2022/07/11/john-mearsheimers-
| lecture-...
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| Mearsheimer, who bases his theory on 'Putin never lies'.
| Sorry if that's your starting point then you're just
| promoting fantasy.
| mistermann wrote:
| > Be careful, Russia invests a lot in disinformation
| campaigns and spreading (conflicting, but that is part of
| their doctrine) narratives.
|
| You may also want to be careful (or not):
|
| - all countries engage in these things
|
| - how things are seem like how they seem, but this is
| very often not the case...and rather than consciousness
| raising warnings for such situations, it very often does
| the opposite
|
| As always, I recommend a meta-perspective on geopolitical
| stories, it is much more fun than being a Normative,
| poorly constrained imagination actor like the vast
| majority of people.
| coupdejarnac wrote:
| > - all countries engage in these things
|
| And thus the disinformation campaign has succeeded, as
| you've turned off your brain and refused to address the
| threat.
| exceptione wrote:
| I certainly welcome critical thinking. How GOP got of the
| rails with the adventures of Bush Jr (War on Terror) is
| worthy of deep analysis. Backed by Russia, which might
| give you a pause.
|
| Geopolitical affairs are indeed difficult to follow. It
| requires deep internal domain(s!) knowledge, which does
| not fit your average corporate media business model. The
| niche outlets that do have a capable editorial board are
| threatened by takeovers [1, 2] from the likes of Axel
| Springer [3]. 1 Billion USD for Politico. An idiotic sum
| for a buyer that small, Wikipedia might pique your
| interest [3]. That is not to say that Politico is useless
| now, but you can count on journalistic degradation over
| time.
|
| But sweeping statements are not of help to get a sharper
| picture. Instead they risk promoting false equivalence
| and may turn participants(!) of democracies into passive
| nihilists. Which is precisely the aim of the foreign
| influence we are talking about.
|
| ___
|
| 1. https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/01/06/axel-springer-
| politico-...
|
| 2. https://countercurrents.org/2021/09/a-right-wing-
| german-news...
|
| 3.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axel_Springer_SE#Criticism
| Salgat wrote:
| This is strange to me because this is basically forcing
| drills that better prepare their enemy.
| michaelt wrote:
| Sound the fire alarm over a birthday cake candle once,
| and you've got a drill making people get better at
| evacuating.
|
| Sound the fire alarm over a birthday cake candle several
| times a week, and people learn the alarm means there's no
| fire, no need to rush, they've got time to finish that
| e-mail and grab their coat.
| kube-system wrote:
| If you never go to war with your enemy, your enemy's
| continued preparations are wasted money and resources
| (both political and economic), aren't they?
| huijzer wrote:
| Prof. Stephen Kotkin -- an historian who wrote multiple
| extensive biographies on Stalin -- calls the Russian regime a
| "gangster regime".*
|
| Once you see them as gangsters, it's not difficult to see why
| they would do this.
|
| *A full link with exact timestamp of Kotkin saying this is
| [1]. Here he talks about why Merkel kept making oil deals
| with Putin even though in hindsight this was probably not the
| best idea. Kotkin argues that, yes, according to econ 101
| trade is good for both parties, but not when the opposite
| party is a gangster. Merkel thought that Putin was thinking
| like her, but he wasn't.
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/live/jJSDdCPpbto?t=4410
| mopsi wrote:
| It should be noted that Putin was personally an enforcer
| for St Petersburg's mayor Anatoly Sobchak[1] in the early
| 1990s, and his "circle of friends" from that time now mans
| key positions of the entire government. For example, Viktor
| Zolotov[2], Sobchak's bodyguard and Putin's judo partner,
| is now in charge of National Guard, despite not having
| qualifications for the job.
|
| Russia is literally run buy thugs who ran protection
| rackets not so long ago. So there's much more to this than
| just a fitting figure of speech. Someone from the worst
| parts of LA would be better equipped to understand and deal
| with such people than those who spent their teens and early
| adulthood playing Model UN at a foreign relations club.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatoly_Sobchak
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Zolotov
| euroderf wrote:
| One theme of cyberpunk is that Russia remains a gangster
| regime in the future. William Gibson's "Kombinat".
| mmooss wrote:
| Look up 'Grey Zone Conflict': Destroying another country's
| assets is generally an act of war, but obviously this
| incident falls short of causing a war. That is the 'grey
| zone', a prominent feature of current international relations
| and a major focus of the defense of the democratic world and
| international order, including in the US military.
|
| The international order is often called the 'US-led rules-
| based interntional order'. Russia, China, and some others
| dislike the first element, of course. The second element
| refers to the legal, rules-based structure (rather than
| power-based anarchy, which led to the centuries or millennia
| of war before the 'order' was created post-WWII). Aggressive
| international warfare is outlawed, for example; if France and
| Germany have a dispute, there is no question of violence -
| they use a legal structure to resolve it, which wasn't always
| true!
|
| Grey zone activities accomplish illegal things without
| reprocussions. And therefore they also serve the goal of
| undermining the international order by demonstrating its
| powerlessness in these situations. In some ways, it's like
| trolling.
|
| Russia uses grey zone tactics heavily - for example, they
| used them to capture Crimea (which was before the clear act
| of war, their 2022 invasion). They use them to run
| destabilizing 'grey zone' campaigns throughout the world,
| including directly interfering in elections. The tactics suit
| Russia in particular because they cannot compete miltarily
| with the democratic world.
|
| China uses them too, for example using their 'coast guard'
| and 'civilian' 'fishing boats' to attack (up to a point) and
| intimidate ships from other countries in the South China Sea.
| If China used their navy, it would possibly be acts of war. A
| Chinese coast guard ship shooting water cannon at a fishing
| boat, though illegal in international waters, isn't going to
| start a war. 'Civilian' 'fishing' boats from China blockading
| access to a reef won't either.
|
| Edit:
|
| Before you look at Russia and China and other Grey Zone
| actors as miscreants, understand that it's just the normal
| behavior of 'revisionist' powers - those who want to change
| the current rules. The current rules serve the interests of
| the 'status quo' powers, who get all self-righteous about
| 'illegal' activities.
|
| In a more common situation on HN, think of IP outsiders, who
| break the 'rules' made by major IP holders, such as DMCA or
| those extending copyright for decades or restricting access
| to scientific knowledge - the IP holders want the status quo
| and call violations 'theft' and the outsiders 'criminals',
| etc. If the US wasn't a status quo power, they'd be doing
| grey zone things.
|
| (That doesn't at all justify Russia and China's goals of
| stealing land, oppressing people's freedoms, and solving
| problems through violence.)
| r00fus wrote:
| > The international order is often called the 'US-led
| rules-based interntional order'.
|
| There's the actual international law (and the UN) and
| there's the US-led rules-based international order (ie,
| what the US wants basically). They're completely at odds -
| often times the US (and Israel or a couple of other minor
| countries) vote against or simply flout whatever the rest
| of the UN wants.
|
| The US is king of Grey zone actions. Random drone strikes,
| funding insurgency and terror groups, invading countries
| without international approval, blockading Cuba, etc. - the
| list is very long.
|
| So when the US complains about Russia doing similar things
| (often responding to provocation by the US or NATO), the
| complaints can easily be filed in the "hypocrisy bin".
|
| https://towardfreedom.org/story/archives/americas/the-u-s-
| ma...
| exceptione wrote:
| > 'US-led rules-based interntional order
|
| You have to look deeper into what kind of government has a
| problem with an international rule-based order. It is not
| the democratic countries with trias politica that have a
| problem with that, but autocratic regimes.
|
| How are you going to ethnically cleanse Uyghurs in a rule
| based order, or run international crime networks at the
| level of statehood?
|
| The question is: how are you going to integrate criminal
| and very powerful clangs in a world that is past the French
| Revolution? We tried, we failed.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partnership_for_Peace
|
| Answer is: you can't, unless the common people take
| ownership over their own countries. Very difficult.
| mmooss wrote:
| > You have to look deeper into what kind of government
| has a problem with an international rule-based order. It
| is not the democratic countries with trias politica that
| have a problem with that, but autocratic regimes.
|
| The democratic countries follow the pattern of status quo
| powers. Is that because they are democratic or because
| they are status quo, or some of both?
|
| The rules are of the status quo powers (matching their
| political cultures), by the status quo powers, for the
| status quo powers. Of course they follow those rules and
| support them. The rules seem to require a country to be a
| democracy to be legitimate - I agree with that as
| necessary to legitimacy (not sufficient), but obviously
| that doesn't suit non-democratic countries.
|
| And like status quo powers, when they break the rules -
| most prominently the US many times, such as the Iraq war;
| the EU treatment of refugees and undocumented immigrants;
| and currently by Israel with US sponsorship - then they
| let themselves off the hook. They engineer
| technicalities, such as the weak UN resolution arguably
| authorizing the Iraq invasion; or just look the other
| way. They say they can't be handcuffed etc. (And some of
| those actions may be the right choice - I'm not judging -
| but they certainly violate the rules.)
| mightyham wrote:
| Just a reality check: the United States is currently
| funding and providing military equipment to Israel, who
| is carrying out an ethnic cleansing in the Gaza strip.
| Apparently, democratic governments also have a problem
| following the rules.
| toast0 wrote:
| Ok there's all the signalling between states that breaking a
| cable has. That also works for false flag operations, or true
| flag operations while making it look like a false flag
| operation (etc).
|
| But also, cutting these cables doesn't stop communications.
| There are other land and undersea routes, and maybe
| terrestrial radio/satellite routes as well. You might damage
| these cables so that communications travel other routes which
| are more observable (or less observable). Or you might damage
| these cables so you can modify them elsewhere to enhance
| observability before they're repaired (or as part of the
| repair process).
|
| Or it could be a training mission for your elite squad of
| cable biting sharks.
|
| Lots of potential for intrigue here.
| brazzy wrote:
| So according to the Bluesky thread, the ship was captained by a
| Russian citizen. One has to wonder whether this was done with
| the approval of the Chinese government, or whether the ship was
| just chosen by opportunity (which seems possible given that
| China is the second most common merchant flag). Or whether
| implicating China was even an explicit goal.
| whizzter wrote:
| Russian captain, how does the ownership history of the ship
| look? Could be some sanction evading ship that was owned by
| Russian interests anyhow.
| pantalaimon wrote:
| It was a Russian ship until a month ago
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Do you have a source for that? According to
| https://www.vesselfinder.com/vessels/details/9224984 it's
| been registered as Chinese since 2016.
|
| Doesn't mean its current Russian captain is serving
| Chinese interests, of course, but at least it seems to be
| Chinese owned.
| netsharc wrote:
| For an analogy, it seems like a scrappy preteen throwing
| around his big brother's name, knowing that if he gets into
| trouble, big brother will intervene...
|
| (i.e. the European countries might be more wary about
| boarding a Chinese ship compared to a Russian ship, because
| escalating against China is scarier...).
| _djo_ wrote:
| Indeed. The best way to understand Russia's approach to
| foreign policy is that it's an extension of its mafia
| state-derived domestic policy, where there are no true
| allies and anyone brought into the circle is tainted
| through compromising actions to ensure they stay loyal to
| you.
|
| It's not dissimilar to the way criminal gangs will ensure
| that they have dirt on anyone joining or intentionally
| implicate others in order to ensure compliance.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| China did not want the war in Ukraine, which has created
| serious problems for them including for Belt and Road. So
| behing closed doors China must be passed off but Russia is
| important to them and they can't let them collapse.
|
| Of course Putin knows this hence him somewhat taking the p.
| graemep wrote:
| I think China stands to gain from escalation of the war so
| its possible they approved. It makes Russia weaker and more
| dependant on them, distracts the US from the Pacific, and
| weakens Europe in many ways.
|
| Similar to both Russia and China gaining from war and
| disruption in the Middle East.
|
| There are many possibilities here.
| lukan wrote:
| I doubt China will be happy, if Russia staged chinese
| support. But rumors have it, that the North Korean troop
| support for the war in Ukraine also came out of the blue for
| China, so Putin might make a risky gamble here, but I doubt
| he dares it. If China would seriously drop support for
| Russia, they would be srewed.
| aurareturn wrote:
| Given that ships often cut undersea internet cables and China
| has the biggest export economy, doesn't it make sense that the
| most likely country to accidentally cut an internet cable would
| be a Chinese trade ship?
|
| On average, it seems like undersea internet cables break 200+
| times per year. For example, Vietnam's internet cables break on
| average 10 times per year.
|
| What would be the motivation for a Chinese trade ship to
| deliberately cut an internet cable? It has next to no impact on
| internet communication and only serves to annoy a small amount
| of people for a short period of time. In addition, China and
| Europe are trying to have a better relationship in general so
| it doesn't make sense for the Chinese government to order this.
| raverbashing wrote:
| > What would be the motivation for a Chinese trade ship to
| deliberately cut an internet cable?
|
| The most charitable reason is that they don't give a fluck.
| Same reason why their rocket boosters just fall wherever they
| fall, population center or not
|
| Edit: https://x.com/Tendar/status/1859147985424196010
|
| > The skipper of the Chinese ship is a Russian national and
| the route leads from Ust-Luga (Russia) to Port Said (Egypt).
| aurareturn wrote:
| Is there any data on which country's ships cut the most
| internet cables?
|
| I think we need a total ships sailing for country / cuts.
| miningape wrote:
| This would be an interesting project for someone to work
| on, I wonder if there's a place where all the internet
| cable outages + reasons are available?
| Hamuko wrote:
| > _What would be the motivation for a Chinese trade ship to
| deliberately cut an internet cable?_
|
| Money. Russia is reportedly bribing people into doing
| sabotage in western nations.
|
| There's also reports that Yi Peng 3 is captained by a Russian
| national, which would also be another reason for a Chinese
| trade ship to conduct sabotage operations beneficial to
| Russia.
| rixrax wrote:
| At the Baltic Sea the cables and such break mostly because of
| one reason only: russia. [0]
|
| [0] https://www.csce.gov/briefings/russias-genocide-in-
| ukraine/
| brazzy wrote:
| I could believe that cutting _one_ cable was an accident. But
| _two_ , by the same ship, 60 miles apart?
|
| Absolutely no way this wasn't intentional.
| yett wrote:
| Yeah and this time they won't let them get away. According to
| Finnish Minister of Defence: "The authorities in the Baltic Sea
| region have learned from the mistakes of the Baltic Connector
| investigation and are prepared, if necessary, to stop a ship in
| the Baltic Sea if it is suspected of being involved in damaging
| communications cables."[1]
|
| And it looks like according to marinetraffic.com that the Yi
| Peng 3 is indeed at full stop surrounded by at least 3 Danish
| navy vessels.
|
| 1. article in Finnish
| https://www.hs.fi/politiikka/art-2000010845324.html
| dingdingdang wrote:
| Boarded according to:
| https://x.com/visegrad24/status/1859132263746744367
| bananapub wrote:
| worth noting that twitter account is not the most
| trustworthy or independent.
| hersko wrote:
| What have they posted that was wrong?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visegr%C3%A1d_24#Content
| details a number of cases.
| mistermann wrote:
| It would be useful to have a site that logs all plausible
| issues of this kind, at arm's length from Wikipedia
| editors.
|
| Kind of a "Who watches the watchers?" type of thing.
| squigz wrote:
| Why would that not be prone to the same issue you think
| Wikipedia faces?
| mistermann wrote:
| Superior methodology (transcending numerous cultural /
| psychological / cognitive norms and obligations) is how I
| would go about it.
|
| For example: banning the conflation of opinion and fact,
| like what's going on (and _always_ goes on) in this
| thread, a behavior that is protected (doing otherwise
| "is not what this site is for").
|
| If an imperfection is noted: log it, investigate,
| improve. Rinse, repeat.
|
| Also: best prepare one's will, life insurance, etc before
| undertaking such a project.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| Maybe it would not, but putting all your eggs in one
| basket has never been a good idea either.
| squigz wrote:
| I don't think that's what we're doing, considering
| Wikipedia points to other 'baskets' as sources.
| lukan wrote:
| Not confirmed by any mainstream newspaper. The danish
| forces only confirm, that they are there, but nothing more.
| cabirum wrote:
| After the Nordstream pipeline attacked and destroyed, its
| reasonable to expect shortened lifetimes for undersea cables
| and sattelites.
| trhway wrote:
| it sounds like you've probably never seen this - tanker
| Minerva Julie (belonging to Putin's friends) traveling
| through the Baltic Sea suddenly decided to hang around for a
| week right at the same place where couple weeks later Nord
| Stream exploded:
|
| https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2023/03/16/23/68797949-11868975.
| ..
| Lichtso wrote:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/14/world/europe/nord-
| stream-...
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/us-navy-was-
| at-...
| mcphage wrote:
| I think it's pretty clear that the NordStream explosion
| was a joint US-Russia-Ukraine operation.
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| Hell, throw sweden in there too: https://omni.se/marinen-
| pa-plats-dagarna-fore-explosionerna/...
| secondcoming wrote:
| Nope, it was definitely Poland trying to maximise on
| their gas connection to Norway.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic_Pipe
| jeltz wrote:
| It was clearly Norway trying to sell more gas to Poland.
| mmooss wrote:
| Where is evidence that the US and Russia were involved?
| oneshtein wrote:
| > it sounds like you've probably never seen this - tanker
| Minerva Julie (belonging to Putin's friends) traveling
| through the Baltic Sea suddenly decided to hang around
| for a week right at the same place where couple weeks
| later Nord Stream exploded: https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/
| 2023/03/16/23/68797949-11868975...
| mcphage wrote:
| Just look upthread from my comment.
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| Clearly NordStream was destroyed in a drunken escapade on
| a rented yacht.
|
| https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/nord-stream-pipeline-
| explos...
| credit_guy wrote:
| And Soros was the mastermind.
| burnt-resistor wrote:
| I'm waiting for Nazis and Jews to be blamed because
| Godwin's law after all.
|
| The US destroyed the Nordstream pipeline for certain and
| Sy Hersh has the evidence.
|
| It is more than probable that this incident indicates
| possible collusion between the Chinese and Russian
| governments to sabotage European interests. The simplest
| fix is for Sweden and Denmark to ban Chinese and Russian
| ships from their territorial waters until they deliver
| accountable assurances that this sort of behavior will
| not happen again. Until then, they must be stopped and
| European countries must play hardball because that's the
| only language these criminals understand.
| valval wrote:
| A common goal seems to unite people of all nationalities.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Yes, of course Putin decided to sabotage the largest
| infrastructure investment in his country's history, that he
| worked for a decade to get built.
| trhway wrote:
| Putin sabotaged the 3 centuries of Russia's progress. The
| pipeline is just a pocket change.
| burnt-resistor wrote:
| It's probable the US and possibly Norway did it under
| cover of BALTOPS 22.
|
| https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/how-america-took-out-
| the...
|
| Snopes only offers FUD but not a single contradiction or
| refutation of any of Sy Hersh's reporting or claims other
| than it boils down to "it relies on a single source".
| Sometimes, in secret operations, that's the reality.
| There exist genuine anonymous sources who cannot be
| revealed themselves. Part of the principle of benefit-of-
| the-doubt is trusting that Sy Hersh isn't merely looking
| for a quick payday to sellout his journalistic integrity
| for a few dollars and that he isn't an easily-fooled
| novice when it comes to doing due-diligence on sources
| and facts. It's mostly a disrespectful hit-piece lacking
| in evidence. With all likelihood, like the identity of
| Deep Throat, the truth will come out once the source
| retires and write a book about it.
|
| https://www.snopes.com/news/2023/02/10/hersh-nord-stream-
| sab...
| nradov wrote:
| Yes, this is why having a prompt satellite launch capability
| to replace attrition losses is now a strategic imperative. We
| need to be able to put up new ones in a matter of hours, not
| months.
| Gud wrote:
| If someone starts blowing up satellites it's pretty much
| game over for space based communications.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome
| nradov wrote:
| The military is shifting toward LEO constellations for
| communications such as SpaceX Starshield. Kessler
| syndrome isn't a serious concern for those because the
| orbits decay fairly quickly anyway.
| yencabulator wrote:
| That "quickly" is on the order of years (as opposed to
| decades, centuries, etc). If the Starlink constellation
| goes boom, you can't start launching new ones for several
| years -- and then the build-up would take years, from
| there.
| nradov wrote:
| Nah. In any major future conflict, the combatants will go
| ahead and launch replacement satellites immediately
| regardless of the risks or long-term consequences (or
| they'll do it at least as long as their manufacturing and
| launch facilities survive). A constellation of hundreds
| of satellites can't go "boom" all at once. Even with a
| bunch of orbital debris floating around the hazards will
| be sparse and some satellites will live long enough to be
| operationally useful.
| yencabulator wrote:
| For the purposes of the crisis, sure. But commerce and
| average consumer internet access will suffer hugely.
| Similarly, severing the sea cable had no direct military
| effect, but was economic damage. Kessler syndrome is
| still a serious concern even in LEO, just not to the same
| extent of practically denying access to space for the
| foreseeable future.
| tialaramex wrote:
| Kessler is often overplayed. Kessler trashes a low orbit
| and you wouldn't want to launch more birds into the
| trashed orbit. But, loads of com sats live in MEO or GEO,
| which is far too high for the numbers to work. They're
| all fine.
|
| You will even see Kessler cited as some sort of barrier
| to leaving, which is nonsense.
|
| Imagine there's a 1x1m spot where on average once per
| week, entirely at random and without warning a giant
| boulder falls from the sky and if you're there you will
| be crushed under the boulder. Clearly _living_ on that
| spot is a terrible idea, you 'd die. But merely running
| through it is basically fine, there's a tiny chance the
| boulder hits you by coincidentally arriving as you do,
| but we live with risks that big all the time. If you're
| an American commuter for example that's the sort of risk
| you shrug off.
|
| Likewise, Kessler isn't a barrier to leaving, humans
| won't be leaving because there's nowhere to go. The only
| habitable planet is this one, and we're already here.
| jgalt212 wrote:
| The latency on GEO orbits exclude them from many use
| cases.
| Gud wrote:
| LEO is where starlink is stationed. Really, there is no
| good scenario where LEO is unusable due to some dumb
| reason, like blowing up junk in space. I'm not sure our
| "world leaders" appreciate this.
| rickydroll wrote:
| GEO is safe for now. But...
| https://spacenews.com/intelsat-33e-loses-power-in-
| geostation...
|
| The most likely explanation for the unexplained
| disassembly is that Boeing made it. Second, most likely,
| is a collision with a hunk of something invisible.
| davidt84 wrote:
| GEO is very cramped. It's just a circle, not a sphere.
|
| Edit: I guess I was assuming geostationary. There's a
| whole sphere of geosynchronous orbits to play with.
|
| Edit2: I was right the first time, GEO (geosynchronous
| equatoral orbit) / GSO (geosynchronous orbit),
| apparently. Now my head hurts.
| tialaramex wrote:
| > GEO is very cramped. It's just a circle, not a sphere.
|
| "cramped" the way that like, Alaska is cramped on account
| of how everybody has to live on the surface, not evenly
| distributed through the volume of the planet?
|
| Like yeah, it's "just a circle" but did you check the
| _radius_ of that circle?
|
| Remember if there's debris, the _debris_ isn 't stuck in
| the circle, but, any time it's not in the circle it's
| harmless. This has the effect of significantly defusing
| the problem, so in total it's too low risk to be worth
| considering.
| varispeed wrote:
| Could they place a giant electromagnet in space to
| collect debris?
| kube-system wrote:
| Space is too big, and the field of even the world's
| strongest electromagnets are too small for this to be
| practical. And even if it did work, you'd only collect
| ferromagnetic material.
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| A large enough electromagnet could actually increase
| effective drag in conductive materials, which may help.
| All the non-conductive materials would still be there,
| and paint chips can be brutal at orbital speeds.
| elif wrote:
| Not true. China has taken down 2 US satellites in the
| last few years.
| K0balt wrote:
| Really? Thats wild. How is this not seen as a military
| provocation?
| bgarbiak wrote:
| They shoot down their own redundant satellites, and it
| was in 2007 in 2010.
| dylan604 wrote:
| You can have the ability to launch 100 satellites in 10
| days, but that doesn't really help if you don't have 100
| satellites
| nradov wrote:
| Well obviously you need to have a supply of replacements
| in stock. From a military perspective, think of
| satellites as rounds of ammunition that will be expended
| during a conflict.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I think it'd be more apropos to compare them to fighter
| jets/tanks vs bullets
| nradov wrote:
| Not really comparable. A new Starlink satellite costs
| ~$1M. A new F-35 costs ~$100M, and some of the guided
| missiles it carries actually cost more than the
| satellite. The militarized Starshield satellites probably
| cost more than their Starlink cousins but still I think
| you get the point that there are orders of magnitude
| differences in unit cost.
| dylan604 wrote:
| And a bullet costs $0.0001, so it's off just as much in
| the other direction.
|
| Also, your focus on cost was not the point. The point was
| numbers necessary. You need $lots of bullets, but you
| don't need any where near the same number of jets/tanks.
| You don't need $lots of satellites. You need a much
| smaller number closer to the number of jets/tanks. At
| least based on Starlink constellation numbers.
| thfuran wrote:
| I assume you can get some significant bulk discounts at
| DoD scale, but it's probably still more like $0.10 than
| $0.0001, which is admittedly still rather less than $1M
| nradov wrote:
| I think you might be getting a little confused by
| terminology. In military terms a round of ammunition
| doesn't necessarily describe just a small arms cartridge.
| It can be any munition that's stored for a long period
| until needed with minimal maintenance. So even an
| expensive missile or satellite might be treated as a
| round of ammunition, depending on the design and concept
| of operations.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Unless the satellite is meant to collide with another
| object, it's never going to be considered ammunition. It
| is a strategic platform for communication or intelligence
| gathering or maybe both. So calling a satellite
| ammunition is just belaboring the point for internet
| points or something.
| littlecranky67 wrote:
| Why is that? Undersea cables makes way more sense - the
| issue is we have maritime law that allows any nation state
| to freely roam over important cables. During wartimes this
| is a complete different story - ships won't be allowed near
| the lines, and if they do get close they will be destoryed
| without prior warning. No more anchoring "accidents".
| nradov wrote:
| It isn't either/or. Satellites and undersea cables serve
| different use cases. Cables are great for high bandwidth
| communications between fixed points but they aren't very
| useful to mobile military forces and they can't be used
| for anything beyond communications. We don't have enough
| ships and patrol aircraft to realistically defend
| undersea cables outside the littorals.
|
| Satellites can serve multiple purposes including
| communications, navigation, overhead imagery, signals
| intelligence, weather, etc. They are also vulnerable, but
| it's possible to launch replacements faster than
| repairing damaged cables.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| Inofficially Europe is already at war, whether it wants
| to or not. Maybe someone needs to inofficially keep a
| close eye on those cables and take inofficial
| countermeasures against inofficial sabotage acts.
| delusional wrote:
| No we're not. Nobody in the EU has transitioned to a
| wartime economy. We are helping out a strategic ally. If
| Ukraine falls tomorrow an cedes add territory to Russia,
| the EU is not going to continue fighting, because the war
| will be over.
|
| That of course assumes that Putin stops at Ukraine. The
| point is that this isn't our war.
| K0balt wrote:
| You're in a zero lot line flat and your neighbors house
| is on fire. I'd be pretty motivated to help out as well,
| but I don't think I'd be quite so cavalier about not
| being on a wartime footing. Russia has shown repeatedly
| throughout history that it does not honor international
| agreements in good faith, and that it sees military
| adventurism as a legitimate way to expand its borders.
|
| After the dust settles on the Ukraine war, if Putin still
| has the capacity to wage war, he will not likely stop
| with Ukraine. It is by now obvious that a limited
| incursion into Poland, for example, will not spark a
| global thermonuclear war.
|
| Ukrainian suffering is both the litmus test and the
| vaccination against nuclear escalation that Putin needs
| to contemplate further expansion.
|
| Political alignments aside, if I were based in Europe I
| would be very, very concerned.
| valval wrote:
| This is a wildly unpopular opinion after 2022, but
| Ukraine has nothing to do with Europe other than being in
| close vicinity geographically.
|
| Ukraine is a corrupt third world country competing in the
| same league with Botswana and Zambia.
| concordDance wrote:
| Even Botswana and Zambia aren't in the same league:
| https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-
| worldbank?...
| valval wrote:
| Frankly Botswana is beating Ukraine in GDP and Zambia in
| perceived corruption.
| jyounker wrote:
| Nine years ago I was in Riga talking with a Latvian
| friend, and even then she was telling me how Russia was
| broadcasting separatist propaganda into Latvia
|
| While the EU may not be at war with Russia, Russia is
| already at war with the EU.
| greenavocado wrote:
| We are at war. The United States guided an ATACMS missile
| into Russian territory yesterday. Imagine the absurdity
| of if China put missiles on the Mexican border and guided
| them into missile storage facilities 186 miles inside the
| border.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| I think you'll find the ATACMS missile guided itself,
| based on inertial navigation and satellite positioning
| data. If your argument is that the United States guided
| the missile because the US provides GPS, that's a pretty
| flimsy argument.
| greenavocado wrote:
| Ukraine would have folded within a few weeks without the
| weapons systems of the combined Western nations. The
| Biden administration has given Kyiv permission to use
| U.S.-supplied missiles in Russian territory in a major
| escalation that now threatens nuclear war due to the
| first use doctrine updates. A few hours ago reports of UK
| Storm Shadow missiles being fired into Russian territory
| emerged. The West is at war.
| avereveard wrote:
| By that logic every dictator t72 field trip would make
| Russia participant in that local war... Absolutely absurd
| statement. Siria civil war would see Russia waging war on
| Russia since their equipment was in both hands. What a
| contrived statement that the arm provider is at war
| itself.
| maximilianburke wrote:
| The passive voice is doing a lot of work here.
|
| Who is now threatening nuclear war?
| jeltz wrote:
| As far as we know Ukraine both put them there and guided
| the missiles. Please provide proof otherwise.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Why do folks like your self make such foolish analogies?
| If the US had invaded Mexico like Russia invaded Ukraine
| then yes, it would be completely fine for Mexico to fire
| missiles into the US.
| amiga386 wrote:
| > maritime law that allows any nation state to freely
| roam over important cables.
|
| I'd like to see your version of maritime law that _doesn
| 't_ allow freely roaming over important cables. Your
| country's enemies would gladly drop cables totally
| encircling you and say "uh uh uh, important cables!" if
| you tried to leave your perimeter
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| "we" are not doing anything AFAICT. Various privately owned
| corporations might be, and that's very different.
|
| Yes, I know the undersea cables are privately owned too.
| nradov wrote:
| At this point it's a distinction without much of a
| difference. For better or worse, SpaceX has now been
| fully integrated into the US military-industrial complex.
| They have huge DoD contracts to build out the Starshield
| constellation, including the prompt replacement
| capability. The US government is going to treat attacks
| on our critical communications infrastructure seriously,
| regardless of whether the hardware is publicly or
| privately owned.
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| weren't those cut exactly because they are the starlink
| backbone when over Ukraine?
| indymike wrote:
| > After the Nordstream pipeline attacked and destroyed
|
| This happend a very, very long time ago. Destroing things
| years after the fact is not logical and is not longer a
| defensive response. Using this as justification is just
| trying to escalate.
|
| > its reasonable to expect shortened lifetimes for undersea
| cables and sattelites
|
| Why is this reasonable? It seems like a pointless attack that
| achieves little other than reminding the world that horrible,
| oppessive governments are dangerous to everyone. Oppression
| is incredibly expensive for humanity, and only benefits the
| few that are the oppressors.
| mglz wrote:
| > This happend a very, very long time ago.
|
| It happened on 26. September 2022. That is not a long time
| ago.
|
| > It seems like a pointless attack that achieves little
| other than reminding the world that horrible, oppessive
| governments are dangerous to everyone
|
| It sends a message, as sabotaging communications is
| frequently done before an attack. Also it damages morale
| and is a show of power.
| throwaway829 wrote:
| "very, very long time ago", it was two years ago.
| allenrb wrote:
| Undersea satellites? You know, like after a launch failure.
| givemeethekeys wrote:
| The CCP thanks the expendable crew for their sacrifice. May
| they continue to suck the resources of their new host countries
| for many years to come.
| a1o wrote:
| C-Lion -> Sea Lion, but not the IDE from JetBrains.
| threeseed wrote:
| And 4 days ago a Russian spy ship was escorted out of Irish
| waters:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/16/russian-spy-sh...
|
| So definitely seems like a coordinated attempt to destabilise
| Europe ahead of anticipated peace talks early next year.
| pcardoso wrote:
| Same in Portugal
|
| https://www.theportugalnews.com/news/2024-11-18/russian-ship...
| jacknews wrote:
| So how long ago were US long-range missiles used to attack
| Russia?
|
| Because that's what seems to be claimed here, that Russia are
| retaliating for that.
|
| How long does it take a ship to travel to a 'suspicious' site
| like this?
|
| versus, how long does it take to intercept the nearest Russian
| ship, and escort it away as a spy ship and 'potential
| saboteur'?
| p2detar wrote:
| The info that the Biden administration would greenlight this,
| should have been known in Moscow for weeks now. I assume the
| news arrive later only for us - the public.
| soco wrote:
| "Russian mission installs more 'spy' antennas in Geneva, Swiss
| TV report claims" https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/foreign-
| affairs/russian-mission...
| INTPenis wrote:
| Why would destabilising europe before peace talks be
| beneficial? Seems like they would lose a lot of leverage.
| HelloNurse wrote:
| Crowdsourced military intelligence offers some hope for the
| future.
| dfadsadsf wrote:
| It could be false flag operation to create pretext for NATO/EU to
| block shipping to Russian ports in Baltic Sea.
|
| Similar to Nordstream destruction in 2022 it could have been
| either Ukrainians or CIA/NSA. This could be last attempt by
| current US administration elements to create leverage for the
| Ukraine before negotiations start.
| mnky9800n wrote:
| what possible reason would nato need to blockade russian ports
| that doesnt already exist?
| maxglute wrote:
| Blockade is legal act of war. RU at war with UKR, not NATO,
| and vice versa. Hence NATO would need casus belli of RU
| attacking NATO or NATO owned infra to declare blockade (read:
| declare war on RU).
| preisschild wrote:
| Russia is already assassinating and sabotaging in NATO
| countries, which are legal acts of war too.
| kryptiskt wrote:
| Russia isn't at war with Ukraine, it's a special military
| operation. Declaring a little exclusion zone outside all
| their ports for live-fire naval exercises isn't an act of
| war either. It'll be temporary, they'll be over by 2028,
| honest.
| trhway wrote:
| >Last ports: Murmansk - Port Said - Luga Bay (never docked, Ust-
| Luga, Russia)
|
| All the way to Luga and decided to not dock. Large cargo ship
| pleasure wandering the sea like a yacht.
| sedan_baklazhan wrote:
| So Two Minutes Of Hate towards Russia is over in this aspect?
| Very Orwellish.
| myrmidon wrote:
| What are you even talking about? Are you suggesting that "the
| West" has a too negative public opinion of Russia or China?
|
| I would argue that interactions/treatment specifically toward
| Russia, especially by European nations in the last 20 years,
| was actually too positive and naive-- specifically because
| unlike Europe, Russia definitely did _not_ leave its
| imperialistic ambitions behind, and treating /trading with it
| as a friendly somewhat flawed democracy during those years
| might have done more harm than good in hindsight.
|
| I'm curious how you think about this?
| sedan_baklazhan wrote:
| Just yesterday on the front page there was a topic largely
| consisting of accusations of Russia breaking these cables.
| Now I see a sudden switch of the "criminal" and a possible
| start of a new 2-minute of Hate. It's very Orwellish indeed.
| preisschild wrote:
| Did you even read the thread? It was captained by a
| Russian, and CN is a Russian ally.
|
| The Kremlin may very well be behind this.
| sedan_baklazhan wrote:
| Wow
| myrmidon wrote:
| People are speculating about whether this was intentional,
| and, if so, who is to blame.
|
| How is that "Orwellian"?
|
| Russia has quite the recent history of poisoning civilians
| both native and foreign (do you dispute that?). Those acts
| are already a significant step above simple sabotage, so
| why would it be Orwellian to consider them a possible
| perpetrator?
|
| In my view, common current western view of Russia is
| everything but:
|
| Orwellian would be a strong, emotional public expressions
| of hate (with frequently switching target).
|
| Current western view (can only really talk about central
| Europe) is more of a muted mix of disappointment, sadness
| and disgust about what Russia did/does in the Ukraine...
| usr1106 wrote:
| Looks suspicious, but there were 4 vessels in the area whose
| transponder signal was lost by public trackers during that night.
|
| It has also been pointed out that this is a location with lively
| traffic. So if it turns out that is was an anchor (as in the New
| New Polar Bear case) that's extra suspicious because anchoring in
| such location is not normal. On the other hand if it were
| explosives like in the Nord Stream case, they could have been
| applied also weeks before.
| A_D_E_P_T wrote:
| Much more information here: https://gcaptain.com/details-of-
| baltic-sea-cable-incident-re...
| emmelaich wrote:
| and some here https://www.newsweek.com/baltic-cable-sabotage-
| nato-1988689
|
| including
|
| > _Social media reports said that the vessel had a Russian
| captain, although this has not been independently confirmed._
| weweersdfsd wrote:
| I think it's time for a special navy operation which captures a
| Russian or Chinese cargo ship every time a cable gets damaged.
| The ships and their cargo could be then sold to the highest
| bidder.
| preisschild wrote:
| ... And profits are given to Ukraine.
| sva_ wrote:
| Am I hearing this right? You're volunteering to be on the front
| lines?
| KSteffensen wrote:
| It that really a precedent we would want to set? It sounds like
| it would be bad for global trade that state actors could
| arbitrarily seize privately owned property.
| mihaaly wrote:
| Wrong time getting cuastic (except if you are supporting China
| and Russia in their bully and troublemaker sabotaging efforts).
| mitjam wrote:
| It was crossing right on time for the interruptions, a Russian
| officer was on board, it slowed down while crossing, no other
| ships were slowing down in that area during that time (rulingnout
| headwinds) - it cannot get much clearer. China is now
| participating in hybrid warfare against Europe (unless they
| present stronger evidence against this assumption)
| KumaBear wrote:
| Time to start sailing the south china sea.
| Y_Y wrote:
| https://news.usni.org/category/fleet-tracker
|
| The US has two carrier groups there now, and has maintained a
| presence there for the last few years:
|
| https://news.usni.org/2017/05/29/brief-history-us-freedom-
| na...
| jhanschoo wrote:
| Coincidentally (or not) a couple lines were down a few hours
| ago in this south china sea degrading connectivity
| upofadown wrote:
| I strongly doubt that this is an official military act of the
| Chinese government. It will most likely turn out that this is
| not an official military act of _any_ government as the intent
| was to do this in secret.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Just because the intent was to be secret does not negate an
| official act of any country. To assume that any military does
| nothing in secret is naivety at its finest.
| greener_grass wrote:
| So if Trump is against China, and China aligns with Russia,
| will Trump then support Ukraine? Interesting (and choppy) times
| ahead.
| duxup wrote:
| Trump didn't do anything with regards to China the first time
| around. I think there's reason to doubt he is opposed to
| China in any significant way.
| lysace wrote:
| He did impose tariffs on imports from China.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93United_States_t
| r...
|
| _China-United States trade war_
|
| _An economic conflict between China and the United States
| has been ongoing since January 2018, when U.S. President
| Donald Trump began setting tariffs and other trade barriers
| on China with the goal of forcing it to make changes to
| what the U.S. says are longstanding unfair trade practices
| and intellectual property theft._
| duxup wrote:
| That reads like token efforts and then he just moved on
| ... quit on the whole thing.
| lysace wrote:
| _By late 2019, the United States had imposed
| approximately US$350 billion in tariffs on Chinese
| imports, while China had imposed approximately US$100
| billion on US exports._
|
| Then the Biden admin happened.
|
| _The Joe Biden administration kept the tariffs in place
| and added additional levies on Chinese goods such as
| electric vehicles and solar panels. In 2024, the Trump
| presidential campaign proposed a 60 percent tariff on
| Chinese goods._
|
| It will be interesting to see what happens. 60% all at
| once would be too disruptive, I think.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| Well Biden put Catherine Tai in as the chief trade
| negotiator, who has been hard on China. Tariffs were
| expanded. And the de minimis exemption was rescinded in
| august.
|
| So hardly "nothing further".
| lysace wrote:
| Sorry - just edited away the "nothing further" part as it
| was incorrect - a minute before reading your comment.
| duxup wrote:
| Trade conflicts all seem like a test of wills.
|
| But if you're not testing, you're not doing anything.
| anon84873628 wrote:
| Let's not forget pulling out of the TPP, which likely
| _empowered_ China.
|
| https://www.cato.org/blog/5-years-later-united-states-
| still-...
| underseacables wrote:
| In his first administration he engaged directly with North
| Korea which has been widely regarded as a Chinese puppet
| state. The last thing China wants, in my opinion, is a
| united and free Korea.
| duxup wrote:
| He engaged with North Korea almost as an admirer and
| their leadership is close to China / Russia.
|
| I'm not sure that means much as far as China goes....
| dole wrote:
| Although China's been taking over the SCS, I haven't seen
| many open hostilities between South Korea and China
| covered in western news media, almost like SK ignores
| China's activities for the most part. I don't think
| there's _any_ chance of a reunified Korea under the Kim
| dynasty or within 10 years.
|
| edit: forgot to shoutout above's username
| fakedang wrote:
| Considering a significant bunch of Korean companies have
| production facilities in China, I'd say the relationship
| is more amiable than say the Japan-China one. Both were
| aligned in protesting the release of Fukushima water into
| the ocean for example.
| n4r9 wrote:
| Even if China doesn't explicitly align with Russia, I believe
| there are strategic reasons why the US would want a
| favourable outcome for Ukraine. I outlined a few points in a
| post a couple of weeks ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42059787
|
| I'm no international relations hawk though, so I'm keen to
| hear opposing viewpoints.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| I _used_ to support Ukraine winning the war at any cost
| (them losing and that result being recognized implies that
| warmongering is acceptable). However, that war is now in
| its third year with no end in sight.
|
| Our (the west's) response to warmongering has been to
| trickle _just enough_ resources and monies to keep Ukraine
| from losing but not so much that they win. The "donated"
| resources of course need to be replenished, the military
| industrial complex is quite literally making a killing.
|
| At this point the question of declaring a firm stand
| against warmongering is lost. It's three years and going,
| warmongering as it turns out is fine. I hate that. My tax
| dollars are going towards endlessly and needlessly
| extending human suffering for the benefit of the military
| industrial complex. I hate that.
|
| So I say, enough of this bullshit. Unless we suddenly send
| in so much support that Ukraine decisively wins very
| quickly, I don't want to see a single cent more of my tax
| dollars going towards this. My taxes are not blood money
| and the military industrial complex can go fuck themselves.
| n4r9 wrote:
| Yep, I'm mostly in agreement with you and am also hoping
| that the West does enable a sudden decisive victory. The
| best option _would_ have been to nip it in the bud.
| Instead, Russia were given the space to landmine swathes
| of land, modernise their military tactics, and build an
| alliance with Iran and North Korea. And as you say the
| wrong kinds of people are winning here.
|
| The only thing is, what happens next if the West pulls
| out? Ukraine's military collapses, Russia moves in on
| Kyiv, Putin gains another Belarus-like satellite state,
| and _at least considers_ encroaching on Estonia, Finland
| etc... . It 's more than just the principle of whether
| warmongering is acceptable - a lot of people will suffer
| as a consequence and possibly for decades to come. We
| have to be really careful to consider which is worse in
| the long-term.
| anon84873628 wrote:
| I agree with both of you, but also want to point out that
| it's easier to make these criticisms in retrospect.
|
| I think the West was making the best calculus it could as
| the situation developed. Sure, you can say we should have
| known Putin was bluffing about redlines. But the downside
| of all out war is high enough that, when multiplied by
| the probability, you still get a bad number. I think it's
| reasonable that Western governments played it cautiously
| and hoped for a different resolution (like a successful
| internal coup).
|
| But yes, now we are where we are and it sucks for
| Ukraine.
| bungle wrote:
| You seem to be worried because of _just enough_ of part
| of somehow your money is given to Ukraine. Come on. They
| are fighting for all of us. And all we need to do is to
| give support. And you are getting tired. I am also
| disappointed that the west have not acted as a single
| front. In EU it seems we cannot even put puppets like
| Viktor Orban in control. Yes, whole west needs to step
| up. Russia doesn't listen anything else than force.
| Period.
| myrmidon wrote:
| I think classifying western aid to Ukraine as tax
| transfer to the military industrial complex is just
| incorrect. Because a lot of it does/did NOT need to be
| directly replenished for the donors-- instead the
| donations was more like getting rid of older stockpiles,
| and for some systems moving the modernization schedule
| up.
|
| And I think the attitude "its pointless to try and keep
| helping against the Russians, people have suffered from
| them for so long anyway" is _completeley_ beside the
| point (and dangerous!)-- the main gain from helping the
| Ukraine in my view is discouraging the kind of neo-
| imperialistm that led to this attack, and stopping the
| support just sends a signal to ambitious tyrants all over
| the world that you don 't really care about them
| plundering their weaker neighbors (and with having the
| biggest military comes some kind of obligation in this
| regard in my view).
|
| I also think that you are patronizing the Ukrainians
| themselves in the worst way-- if anyone should get to
| decide how long it is worth it to fight for their
| country, it should be them.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >instead the donations was more like getting rid of older
| stockpiles, and for some systems moving the modernization
| schedule up.
|
| That is precisely the benefitting of the military
| industrial complex that I am fed up with.
|
| >"its pointless to try and keep helping against the
| Russians, people have suffered from them for so long
| anyway"
|
| That is _not_ what I 'm angry about. I am angry that this
| war is dragging on far longer than there is any
| reasonable reason to be. If we hadn't trickled in support
| Ukraine would have lost already, if we had placed our
| full weight behind Ukraine they would have won already;
| either way the war would have ended long ago.
|
| With the question of warmongering settled at this point
| (it's okay to warmonger, whether any of us like it or
| not), the only thing I care about is people not dying. I
| sincerely don't care how the war ends anymore, all I care
| about at this point is that it stops ASAP, that people
| stop dying.
|
| >if anyone should get to decide how long it is worth it
| to fight for their country, it should be them.
|
| If they want to continue fighting that's totally within
| their right, but I as an American taxpayer am not obliged
| to foot their bill much less in the manner we've been
| doing it.
| myrmidon wrote:
| > That is precisely the benefitting of the military
| industrial complex that I am fed up with.
|
| This whole position just strikes me as misguided, because
| the numbers simply dont work. At all. Because if what you
| mainly care about is reducing US taxes flowing into
| weapon manufacturers, then the Ukraine is such a marginal
| portion that it basically does not matter _at all_ :
|
| If you said "lets reduce US spending on military to what
| all the rest of NATO together spends" (mind you, that is
| still the largest military budget in the world!), then
| that change alone would save in a single year over 4
| (total!) Ukraine aid programs (and this is including all
| financial and humanitarian aid so far).
|
| If you look at the stock price for major US arms
| manufacturers (RTX, LMT, NOC-- picked for being large and
| majority non-civilian revenue), then the whole Ukraine
| thing is basically not even a blip-- you would not even
| be able to tell (contrast the whole bitcoin/AI boom which
| is _clearly_ visible in Nvidia price).
|
| > With the question of warmongering settled at this point
|
| I strongly disagree that this question is settled with a
| yes. I do absolutely agree with you that the answer from
| the US and especially its european allies should have
| been more decisive and unambiguous.
|
| In the end, what the Ukraine war did and still does is
| establish a _price_ on blatant imperialism. That price
| _needs_ to be as high as possible to discourage and
| prevent repetitions as much as possible.
|
| I would argue that this was a success in that regard
| already, but a _small_ one, especially regarding the EU.
| Cutting further support would undermine and weaken this
| even more.
|
| I'd also like to challenge your position on wanting to
| force an end to avoid further loss of life: How can you
| be confident that an (immediate) conclusion in Russians
| favor by cutting Ukraine military, humanitarian and
| financial aid (possibly also from allies) _would_
| actually be a net benefit in lives saved?
|
| If you just look at the first and second Chechen war and
| the 8 years of insurgency directly after, what would make
| you confident that the exact same atrocities would not
| repeat at 20 times the scale?
|
| To me personally, cutting support for the Ukraine when
| ones country is _founded_ on principles of self-
| determination, freedom and democracy is _peak_ hypocrisy.
|
| Sources:
|
| https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/RTX
|
| https://de.finance.yahoo.com/quote/LMT
|
| https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/NOC/
|
| Ukraine aid volume:
|
| https://www.cfr.org/article/how-much-us-aid-going-ukraine
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >the only thing I care about is people not dying
|
| If you think Ukrainians are just going to roll over and
| submit if everyone abandons them and Ukraine must
| capitulate, you are an idiot.
|
| These are people who's ancestors had their ethnicity half
| erased. Even this war is part of that erasure. Russia
| literally kidnaps children to ship them off who knows
| where.
|
| The Ukrainian people will resist. It will be Afghanistan
| all over again.
|
| Plenty will continue to die.
|
| A lack of ATACMS will not change that. The ONLY outcome
| that stops people dying is Russia going the fuck home.
| Ukrainians have been dying to push out Russian invaders
| for 10 years now, not 2.
| tmiku wrote:
| > if anyone should get to decide how long it is worth it
| to fight for their country, it should be them.
|
| Looks like the popular sentiment over there is shifting
| towards a negotiated peace with territorial concessions.
| https://www.newsweek.com/ukrainians-changing-their-minds-
| war...
| n4r9 wrote:
| Are there other less partisan sources reporting this?
| From what I understand, Newsweek has been an alt-right
| mouthpiece since 2022.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| The linked article is just repeating numbers and findings
| from Gallup:
|
| https://news.gallup.com/poll/653495/half-ukrainians-
| quick-ne...
| n4r9 wrote:
| Thanks! The article does indeed seem impartial, at least
| up until the Trump parts. It's not surprising. My own
| resolve would probably wane sooner than most Ukrainians.
| It cannot be easy to live in fear of loved ones dying at
| any time.
| myrmidon wrote:
| Thanks for the link! Was really suprised to see EU being
| favored as brokers over the US.
|
| Makes me kinda curious if there is still significant
| blame/resentment regarding the Budapest Memorandum
| (against the US specifically)...
| tmiku wrote:
| Yeesh, I wasn't aware that that happened at Newsweek. The
| Gallup link in the sibling comment is the best source, I
| had seen those results in a couple different places so I
| just grabbed one from the top of Google (wrongly assuming
| that remembering Newsweek being on my parents' coffee
| table 15 years ago is sufficient vetting). Thanks for
| keeping me honest!
| rangestransform wrote:
| I'm fine with using my tax dollars to cripple a
| geopolitical rival and maintain the Pax Americana status
| quo
| tmnvix wrote:
| I would be ashamed if my tax dollars were funding what is
| happening to Gaza.
| dagenleg wrote:
| How can people keep repeating the russian talking point
| that equates helping Ukraine resist the invasion with
| "extending the suffering". Don't they know what kind of
| hell the occupied regions have become? One can't pretend
| not to understand that the ultimate russian goal is
| complete annexation and assimilation, which by the way
| will provide ample cannon fodder for the next war of
| conquest.
|
| I can't take in good faith this whole "suffering"
| rhetorics -- not containing the imperialistic
| expansionist nuclear-armed empire is sure to bring more
| suffering to the world.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| I think you're not understanding the whole argument:
| We're not helping Ukraine defend themselves, we're not
| containing the "imperialistic expansionist nuclear-armed
| empire". If we were then this war would have ended long
| ago and we wouldn't be having this conversation and Trump
| probably wouldn't have been elected.
|
| No, I am angry because our response has been halfassed
| and lukewarm. We are keeping the war going with no end in
| sight, my tax dollars are being used explicitly to extend
| human suffering rather than end it. Sincerely fuck that
| noise. Either we go all in or do nothing at all, the
| current timeline is the worst one we could have possibly
| chosen.
| dagenleg wrote:
| Yes, I'm definitely not following your argument. You're
| claiming that keeping the war going is extending the
| human suffering, while pushing Ukraine towards losing it
| would somehow end the suffering. That's false. Ukraine
| under russian occupation would be hell, and Ukrainians
| know it very well - that's why they are still fighting
| for survival.
| karp773 wrote:
| "The military industrial complex" has pocketed trillions
| upons trillions of tax payers money to arm NATO for a
| possible confrontation with Russia. Now that Russia is
| being beaten up and worn down on the cheap, people are
| throwing tantrums over the amounts that are essentially a
| pocket change (a half of which stays in the US anyways).
| How does this make sense?
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >on the cheap
|
| Human lives are not "cheap". Sincerely what the fuck, my
| dude.
| karp773 wrote:
| Whose lives are we talking about here?
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| I agree with what you have said here, but I don't know if
| the US is in a position to turn the war around in 2024
| without a huge escalation. It remains to be seen if there
| is any possible way to do that without "boots on the
| ground" (formally starting WW III) or the use of nuclear
| weapons (again, formally starting WW III).
|
| There were plenty of options to pressure Ukraine into
| preventing Russia from having a causus belli in early 2022
| (too bad the Biden admin didn't do any of those), but those
| are gone now and Russia currently controls much of the
| territory they had as military objectives.
| aguaviva wrote:
| Doesn't need to be a huge escalation.
|
| Just enough to send the tide of attrition turning slowly
| _the other way_ for a while.
|
| After which HN will instantly fill up with comments about
| "how badly Russia is losing", "it's clear Ukraine has
| already lost", and so forth.
|
| _There were plenty of options to pressure Ukraine into
| preventing Russia from having a causus belli in early
| 2022_
|
| Russia never had _casus belli_ in this conflict, and no
| one did anything to present it with such.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| I'm not sure Ukraine wins a war of attrition in any
| meaningful way. Russia is also shockingly good at wars of
| attrition, and the entire Russian economy has been built
| around war with the West. Ukraine is a small state in
| comparison, and they are running out of men, money, and
| munitions so fast that even tipping the scales by 10x
| will sink Ukraine before Russia retreats from the
| territory they now own. In 2022, the goal would be to
| make it costly to acquire territory so ideas about
| attrition would have worked a lot better, but it's 2024
| and Russia has already grabbed the land. Someone needs to
| go take it back.
|
| Here's a memo for you on Russia's causus belli. You can
| claim that they didn't have a legitimate one (I don't
| think they did), but they had one that got them enough
| local and international support to work in both 2014 and
| 2022: https://www.ponarseurasia.org/vladimir-putins-
| casus-belli-fo...
| n4r9 wrote:
| In your opinion what could Ukraine have done to avoid the
| causus Belli in 2022?
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| The causus belli was twofold, and was aimed at the
| Russian people:
|
| 1. Prevention of NATO encroachment toward Russia
|
| 2. Protection of ethnic Russians in Donbas
|
| Any and/or all of the following would have weakened or
| broken Putin's narrative:
|
| 1. Stop the military buildup in Donbas that had started
| in 2021
|
| 2. Cease admission of new NATO member states for 3-5
| years
|
| 3. Stop the process of Ukraine getting closer to NATO and
| the EU
|
| 4. Reduce or stop US military assistance funding to
| Ukraine
|
| 5. Drop the Biden administration's economic sanctions of
| Russia
|
| 6. Continue implementation of the Minsk accords
|
| 7. Stop the planned deployments of US missiles to Ukraine
|
| There are many more options. The US administration in
| 2020 was bringing Ukraine into the fold (because it
| wanted to be there), but that is not a recipe for peace.
| NATO had previously agreed not to get close to Ukraine or
| other states bordering Russia.
| aguaviva wrote:
| The basic flaw in what you're suggesting (that the war
| could have been averted by mollifying Putin on the terms
| of his stated narrative), is that, as we both seem to
| agree, the stated narrative was never the _real_ basis
| for his decision to invade.
|
| Putin's actual reasons, in turn, seem to have been
| primarily about:
|
| 1. Securing the 3 currently (as of Feb 2022) occupied
| regions, especially the Crimea, for permanent annexation.
| Russia's position in the Crimea in particular was at the
| time severely compromised, due to Ukraine's shutting off
| of its water access. It also "needed" a land bridge
| (around the Azov) in order to be reasonably secure in the
| long term. (We put "needed" in quotes here to remind
| ourselves that this was the regime's internal desire, not
| any kind of objective or real "need"). As gravy, or as a
| way of offsetting the cost for the whole operation, there
| was also the matter of the Donbas region's significant
| lithium reserves (estimated at $3T).
|
| 2. Permanent deterrence of any NATO bid on Ukraine's
| part, likely involving some form of formal declaration of
| permanent neutrality (Finlandization).
|
| 3. As gravy, anything it could have also won in terms of
| regime change in Kyiv, preventing whatever rump state (if
| any) that remained in Western Ukraine from joining the
| EU, or simply damaging its chances for success and
| prosperity generally ("wrecking it", in Mearsheimer's
| words) would have been a very signicant plus.
|
| The thing is, (2) by itself could have been had without
| resorting to a full-scale invasion. The West was eager
| for some kind of deal to end the 2014-2022 conflict, and
| having Ukraine in NATO was always optional, as far as it
| was concerned.
|
| But the price for Putin -- forgoing his paramount desire
| for (1) -- would have been far too high. Plus he thinks
| of himself as a visionary leader, destined to make his
| mark on history, and for many years had deluded himself
| as to Russia's actual capabilities for military
| adventures of this sort.
|
| So that's why he went "whole hog" in Feb of 2022. The
| main point here is that there doesn't seem to be much
| logic in thinking the war could have been avoided by
| addressing the _stated_ narrative. When Putin 's real
| reasons for invading, with emphasis on (1) above, would
| be in no way addressed by tactical appeasement of this
| sort.
| chx wrote:
| You would greatly benefit from watching https://www.youtu
| be.com/playlist?list=PLcfqP0PtWDcGKIHGTTbVl...
| petesergeant wrote:
| Trump is pro Trump-looking-strong, and that's about it.
| Interesting times ahead for sure, but trying to predict
| Trump's future positions is a mug's game. I suspect regarding
| Ukraine, someone will give him a plan that they tell him is
| fair ($10 says Russia keeps Crimea but virtually nowhere else
| and Ukraine agrees not to join NATO), and he'll manage to get
| both sides to sign it by threatening them.
| Epa095 wrote:
| I will be absolutely flabbergasted if he manages that deal.
| I think Ukraine will have to give up significantly more
| than Crimea unfortunately:-/
| petesergeant wrote:
| Perhaps. His key leverage here is that he's chaotic, a
| lunatic, and will be the CiC, and who the fuck knows what
| he'll do if he doesn't get his way? Enforce a no-fly
| zone? Flood the country with weaponary? Abandon Ukraine
| for Russian oil? Leave NATO? Provide explicit nuclear
| umbrella to the Poles and tell them to have at the
| _erbfeind_ if they want to?
|
| About the only thing you can rely on is that he'll do
| whatever he and his equally loony and chaotic advisors
| think will make him look good in the short term, based on
| feels, backed by the might of the American military.
|
| Given all that, is Putin really going to defy him when
| presented with a deal that Putin has any chance at of
| spinning as a win at home? Putin's singular leverage is
| threatening nuclear war, but that only works if you can
| convince your opponent you're more unhinged than they
| are, and Putin loses that particular metric to Trump
| every time.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| You should probably get it out of your head that Trump
| supports Russia. Especially considering Russia decided to get
| frisky with Ukraine in 2014 (during Obama), and 2022(Biden),
| but took no real action in this regard during the Trump
| presidency.
| tediousgraffit1 wrote:
| This line of reasoning keeps popping up and something about
| it bothers me - why go to war when you can get what you
| want in other, cheaper ways? It seems likely the
| correlation is real but so far no one has adduced any
| reasons to assume the causation actually goes the way they
| assume.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| If you note that what Russia wants is Ukrainian territory
| (first Crimea in 2014 and then a land connection to
| Crimea in 2022), that was guaranteed to involve _some_
| amount of war. That will give you everything you need to
| infer the correct direction of causation.
| tediousgraffit1 wrote:
| Why do you think Russia wants territory? Why did they
| suddenly develop an appetite for territory in 2014?
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| They have wanted it since the fall of the Soviet Union
| and access to the Black Sea has immense strategic value
| to them. They only had geopolitical (and local political)
| cover to get it in 2014 and 2022.
| tediousgraffit1 wrote:
| So not because ukraine rejected them in 2013? To be
| explicit, I still have seen no evidence for the premise
| that '_some_ amount of war' was inevitable. Belarus would
| seem to be an obvious counterexample.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| No person seriously discussing that region of the world
| would have ever thought Ukraine would give _Crimea_ to
| the Russians without a fight. Countries, in general, don
| 't give up land without a fight. Crimea is also one of
| the most militarily valuable pieces of land in the world.
| Putin, at the same time, wanted to do some "re-
| unification" of some previous Soviet territories
| including Crimea.
|
| I'm also not sure why you're citing Belarus here. It was
| split off from the Soviet union in 1990 and governed
| itself the whole time despite being essentially a vassal
| state of Russia. Belarus has not ceded any land to
| Russia, either.
|
| Edit - I see what you're saying about control or
| territory. If you want control, directly controlling the
| territory is better than having a puppet government.
| While Russia would have accepted a puppet government, as
| they have in Belarus (since there has been no good
| opportunity to go to war with Belarus to take it over),
| they had the opportunity to go to war for direct control
| and the West made it clear that Ukraine as a vassal state
| was not an option (see the 2014 revolution). If you think
| someone wants control, why do you think that they see $0
| of extra value in directly owning the territory?
| tediousgraffit1 wrote:
| > It was split off from the Soviet union in 1990 and
| governed itself the whole time despite being essentially
| a vassal state of Russia.
|
| It's obvious that Russia wants ukraine as a vassal as
| well. I would note that the invasion of Ukraine was
| launched _via_ Belarus, despite the fact that Russia does
| not formally control that territory. So again I ask, if
| Russia can get what it wants (which is _control_, not
| territory) without going to war, why would it do so?
|
| Let's be plain - we are ultimately dancing around an
| empirical question, whether Trump will be hawkish or
| dovish towards Russia. Ultimately I think he's too
| chaotic for past behavior to be a good guide. So let's
| see what happens! I for one hope that you are right, but
| I think I have plenty of reasons to be cautious.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Why did they suddenly develop an appetite for territory
| in 2014?
|
| Did they? They took a chunk of Georgia in 2008
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Georgian_War) and
| have been actively occupying some of Moldova since 1990
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transnistria_conflict).
| energy123 wrote:
| Whoever was POTUS played no role in the timing of 2014.
| Putin invaded Donbas in 2014 in response to a revolution in
| Ukraine that ousted the unpopular Russia-aligned
| Yanukovych. Not because Obama was POTUS or because Trump
| wasn't POTUS.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Okay, and why did Putin wait until 2022 to (re)invade
| Ukraine, if that was the goal? Shouldn't he have done it
| when he had a stooge in the white house?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Shouldn't he have done it when he had a stooge in the
| white house?
|
| If you think said stooge is likely to get reelected
| (which, except for COVID coming out of the blue, was
| highly likely) and that stooge is already making noise
| about isolationism, why interrupt?
|
| 2022 looks a lot like an "oh shit, plan B" scenario.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Okay, and why did Putin wait until 2022 to (re)invade
| Ukraine
|
| Because that's when he had intelligence leading him to
| believe the Ukrainian regime would crumble quickly or
| capitulate in the face of a large-scale invasion, and
| possibly also the NATO would fail to unite and respond,
| in part due to the success of Russian influence
| operations, which were not only directed at the US.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| The whole Trump/Russia conspiracy theory was all fake anyway
| - the Steele dossier which is the basis of the whole thing
| was fabricated and is unsourced. I expect him to be
| relatively hawkish on Ukraine because losing in Ukraine makes
| the US look weak, although Ukraine is currently losing the
| war relatively badly so I expect some territory to be ceded
| to Russia.
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| This. The amount of downvoting on these comments is proof
| of the amount of influence propaganda can have on the
| population. A large number of people here appear to still
| be convinced that Trump and Russia are working together.
| netsharc wrote:
| > China is now participating in hybrid warfare against Europe
|
| Geez, I'm glad you're not war minister. It's a Chinese
| registered ship with a Russian captain.
|
| If a terrorist crashes a truck with Portuguese plates into the
| US embassy in Berlin, would that mean Portugal's declared war
| against the USA?
| drewcoo wrote:
| > war minister
|
| Due to an earlier generation's newspeak, that's "defense,"
| not "war."
| Arnt wrote:
| Are you sure about that?
|
| I happened to notice that at least in some cases, the
| change of terminology happened roughly when it became clear
| that offensive war was a losing proposition in terms of
| money and resources. I suspect that as invading the
| neighbours became financially irrational, the cool heads
| that tend to survive in management shifted their stand from
| mixed offense/defense to just defense.
| mitjam wrote:
| Yes Mr Pistorius is ,,Verteidigungsminister" as in
| defence, and it's called that way since 1955. Not that
| hard to find out.
| Arnt wrote:
| Germany's a good example. In 1914 the ministry was called
| Kriegsministerium, and an invasion wasn't seen as a
| _necessarily_ bad idea. I think it already was, but at
| the time, you could argue in Berlin that a country that
| started a war could benefit from that war, if executed
| well. That kind of argument wouldn 't make people doubt
| your judgment yet.
|
| A few years later it was clear that offense was
| necessarily a resource loss. Someone who wanted to build
| a career as a civil servant might then see a defense
| ministry as a viable option, but not any sort of
| offensive war. Offense was clearly not viable, and
| therefore not a good basis for budget allocations, and
| therefore the good career move for the civil servants was
| to focus the ministries entirely on defense.
| Larrikin wrote:
| [flagged]
| Octoth0rpe wrote:
| They're not asking for Russia to get the benefit of the
| doubt, they're asking (reasonably IMO) for China.
| jajko wrote:
| A well-earned result of decades of their hard work,
| although this is about china-registered vessel
| Arnt wrote:
| [flagged]
| netsharc wrote:
| Yes, this is what I'm saying, but with less words.
|
| But look around (even in these comments) and look at how
| many people are thinking "Chinese act of war!!!11!!"
| Arnt wrote:
| Yes... A lot of them really need have it spelt out,
| twice, in large clear type.
| jstummbillig wrote:
| > Yes, this is what I'm saying, but with less words.
|
| That's really not all you are saying, and the difference
| is important. Maybe not to you, though.
| netsharc wrote:
| Then, elaborate please, Jochen, what's the important
| difference?
| PhasmaFelis wrote:
| As far as I can tell, you're both saying the same thing:
| that registering a ship in China does not mean China is
| responsible for that ship's actions. If you've got a
| different point to make, please make it clear.
| xbar wrote:
| Well said.
| aldous wrote:
| Yes, good points. It's not a wild stretch of the
| imagination that Mr P and gang are actively trying to drag
| China into the Ukraine conflict and I'd imagine Beijing is
| pretty pissed off today about being (ostensibly) implicated
| in this sabotage. So the usual underhand scheming from the
| Kremlin imho, don't fall for it. China and Russia's
| relationship is very complicated of course and there's many
| a convincingly analysis out there that predicts conflict
| between them in the near future (an example flashpoint
| being Siberia).
| holowoodman wrote:
| Well, yes, Flag of Convenience is a thing.
|
| But there is a "but", which is that in the articles of war,
| the flag of a ship does have quite a few implications. E.g.
| when two nations are at war, stopping ships flagged as
| belonging to the opposition gives certain rights of
| stopping and searching them, blockading their passage,
| seizing the vessels and cargo, etc.
|
| And the relevant characteristic in that case is the flag,
| not the captain's nationality: > Art. 51. Enemy character.
| The enemy or neutral character of a vessel is determined by
| the flag which it is entitled to fly.
|
| http://hrlibrary.umn.edu/instree/1913a.htm
| Arnt wrote:
| If you want to be formal about it, none of the countries
| with Baltic coastlines are formally at war.
| holowoodman wrote:
| Yes, but there is the huge other "but" that in modern
| use, a formal declaration of war is no longer necessary,
| committing acts of war is sufficient for a state of war
| to exist. (However, committing acts of war without a
| preceding declaration is of course a war crime.)
|
| Of course this isn't really automatic and triggered by
| the smallest thing, both sides kind of have to "agree" to
| be at war, e.g. by a counter-attack, a declaration
| following the attack or something like that. And nobody
| really wants to take that bait, due to the huge
| consequences involved.
|
| Yet, it is China playing with fire here, we all can be
| happy that none of the affected nations took them up on
| their "offer" of war.
| escape_goat wrote:
| Just to clarify again, this is a dry bulk / Panamax
| vessel. It is part of the shipping industry. At scale, it
| is analogous to a railroad car. In 2015 it was operating
| as the Avra under the flag of Greece. The foreknowledge
| of the Chinese government that a Russian officer would
| conduct hybrid operations from the vessel cannot be
| inferred from the circumstance. It is like thinking that
| someone with an American passport is an American spy.
| holowoodman wrote:
| It is quite the opposite from what you are arguing. China
| is responsible for the conduct of the vessels they
| allowed to fly their flag.
|
| They can later claim that the crew and captain acted on
| their own will, without orders from the Chinese
| leadership. They can duly punish the captain and crew or
| disavow the vessel and declare them renegade, disallow
| them to fly their flag. But without such a declaration, a
| nation such as China is responsible for the conduct of
| their fleets, be they civilian or military. And any
| vessel they allow to fly their flag is part of their (in
| this case civilian) fleet.
| WitCanStain wrote:
| Is the US responsible for any crime committed by members
| of ships that fly the star-spangled banner?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| To some extent, yes. US law applies on US-flagged ships.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_convenience
|
| > A ship's flag state exercises regulatory control over
| the vessel and is required to inspect it regularly,
| certify the ship's equipment and crew, and issue safety
| and pollution prevention documents.
|
| Because US law is strong in this regard, the US military
| is by far the largest contributor to the count. Less than
| 200 civilian vessels are flagged in the US;
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/652126/us-flag-
| oceangoin....
| scrps wrote:
| So the Russians who are at this point highly dependant on
| Daddy Xi to keep their economy and military afloat are
| gonna false flag the West to suck China into a quagmire of
| a war a few months before the most unpredictable and
| venomously anti-china president (who has thin skin, a hair
| trigger, and no qualms about conducting airstrikes on high-
| ranking Iranian generals unilaterally on a whim) in modern
| US history is about to take office at the head of a country
| with the largest functioning stockpile of nuclear weapons
| and a massive military? You think Chinese intelligence is
| asleep at the wheel and wouldn't notice given the stakes
| and absurd levels of geopolitical risk the entire planet is
| at?
|
| China may back Russia to try to shift perception of the
| west's military might/will or to drain resources or just to
| buy Russia by making them dependant to get those juicy
| Russian natural resources but they aren't going to start
| world war iii to help Putin with his fetishistic "yet
| another European dictator" fantasy.
|
| The Chinese know how to play the game same as the Russians
| and the US. All these little games are just calibrated
| psyops, why destroy, very publicly, comms lines when
| tapping it would be far more beneficial to a war effort and
| much quieter? Maybe to make the West look weak and unable
| to defend their borders which affects consequences
| domestically like say channeling political support to
| isolationist politicians who want to retreat from
| supporting Ukraine? Cause those politicians didn't make
| gains in the last European elections or nothing.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > If a terrorist crashes a truck with Portuguese plates into
| the US embassy in Berlin, would that mean Portugal's declared
| war against the USA?
|
| At the very least, the cooperation of Portugal's authorities
| would be expected to determine how the truck ended up being
| used for the attack, and if anyone knew about how the vehicle
| was to be used.
|
| I expect the same amount of cooperation from China as the
| flag state.
| bungle wrote:
| It was the second Chinese registered ship with Russian crew
| within a short period of time. A year ago this
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newnew_Polar_Bear cut the gas
| pipe and another communications line.
|
| I am sure if the cowardly Russians ever did this to USA, it
| would cause a much bigger drama and retaliation wave, and
| China would take the hit as well.
| mitjam wrote:
| True but China can support or not support investigations and
| prosecution. After all they are the ones who can exercise
| their sovereign rights on ships sailing under their flag. I'm
| really curious and open minded how this plays out but sadly
| would be surprised if China would support the EU in this
| case.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Why did they leave AIS on?
| diggan wrote:
| Having AIS on is mandatory. I'm sure turning it off would
| raise even higher warning flags than just leaving it on while
| doing your shady stuff.
|
| Regardless, there are satellites covering the area, so you
| wouldn't get rid of being tracked anyways, would just be a
| bit slower.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| recent statistic : Global Fishing Watch's study published
| in Science Advances on November 2, 2022, revealed that:
|
| Over 55,000 suspected intentional disabling events of AIS
| signals were identified between 2017 and 2019, obscuring
| nearly 5 million hours of fishing vessel activity. This
| phenomenon accounts for up to 6% of global fishing vessel
| activity.
| bergie wrote:
| Having AIS on is mandatory, and in many places taken quite
| seriously. Last night we sailed from Fuerteventura to Gran
| Canaria. There was a cargo ship with broken AIS in the
| area, and the VTS broadcasted their position over VHF every
| half hour (with DSC all ships alarms and everything)
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Having AIS on is mandatory, but in practice a lot of ships
| turn it off regardless. From shadow oil fleets laundering
| sanctioned oil to fishermen, fake or disabled AIS systems
| are hardly an exception.
|
| I don't think Russia is trying to hide their sabotage,
| though. Even with AIS disabled, there's no way European
| intelligence agencies didn't know what ships were floating
| above these cables at the time they went down.
|
| This was a warning, not a secret operation.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Every recreational sailor knows that AIS is "mandatory."
| It's completely routine to see commercial ships running
| without it.
| diggan wrote:
| > It's completely routine to see commercial ships running
| without it
|
| I think this depends a lot on the location, as different
| areas seems to make it different levels of "mandatory".
| Are you speaking about the Baltic Sea specifically based
| on experience?
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Yes. I spent a pandemic summer sailing the north sea,
| denmark, sweden with a friend. We sailed much less in the
| baltic and I admittedly kind of mix the north & baltic in
| my memory but they are very similar regulatory
| environments re boats so it would surprise me if it was
| common in one but not the other.
| diggan wrote:
| > they are very similar regulatory environments re boats
| so it would surprise me if it was common in one but not
| the other.
|
| One has Russia and their ports, while the other doesn't.
| So preparedness and military presence certainly is
| different between the two at least.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| I defer to your presumably greater baltic sailing
| experience.
| WinstonSmith84 wrote:
| With "commercial", I guess you imply fishing vessels
| doing this to go fishing outside their delimited area.
| That's different from a massive bulk carrier in the
| middle of the Baltic
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| No I meant what I said. I've never seen a like
| supertanker without AIS but I've seen smaller cargo
| ships, ferries, and specifically in northern europe
| energy company tenders running without it.
| underseacables wrote:
| I don't know if the evidence is conclusive, but I do think we
| can say China is supplying Russia with military hardware and
| supporting them in other ways. So.. it's possible.
| gizmo wrote:
| China trades with pretty much everybody, don't read too much
| into that.
|
| China is not allied with Russia and China is unlikely to
| engage in sabotage like this because they stand nothing to
| gain from it.
| petesergeant wrote:
| > China is not allied with Russia
|
| They don't have a mutual defense treaty, sure, but they
| describe themselves as having a "friendship without
| limits". I would agree that China has no interest in
| getting involved in Putin's idiot war in Ukraine though,
| and there's zero benefit to China in antagonizing Europe.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| They do have an alliance:
| https://www.cfr.org/article/china-russia-and-ukraine-
| october...
|
| What the words are worth in a time of need remains to be
| seen. Neither side is exactly trustworthy :)
| gizmo wrote:
| Blessedly we're citizens of good and noble western
| countries that are supremely trustworthy and that would
| never ever renege on a deal or fight unjust wars.
| fakedang wrote:
| From what I understood, China was completely blindsided
| by the invasion (given that it happened so soon after the
| announcement of the alliance), and actually somewhat
| pissed. Russia basically used their alliance as insurance
| against a fully global sanctions regime, and China had to
| stick around to save face.
| tannedNerd wrote:
| This has to be the biggest propaganda I've seen from a CCP
| agent on here. China and Russia have are allies, they have
| a defense pact. Stop trying to sow disinformation.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Russia and North Korea have a newly signed defense pact
| (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/20/world/asia/china-
| russia-n...). I don't believe Russia and China do,
| though.
|
| They are absolutely allies, though. Per Putin himself.
| https://www.reuters.com/world/putin-says-china-is-
| russias-al...
| gizmo wrote:
| Russia desperately needs allies. Russia wants China to be
| their unconditional ally. Unfortunately for Putin, and
| fortunately for the rest of us, China cares primarily
| about China.
| miningape wrote:
| I'm no fan of the CCP either but really what do they
| stand to gain here? Getting dragged into Russia's
| conflicts and the sanctions that would ensue would be
| devastating to the Chinese economy and security of the
| CCP's control.
|
| The CCP are aware of this fact and they're planning for
| it, but they're not ready yet.
| gizmo wrote:
| What they have falls short of a defense pact. The "Treaty
| of Good-Neighborliness" contains language that the
| countries shall immediately discuss military options when
| under attack, but an agreement to talk is not an
| agreement to join a war.
|
| This is what article 9 says: "When a situation arises in
| which one of the contracting parties deems that peace is
| being threatened and undermined or its security interests
| are involved or when it is confronted with the threat of
| aggression, the contracting parties shall immediately
| hold contacts and consultations in order to eliminate
| such threats."
| vlovich123 wrote:
| Reading that thread it sounds like it was a Russian ship that
| was sold to China last month (perhaps as a pretext to mask
| this) so ownership is unclear.
| guerrilla wrote:
| So what would China's motivation be here?
| PontifexMinimus wrote:
| Helping Russia
| a-french-anon wrote:
| So what's the strategic importance of this move? inb4
| "they're just acting like hoodlums to show off their
| strength".
| kstenerud wrote:
| Keeping Europe on edge and cowed, so that they spend less
| time and effort on Ukraine. This allows Russia to capture
| more of the historic Russian Empire in the east, which
| makes them more powerful and embarrasses the Western
| countries, pushing more unaligned countries into BRICS.
|
| The endgame here is to build a new world order with Russia
| and China calling the shots (actually, China calling the
| shots, but we're not supposed to say that yet).
| a-french-anon wrote:
| This seems very unrealistic, as the resulting distraction
| is probably of low consequence concerning Ukraine.
|
| Not even replying to the claims about world domination, I
| don't have time for these... "suppositions".
| kstenerud wrote:
| Yes, and that's half the problem. The only ones taking
| this seriously are the Latvians, Estonians, and
| Lithuanians (although the Finns and Poles finally woke up
| to it last year - also why Poland upped its military
| spending to 5%). The Estonian military reports are
| particularly enlightening, and Timothy Snyder offers
| background into the why.
| a-french-anon wrote:
| Europe spent half the previous century ravaged by two
| world wars stemming in part from suppositions, paranoia
| and alliance networks. Never forget that.
| 0rzech wrote:
| > although the Finns and Poles finally woke up to it last
| year - also why Poland upped its military spending to 5%
|
| Poland has been warning about Russia at least for over 14
| years now, since before Crimea annexation for sure. It
| started with Russia invading Georgia, I think.
|
| Likewise, Poland has also been meeting NATO spending
| quota for years, upping it even more these days.
|
| Poland refused to let another gas pipe from Russia
| through its territory without it going through Ukraine
| too, because it was obvious Russia would use it as
| leverage against Ukraine. This is what actually led to NS
| project which, for the same reason and this time
| additionaly because of the risk of creating leverage
| against other CEE countries, Poland refused to
| participate in and had been instead alarming that NS will
| result in troubles with Russia and security of Europe and
| Ukraine in particular.
|
| Poland has been raising the issue of not only Ukrainian,
| but Georgian situation too. Many people forget, that
| Russia has been occupying parts of Georgia for over 16
| years now.
|
| Poland, despite paying penalties for that and being
| called racist etc., has been also blocking illegal
| immigration influx on its border with Belarus due to it
| being a hybrid war of Russia against Europe.
|
| If anything, Poland did not sleep over Russia's plans.
| Quite the opposite, actually.
| guerrilla wrote:
| Dude, Chinese state TV still calls Russia a "gas station with
| nukes." Of course they make money off of it and uphold their
| agreements but so far China has avoided any direct
| involvement with Russia's bs.
| euroderf wrote:
| Also to the point, Burkina Faso with nukes.
| Tade0 wrote:
| Might be just a crew paid off by Russians to do it.
|
| In my country saboteurs largely weren't Russian - it's easier
| to pay off a local than have ano5 Russian cross the border,
| when his predecessor gets caught.
| duxup wrote:
| Finding out how far they can go without consequences / test the
| will of another nation to do something?
|
| Article indicates this isn't the first time.
| KSteffensen wrote:
| China has a lot of interest in the war not ending one way or
| the other. Their peer competitors are spending resources on it
| and a potentially problematic regional competitor is becoming
| more irrelevant the longer it runs.
| euroderf wrote:
| In the superpower listings they're Number 2 with a bullet.
| llm_nerd wrote:
| China likely has nothing to do with this. It is unlikely they
| have any participation or even knowledge of this. Twice now
| some Russians in a China flagged ship caused trouble, and the
| China-flagging seems very intentional.
|
| Russia is desperately trying to make the China-Russia thing a
| reality, and is probably trying to drag them in against their
| great resistance. China has zero credible reason to be dragged
| into Russia's nonsense, and a billion reasons why they want
| nothing to do with it.
|
| The ideal outcome of this is that China realizes that Russia is
| outright trying to drag them into conflict, and that they
| repudiate that country entirely.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| China has already been involved quietly, funneling weapons
| and intel to the Russians, essentially playing the opposite
| role to the US. Make no mistake - this war has a component of
| the US and China probing each others' capabilities.
|
| The Russians could have done this with a fishing trawler
| (they cut cables accidentally all the time), so like you I
| doubt we can infer some nefarious Chinese plot from the flag
| on the vessel.
| anon84873628 wrote:
| I'd say another reasonable view is that China is happy to
| put morality aside and make money off weapons sales so long
| as they can get away with it.
| kube-system wrote:
| "Chinese-flagged" does not equal "Chinese operated"
| thecodemonkey wrote:
| The Danish defense forces now confirms their presence but they
| are not providing any other information right now:
| https://x.com/forsvaretdk/status/1859195509866381402
|
| (This is also a rare English-language tweet from an account that
| usually only tweets in Danish)
| TinkersW wrote:
| This is the 2nd time China did this in that Baltic isn't it? Both
| times look intentional.. maybe don't allow Chinese ships in the
| Baltic?
| tossandthrow wrote:
| That would not swing.
|
| Denmark controls the waters of the seaway to Sct. Petersburg
| and Kaliningrad that are some of the strategically most
| important ports of Russia.
|
| Blocking of traffic to these would be a severe escalation.
|
| Regularly Russian subs pass through Danish waters - controlled
| and allowed.
| Tade0 wrote:
| Damaging infrastructure is already a severe escalation.
| Should not have done that.
| tossandthrow wrote:
| These are times to chill - unless we want a full on nuclear
| war.
|
| (I do realize that in particular US citizens have very high
| confidence in their own military capacity and might be
| overly bullish on situations like these)
| tallanvor wrote:
| Nuclear war is not a realistic concern, luckily. If it
| was, it would have happened after the first "red line"
| Russia claimed the west had crossed.
| tokai wrote:
| On the contrary, chilling would endanger everyone living
| the in the free world even further.
| Tade0 wrote:
| Not American - I'm Polish. I've got friends who got
| drafted already (if only for training) so it's entirely
| possible I'll join them eventually.
|
| My take is that Russia's plan is to continue sabotaging
| and a weak (or lack of) response to that only emboldens
| them.
|
| Also nuclear war with what? Their recent Satan II ICBM
| test demonstrated that they don't necessarily have the
| technical chops to launch anything sufficiently capable
| and it must have come as a surprise to them as well.
| p2detar wrote:
| We were chill since 2014 if not earlier. It brought
| nothing but pain both to Ukrainians and to us in the
| West. It doesn't work.
| meindnoch wrote:
| It's high time for the West to man up and solve the
| Russian problem once and for all.
| malermeister wrote:
| How severe an escalation would it be?
|
| As severe as... say starting the largest war in Europe since
| WW2 right at our doorstep? Or as damaging our critical
| infrastructure? Or manipulating our democratic processes?
|
| It's time the West pulls its head out of its ass. We're
| already at war, whether we want it or not.
| rightbyte wrote:
| > We're already at war, whether we want it or not.
|
| I think you should complain about 'appeasement' abit longer
| before switching gear to 'to late YOLO'.
|
| That would help your cause better.
| malermeister wrote:
| I don't think I have a cause. I'd like to not be
| constantly attacked by foreign adversaries, is that a
| cause? But if attacks happen, we can't just ignore them
| because hitting back might make the abuser more mad.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Seems quite easy for an 'adversary' to manipulate two
| other 'adversaries' into an extended suicide with that
| mindset.
| talldayo wrote:
| Am I missing something, or do you post peacenik
| appeasement demands under every HN submission? It's such
| a radically stupid position that I'm legitimately
| starting to think you're a Russian propagandist. _Why_
| would any rational country appease a madman? Because
| people like you write internet comments about pissing
| your pants?
|
| If we reach the "to [sic] late YOLO" stage it won't
| matter what options we picked. That's why appeasement is
| a fundamentally pointless idea that the US has refused
| for decades. If you _even once_ play the "give a mouse a
| cookie" game you will end up surrendering everything to a
| power that can threaten you with nuclear terrorism. Only
| a moron would appease Russia in this scenario.
| rightbyte wrote:
| I could be anyone except you. I don't see the relevance
| in speculating about that.
|
| The US have no qualms appeasing Netanyahu. Biden and his
| party was even fine arguably losing the election over it.
| I don't see any contradiction there.
|
| Russia and the US from time to time more or less
| arbitrarily bombs or invades some other country. I guess
| Russia's Holywood need to make better movies depicting
| their own soldiers as victims of their own wars. Still
| glorying though. There is work to be done there for sure.
| The two I've seen depicted soldiers as pathetic losers.
|
| I mean, trying to economically, socially and culturally
| isolate the US would probably make it wreck even more
| mayhem over the world than trying to have cultural
| exchange, be nice, and what not. And when this fails not
| throwing yourself on a spike might be preferable.
| talldayo wrote:
| > The US have no qualms appeasing Netanyahu.
|
| The US didn't give Israel Mandatory Palestine - Britain
| did. America selling arms to Israel is a moot point, and
| if we want to compare like-to-like then Russia is guilty
| of the exact same thing with India. But neither situation
| is an appeasement in the first place, so it's a plainly
| facetious argument.
|
| > Russia and the US from time to time more or less
| arbitrarily bombs or invades some other country.
|
| America hasn't arbitrarily invaded any country since the
| Philippines. Comparing bombings to occupation of a
| sovereign nation is a faux-pas that reveals you aren't
| arguing in good faith. They are drastically different
| things and anyone with a serious perspective of military
| escalation understands this. I pity you for not
| recognizing that these are incomparable situations and
| suggest that you reflect on whether or not this kind of
| judgement is worth sharing online. Every comment I've
| read from you repeats the same fearful tone without
| suggesting a serious response besides giving Russia what
| they want. You are either falling for propaganda or a
| blatant mouthpiece yourself.
|
| > trying to economically, socially and culturally isolate
| the US would probably make it wreck even more mayhem over
| the world than trying to have cultural exchange, be nice,
| and what not
|
| A perspective you could only possibly possess if you were
| economically, socially and culturally isolated from the
| rest of the world. Or is India and Iran enough to keep
| Putin company? Some world "superpower" Russia is.
| mihaaly wrote:
| I'd consider the serious escalation of offensive (cowardly)
| acts were carried out by Russia many many years ago
| repeatedly, increasingly, throughout Europe (elsewhere too),
| with mild consequences. Got seriously unabashed escalating
| further. Being cautious with the nazi Germany blew into the
| face of the World, will definitely not work with the
| imperialist Russia either. China acts on behalf of Russia
| here - Russia being coward for open confrontation with anyone
| (believed by them) able hitting back hard. China has
| secondary benefits for self as well.
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| Was it Shakespeare who wrote "Discretion is the better part
| of valor"? That level of cynicism might be appropriate
| here. The cowardice is on the European side, surely?
| euroderf wrote:
| > Regularly Russian subs pass through Danish waters -
| controlled and allowed.
|
| I've always wondered how subs handle tidal flows there, and
| how challenging the tidal flows are.
| Arnt wrote:
| No it isn't.
|
| Both of the two Chinese registries are open, pretty much anyone
| can register ships there. It's a bit like the .tv domain -- if
| you see something.tv you can't assume that it's a company in
| the country Tuvalu.
|
| Look at the nationality of the captain and the beneficial owner
| instead.
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| Right. So they might need some motivation to change that.
| a-french-anon wrote:
| So, when do we know it's not just another operation Northwoods?
| Gualdrapo wrote:
| Going from fishing illegally in south american waters to damaging
| internet cables in Europe.
| selimnairb wrote:
| I guess WWIV has been on a slow burn for going on three years
| now.
| queuebert wrote:
| More like since Deng Xiaoping initiated the modern Chinese
| economic strategy in the '80s to control the West through
| trade.
| RevEng wrote:
| The West did a fine job of this themselves. Outsourcing to
| poorer countries is what has made the West so wealthy for so
| long - goods whose price is subsidized by cheap labor. Now
| that China and other countries have caught up, the West
| doesn't get the same discount, but they also don't have their
| own manufacturing because they all outsourced. We did this to
| ourselves.
| p2detar wrote:
| Very much this. We could have also used that time to
| advance and perfect on-demand production like 3D-printing,
| enhance our society by promoting more robust and prone to
| repair products, but instead we clinched on mass-
| consumption and profit. Our whole economic system needs
| recheck.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Sorry best we can do is an incompetent admin full of 3rd
| rate celebrities who explicitly want to dismantle
| everything our ancestors built with a side of outright
| grift. The department of education is for losers. What do
| you mean half the country can't read at a high school
| level?
| VyseofArcadia wrote:
| Did I miss WWIII?
| nickpp wrote:
| Also, Russia is sabotaging European satellites:
|
| https://nltimes.nl/2024/11/15/dutch-childrens-channel-outage...
| geor9e wrote:
| To be less ambiguous in word choice, they jammed a satellite
| from the ground. Russians used a ground based dish to spoof a
| TV station signal to a repeater satellite, causing TV stations
| near Ukraine to go down and show an interference error. I'm
| just clarifying because "sabotage" could mean any number of
| more costly and damaging things, like a spy loosening a bolt
| before launch or something.
| https://nos.nl/nieuwsuur/artikel/2544558-verantwoording-en-b...
| matthewfelgate wrote:
| China will do more and more of this as the USA withdraws from
| policing the world.
| fjfaase wrote:
| It looks like that the pilot ship Styrbjoern [1] came along side
| the Yi Peng 3 today. It traveled from the harbor of Grenaa to the
| ship and back. It possible that they took some people in for
| questioning or put a pilot and/or guards on the ship.
|
| [1] https://www.vesselfinder.com/?mmsi=219003826
| adverbly wrote:
| Should be very easy to verify if this was the cause.
|
| All you have to do at this point is go look at the cable near the
| crossings.
|
| If there is evidence of an anchor hitting the cables in both of
| these locations then you've got pretty clear proof.
|
| Someone should obviously be checking into this right now. No
| point speculating until it's confirmed really.
|
| I guess you might still want to board just to find out weather
| there is any evidence of intent rather than negligence in the
| case that this is confirmed to be the cause...
| ActionHank wrote:
| At best fall guy captain will claim ignorance, malfunction, or
| negligence. Retire or move to some cushy job.
|
| No one will want to implicate China in something that would
| support Russia's war and would all be afraid of the economic
| fallout.
| Etheryte wrote:
| This is not how ship registration works. A useful model is to
| think of a ship's flag like a tld, just because a site is .cn
| doesn't mean the company is based out of China. Ships usually
| fly one flag or another based on tax and legislative reasons,
| and it's often unrelated to the country of origin.
|
| The ship suspected of breaking the cables has been
| apprehended and it turns out it was currently sailing from
| Russia with a Russian captain [0].
|
| [0] https://x.com/visegrad24/status/1859132263746744367
| godelski wrote:
| > The speed of cargo ship Yi Peng 3 was affected negatively as
| she passed the 2 Baltic Sea cable breaks C-Lion 1 and BSC.
| > Before the incidents she held normal speeds. After stopping
| and drifting for 70 minutes she again held normal speeds. By
| this time the two cables were broken. > No. I
| checked the 5 most close ships heading the same way. They did
| not slow down similarly in the same wind. The ship most closely
| resembling Yi Peng 3 actually sped up. The Lady Hanneke.
|
| Some additional information: - Putin calls the
| region "NATO Lake" - German Defense Minister has called
| the line failure sabotage - Danish Naval ships are now
| shadowing Yi Peng
|
| It's unlikely that all information will become public in any
| meaningful time. I assure you, * _someone*_ is checking on this
| and verifying. But as is common with many acts like this one
| side is operating on (not so) "plausible deniability" while
| the other is just not going to publicly declare an accusation
| but continue to watch more closely. It's like when a mob boss
| says "it would be a shame if something were to happen". This
| isn't evidence in of itself, but contextually it is suspicious
| as hell.
|
| The other part is that explicit accusations create a lot of
| political tensions. Obviously so does the actual act of
| sabotage. But definitive proof is quite difficult to actually
| reach. Unless there is literally a letter on that captain's
| desk from a military leader ordering the action (a "smoking
| gun") then it is easy to just blame the captain and/or crew, as
| Hank mentions. After all, a country should not be blamed for
| the actions of individual citizens not made with the direction
| of that country, though it is also important that countries
| hold their citizens accountable. Accusations will more depend
| on how hawkish the leaders are. Obviously all countries play
| games like this, but certainly some are more aggressive than
| others. One major country loves to play the victim card while
| creating "red lines" which violate international laws. So take
| it as you will
| bobbob1921 wrote:
| What I don't understand - if the yi peng was intentionally trying
| to damage the FO cables, why would they not spoof or disable
| their AIS data/broadcast (ship tracking transponder which is the
| source of this positioning data we see). Anyone have some insight
| on that?
| wlll wrote:
| AIS is required for large ships in many if not most
| jurisdictions, to have it turned off is suspicious in itself.
| If you turn it off then re-appear later on somewhere else
| having had to traverse the area where the cables where at the
| time they got damaged, that's suspicious. You could turn it off
| in port, head out, cut the cables then return and turn it on
| again, but the window of time you had it off would straddle the
| cable damage time, and there's a high chance you would have
| been documented (video, radio traffic) leaving port in that
| time, and depending on the departure port it may be hard to
| leave without AIS on as the authorities may notice.
| Already__Taken wrote:
| fishing boats and military often have it off btw.
| stainablesteel wrote:
| fishing boats turn it off when they're in places they're
| not supposed to fish
| AllegedAlec wrote:
| Chinese fishing boats specifically.
| hinkley wrote:
| Do we need to get James Cameron and associates to design a
| DitchWitch that can operate at 2 miles down? How deep can ship
| anchors go?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| They already use such a thing.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_layer
|
| > Cable ships also use "plows" that are suspended under the
| vessel. These plows use jets of high-pressure water to bury
| cable three feet (0.91 m) under the sea floor, which prevents
| fishing vessels from snagging cables as thrall their nets.
| jmward01 wrote:
| Completely aside from the cable discussion, I'm glad this was on
| bsky. I could finally follow the comments in the link again. I
| hope this trend continues.
| FlyingSnake wrote:
| BlueSky has attained critical mass and it is the next
| generation of microblogging. We're witnessing the long awaited
| dethroning of twitter and it will end up ceding the space like
| Reddit did.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Until users get disenchanted with it and move to the next
| thing....
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| Actually that bit I care less about.
| moomin wrote:
| I never got disenchanted with Twitter. It got boring. If it
| had stayed the same I'd still be on there complaining about
| it.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Transitioning from not finding it boring to finding it
| boring is exactly being disenchanted with it.
| CalChris wrote:
| ... which is the way it should be. Users vote with their
| fingers and eyeballs.
| FlyingSnake wrote:
| That's the whole point. These next gen protocols make it
| easy enough to move on to the next thing.
| chx wrote:
| Yes but bluesky _does not_ let you do that!
|
| https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/02/ulysses-pact/
| rikthevik wrote:
| Yeah dude. There will be a next thing.
|
| "Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be
| assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a
| way around or through it. If nothing within you stays
| rigid, outward things will disclose themselves.
|
| Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you
| put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water
| into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a
| teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it
| can crash. Be water, my friend."
|
| - Bruce Lee
| mardifoufs wrote:
| I mean, it's still a very small niche website of again,
| mostly tech related westerners. Twitter is much more diverse
| danielovichdk wrote:
| Diverse is probably a stretch.
|
| More like an echo chamber for the choir preachers.
| dogleash wrote:
| > very small niche website of again, mostly tech related
| westerners
|
| That's what they want. A social club with an overton window
| they like.
|
| It's designed for mass userbase so it can feel like a big
| party that "everybody" is at. But once "everybody" includes
| their parents then the party is over.
| Postosuchus wrote:
| Nope. -\\_(tsu)_/-
| jonas21 wrote:
| What happened to Reddit? AFAIK, they're bigger than ever now.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| In any of the larger subreddits, the posts are heavily
| repost bots and the top comments stolen from the last time
| it was posted.
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| It's also astroturfed to death, including moderation.
| Cyph0n wrote:
| Astroturfing and moderator controlled subreddits have
| ruined Reddit for me. /r/worldnews is one example of the
| latter.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| Someone analysed a popular post and found that 19 of the
| top 20 comments were bots.
|
| The Dead Internet theory is all too true.
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| I think some of the community will also move to substack
| talldayo wrote:
| As an outsider, I've always associated Bluesky/Twitter with
| "volitile but potentially cutting-edge reporting" and
| followed it but with a grain of salt.
|
| When I see an article on Substack I always assume the
| worst. The signal-to-noise ratio is lower on Medium and
| Substack than any other social platform I browse, which is
| a tragic indictment of where long-form blogging has gone.
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| As with all social media, it's about who you follow. I've
| found it particularly attractive for international
| reporting, albeit typically with some clear bent or
| polemic.
| treyd wrote:
| It still seems to require JavaScript be enabled to render
| anything.
| burkaman wrote:
| Here's an alternative frontend you can use that doesn't
| require javascript: https://blueviewer.pages.dev/view?actor=a
| uonsson.bsky.social...
| knowitnone wrote:
| They'll obviously point the finger at another country
| kkfx wrote:
| Ahem... Cui prodest/cui bono?
|
| What kind of interest Chinese could have to damage such cables?
| IMVHO ZERO. Also I doubt Russians have interests to do so.
|
| Who could be interested?
|
| - some private company for makes and insurance/the public pay to
| fix something who need money from the owner for other reasons
| (like I break on purpose my car to get it repaired for free or at
| least less money than what it would costing me avoiding the self-
| sabotage);
|
| - some countries wanting war at all costs trying to create a
| casus belli to justify the push toward WWIII
|
| - some countries experimenting the resilience of their infra
|
| I fails to see any other potentially interested party.
| rafinha wrote:
| If a cable goes down, isn't the traffic just re-routed? Don't see
| the point of intentional damage here.
| hnuser123456 wrote:
| Cost of new anchor = X
|
| Cost of fixing cable = >>X
|
| Damage = done
| nessbot wrote:
| Dunno what the real reason is, but it's easy to see possible a
| intentional reason: Testing to see how it well it works and how
| other nations respond.
| coriny wrote:
| Botswana is well in the top half of least-corrupt countries. I
| suspect you know nothing about Ukraine or Botswana.
| byearthithatius wrote:
| YESS!! Finally a bsky link instead of X. Hope this is how it is
| from now on.
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