Finland, Sweden complete repairs on Baltic Sea cables
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It seems unlikely that the Chinese would get involved at the behest of the Russians. Russia depends on China now and not vice versa.
We see right now what an actual Russian retaliation for ATACMS strikes looks like: Oreshnik, taking out energy infrastructure in Ukraine, etc. Certainly the visual effects of Oreshnik were greater than a cable cut that just reduces gamer latency in Finland for a couple of days.
Actually, many people started to seriously doubt anything that Russia says, especially concerning their military power in the light of their spectacular failures especially at the beginning of the war.
Regarding their nuclear arsenal from Soviet times, we are right to doubt in what shape it is and whether it could pose more damage to other countries or Russia itself.
As for Oreshnik, we have no idea how many copies they actually have, but at least the USA have practiced successfully intercepting hypersonic missiles already several years ago. I doubt they would export the tech to Ukraine, though.
Now the U.S. ships a small number of THAAD missiles to Israel, presumably in the hope of testing THAAD under real world conditions.
Patriot missiles in Ukraine do not have a 100% intercept rate. What is the new miracle weapon that is supposed to intercept 18 hypersonic MIRVS in a single IRBM?
Perhaps withdrawing from the INF treaty in 2018 wasn't such a great idea. Perhaps reverting to SS20/PershingII times is not such a great idea. Back then the German Green Party owed much of its existence to protesting both. Now it is an obedient war party.
Since the U.S. wants to station IRBMs in Germany, thereby making it the primary nuclear playground again while being safe itself: Will Germany also get these anti-IRBM wonder weapons and will they actually work?
Sure, you just have to pay ;)
-- Lockheed Martin
Source?
A source. I need a source.
Sorry, I mean I need a source that explicitly states your argument. This is just tangential to the discussion.
No, you can't make inferences and observations from the sources you've gathered. Any additional comments from you MUST be a subset of the information from the sources you've gathered.
You can't make normative statements from empirical evidence.
Do you have a degree in that field?
A college degree? In that field?
Then your arguments are invalid.
No, it doesn't matter how close those data points are correlated. Correlation does not equal causation.
Correlation does not equal causation.
CORRELATION. DOES. NOT. EQUAL. CAUSATION.
You still haven't provided me a valid source yet.
Nope, still haven't.
There was a NYTimes article that said Russian GRU agency has turned to recruiting petty criminals to do arson and shootings across Europe because most of their spies have been kicked out. And the main side effect is they are sloppy and easy to catch unlike professionals.
Very likely in this case.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=og9DV0Si8bs
You can pretty much find-replace terms to closely match what we imagine George would say in 2028.
So nothing really changes, and the broad general positions of the parties doesn't really change. People just have short memories.
And what is the pitch? "Hey, how about committing a very visible crime you will get caught doing and will risk your ability to ever captain again?" Oh yes, very enticing.
And if you mention this, you're an instant suspect of taking part in a Russian disinformation campaign.
Its not war propaganda when there is actually a lot of proven "hybrid warfare" being conducted by Russia. This fits perfectly in their MO
Conducted by everyone, including the US and the west (in fact, I'm positive that we are the best at it).
As for Putin being upset with the West helping Ukraine: they can stop it at any moment. It's enough they stop attacking Ukraine and go home, as simple as that.
> As for Putin being upset with the West helping Ukraine: they can stop it at any moment. It's enough they stop attacking Ukraine and go home, as simple as that.
The way I see it, staying in the war to force a treatise is Putin’s only option to preserve his regime, as well as his intention from the start, not anticipating the US prolonging the conflict.
No we don't unless you think helping a victim defend against an aggressor is on the same level
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/russia-behind-staggerin...
Would you agree that this suspicion is a good base hypothesis for most forms of suspected sabotage?
Can;t it be just a coincidence that all this people die and Putin is not a giant criminal? Russians do not like criminals, they would not worship criminals like Stalin, Putin, the Wagner guy
/sarcasm
I know, I did not said Putin is communist, he is a criminal but many Russians and some in Ukraine are still soviets in mentality, my point is that Russans think that criminals are good leaders, because they are though and Ruzzia needs to be tough and reclaim half of Europe because some fake history book said that Ruzzia has the right to dominate this people.
It's actually a whale with some harness, nothing attached to the harness, that has lived around norway and sweden for several years… So in no way connected to ukraine. But the title and the article just look better that way.
> It seems unlikely that the Chinese would get involved at the behest of the Russians. Russia depends on China now and not vice versa
1. Russia still has significant autonomy and is not a "client state" yet.
The Russia-Ukraine War itself was a major blow for Chinese ambitions - much of China's naval (eg. Aircraft carriers [0]) and aerospace technology (eg. Turbofan Jet Engines [1]) exists thanks to Ukraine's defense industry in the 2000s and 2010s. Ukraine was also one of China's largest Belt and Road Initiative (BRI/OBOR) partners in Europe [7], which has all now gone to smoke.
Russia's rapprochement with NK is also worrisome for China, as China is trying to negotiate a three-way free trade agreement [2] with South Korea and Japan which collapsed as both view North Korea as an existential threat [3], and North Korea has pivoted towards Russia for military cooperation because China has also unofficially committed to North Korean denuclearization in order to unblock the China-South Korea-Japan FTA [4]
2. The crew on the ship were Russian nationals. The ship was China flagged, and realistically this was probably a Russian operation. This fiasco came at a horrible time, as European policymakers are in the process of adding additional tarriffs on China and de-coupling from China, and this fiasco only proved that point.
3. Even Russia doesn't want to become a client state of China. This is why Russia has been wooing North Korea as leverage as NK has become increasingly anti-China [5], and diversifying trade relations by leveraging India, especially because it was Russia that mediated between China and India during the 2020 Galwan Crisis which almost became a China-India War [6]
-------------
All in all, the Russia-Ukraine War was a massive failure for Chinese ambitions, and treating Russia and China as part of a single axis doesn't make sense.
[0] - https://galeapps.gale.com/apps/auth?userGroupName=mlin_oweb&...
[1] - https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/Portals/10/CASI/documents/R...
[2] - https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Trade/China-Japan-and-South-...
[3] - https://www.nippon.com/en/in-depth/d01007/security-tensions-...
[4] - https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2024/05/844fe5afa077-japa...
[5] - https://www.joongang.co.kr/article/25278704
[6] - https://www.deccanherald.com/world/how-russia-and-singapore-...
Citation needed. The sources I can find (e.g. [1]) claim that the vessel "is captained by a Chinese national and includes a Russian sailor". The first part can be verified by the strong accent of the radio operator [2].
2: https://www.svt.se/nyheter/utrikes/kina-redo-att-samarbeta-o...
[0] - https://www.thebarentsobserver.com/news/sister-ships-of-want...
[1] - https://www.dnb.com/business-directory/company-profiles.torg...
Everything gets blamed on Russia now. The press and politicians tells us Russia is both incompetent and omnipotent. "Normal" people on Twitter will accuse you of being a "Russian bot" if you have a slightly different opinion. We blamed the Russians for blowing up their own pipeline for no reason in particular. It's crazy.
Is this a meta-attack from Russia to flood the information space so that blaming Russia becomes something people ignore? Hmmm....
Most people I know think the Ukrainians blew up Nordstream.
What is true that the HN community (though highly international) is mostly Western, so there's a bias in favor of Western points of view and some difficulty in opening to non-Western points of view. We try to help with this where we can, but there's not a lot we can do.
Among the many problems with this is that minority participants—that is, the ones with contrarian or minority views—tend to feel embattled and to defensively break the site guidelines themselves. (You've done that in your own post here, for example.) That puts the moderators in a quandary: we want minority viewpoints to be heard fairly, but we can't condone the guidelines breakage. I wrote about this recently if anyone cares: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41948722, and there's plenty more at https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que....
Well dunno… you're responding to a deleted comment that I can't read. Maybe he had a point about censoring :D
[dead] comments are readable by anyone who wants to turn 'showdead' on in their profile. This is in the FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html.
In the case of the GP comment, it was [dead] because users flagged it. (I've unkilled it now though.)
I hope one day after Putin dies Russia becomes a free country and at that point we could consider using this pipeline - or even build more! But now it's just an infamous piece of infra nobody wants to deal with.
I mean, this is spy stuff here. It strains reason to expect that Russia would use only clearly identified Russian government vessels for its clandestine sabotage operations.
The Russians are testing our response and response times. They do it like this by cutting cables, they sail ships close to the border, they cross into our airspace.
Remember, in the 80s a Soviet submarine ""accidentally"" ran aground in southern Sweden. (Totally not spying on us btw)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_submarine_S-363
If real war happens, physically cutting communications will certainly be part of it.
But for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93U.S._RQ-170_incid...
Its not clear what form exactly this will take, or what has been asked, but I could guess that they've asked that the ship sail into Swedish territorial waters.
Dasvidaniya Putin! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1ozCWyUlCg
Article on this recently: https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2024/7/10/b...
An effective retaliation option, I guess kept in reserve, "just in case" retaliation is needed.
I know it's a mental shortcut and if we wanted to be precise it would quickly become unwieldy so just a quick note, also to self, that the Russians I know don't have and don't want to have anything to do with this, are fed up with what is going on and just want to live in peace.
Putin may achieve 80%+ support through rigged elections, but even without rigging, it's likely 60%+. So, it's not a simple dichotomy of the Russian people versus Putin - it's more complex.
That said, I also have Russian friends (many now former Russians) who passionately hate the current government and condemn its actions.
https://www.thebarentsobserver.com/news/declining-war-suppor...
This is the lowest support for the war in Russia since the beginning. I know the limitations of such polls but there is some truth behind them.
It would be good to hear how many that were in favor of ending the war because it's the right thing to do. Because it's unjust. Because it's an invasion of a sovereign nation. Not just "Because the sanctions make my butter too expensive".
The difference being that if the former number is over 50% that might mean the people would be for change, for new leadership and direction. If the latter is above 50 that just means people want cheaper butter. Perhaps wait a bit and try invading later. Or invade some weaker nation.
From a Russian perspective it’s not at all clear that it’s unjust; Ukraine was persecuting ethnic Russians and the initial claimed purpose of the war was to bring ethnic Russian regions back into Russia.
Tribalism is a powerful reality distortion force.
From what its current regime says for internal and external propaganda purposes.
It's just the regime's funhouse mirror presentation of that perspective.
There's no substance to the "Ukraine was persecuting ethnic Russians" line, in any case.
What matters is -- it's just plain delusional.
Edit: Not sure what the downvote is. It's factually true. I don't think that necessarily means it's a bad idea or that it's a red line that should be observed when all other red lines are obviously illusions.
Even 10 years ago this was no longer true. Putin completely quashed the oligarchy -- and what he succeeded in building in its place has been by far the strongest one-man system the country has seen since Stalin. The oligarchy will likely have some success in reasserting itself, at least for a while after he croaks/fades in a few years.
His eventual successor will quite likely be another similar leader.
You almost want to wish, right?
The problem with the system he created is that it can only be managed by someone very much like himself. But Putin's really quite unusual, both for Russia and when compared with virtually any leader we've ever known anywhere.
His "successor" will likely be an effective power vacuum, visible to the outside world as an open-ended period of instability. It's entirely possible (likely even) that the security agencies will try to someone up the flagpole again, at least for a while. But it's difficult to imagine that person having the actual battery of intelligence, skills -- and sheer force of will -- to run things the way Putin has.
See also: Такого как Путин - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zk_VszbZa_s
> regardless of the power he has, Putin is still a product of the system.
Yes, and the system in question is FSB, or vaguely siloviki in general, not the business elite. It's extremely decentralized.
Plenty of cables.
BUT this is a test by the Russians of our response.
You people always try to either downplay or exaggerate.
"oh nothing happened so it is fine" or "waowh internet totally went down!!!" This is also propaganda to try an minimize the Russians actions.
Now that they've repaired the damage they should know, right?
Or was this whole thing all just manufactured accusations and scaremongering by the western governments and press?
They knew what they were doing.
Don't try and play coy ruskie.
And that it was deliberate?
Are you talking about the Chinese ship? Why would they do that?
fyi I'm a westerner, just maybe not so enveloped in the bubble so many of you seem to be.
Deliberate? If it was not they would say so.
China and Russia are allies against the west.
I am fine here in my bubble of truth. And I get it, I really do. You saw some Oliver Stone films that lists all the bad things the EU and USA has done and saw Michel Moore go to Cuba for cancer treatment.
But now, Russia especially is worse. The Cold War never ended. The west knows best, not in EVERYTHING, free healthcare, university, and access to abortion is good, but we have all that in Sweden an EU country. There is no need to go full commie my dude.
So how do you know this 'fact' then? It's possible it was deliberate of course. But for now there is only circumstantial evidence and brazen finger-pointing at Russia, just like Nordstream. Except in that case it was most likely the US, not Russia.
"I am fine here in my bubble of truth."
lol, none are so blind as those who will not even look.
Of course Russia is a corrupt dictatorship with a deliberate policy of sowing lies and chaos, and China is on the same road. But look at your (our) own governments, they are far from the angels you seem to believe them to be.
"Both sides equally bad" is a Russian talking point/propaganda. You fell for it, congrats.
Has the USA and EU/WEST done bad things. Yes. Is there corruption? Yes.
But at least my country has all indoor plumbing... like at some point one thing is better over the other. For quality of life I would rather be in the EU rather than the USA sure.
You cannot put western governments to a perfect standard and russia/china as inperfect. China is trying the same sneaky shit being classed as Third World country for climate and economy to get grants.
I used a little critical thinking to determine that western governments also lie and manipulate, especially in cases like this, cold war situation. If that's a Russian talking-point, well, maybe they're right to point a finger back at us. Something about throwing stones in a glasshouse.
'hybrid warfare', 'Russian spy ships", 'Russian saboteurs', etc are all talking points and propaganda of western governments (let alone the Nordstream sabotage) but we're expected to blindly ignore all that that because they're 'on our side'?
No I say USA is much worse (supporting genocide in Palestine, currently, but the list is long).
What I'd like is for NATO to be disbanded and EU to do its own thing.
Perhaps not the 'who' but certainly the 'done it'.
If there's something to the content of whatever you're pointing people at - please summarize.
What is publicly known this time: when and where the cables were cut (locations approximately, times accurately), and that there's a Chinese ship (Yi Peng 3) that was followed by Danish navy vessels, and the ship has been anchored for a week with constant guard from German and Danish (and possibly Swedish) navy.
There's a video[1] by a Finnish sea captain with MarineTraffic history access going over the track of YP3. Since it's in Finnish, a brief summary (or try your luck with auto-translation):
1) The ship sets off with a speed of 9-10 knots, but then slows down to 5-6 knots for 400 km or so, before returning to 9-10 knots. While weather could be a factor, other ships in the area experience no slowdowns. 2) The ship crosses the cables right around the reported break times. 3) There is an additional slowdown to 3-4 knots near a known underwater sand ridge. 4) The ships heading jumps around a bit; again, the other ships do not do this. 5) There is a missing portion in AIS data; however, this is seen with other ships as well.
Now, this is all circumstantial evidence, but is consistent with dragging the anchor on the seafloor for an extended period of time. Calling it sabotage would require establishing malicious intent, of course.