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Comment by ktsaver | Hacker News Reader

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

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

We see right now what an actual Russian retaliation for ATACMS strikes looks like: Oreshnik, taking out energy infrastructure in Ukraine, etc. Certainly the visual effects of Oreshnik were greater than a cable cut that just reduces gamer latency in Finland for a couple of days.

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

Russian ships got away with doing the anchor drag sabotage multiple times already such as in Norway in 2021 on a remote research station https://youtu.be/pw2lO4sxZn8

There was a NYTimes article that said Russian GRU agency has turned to recruiting petty criminals to do arson and shootings across Europe because most of their spies have been kicked out. And the main side effect is they are sloppy and easy to catch unlike professionals.

Very likely in this case.

It's much easier and cheaper to support criminals and criminal organizations in western countries to sow division and destruction, instead of installing their own networks. Hell, they managed to get criminal elected in USA, for a second time. I wonder when the west stop sleeping and start doing something about it. Or is everyone waiting for real nuke strikes and fallout, like in the Hollywood movies?

There is nothing particularly new about today's modern politics. Here is a rant by George Carlin from 1988 about a previous government nearly 40 years ago:

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.

Honestly, I'm not finding it very easy to imagine a Chinese captain speaking Russian, nor that said captain would think its perfectly normal to encounter a Chinese speaking Russian.

And what is the pitch? "Hey, how about committing a very visible crime you will get caught doing and will risk your ability to ever captain again?" Oh yes, very enticing.

Do you imagine that all the worlds sea captains, when in foreign ports, cannot communicate with anyone there?

There was quite likely a large sum of money involved.

The pitch is dubious, but China and Russia share a border. Chinese speaking Russians and Russian speaking Chinese are a dime a dozen.

Isn't it more plausible that it was an accident? Anchors cut these cables all the time.

No, because the ship was zigzagging over the sea cable.

Just to be clear: that is a claim not a fact.

100 miles of anchor dragging is a lot.

Such a big boat cannot zigzag. Do you have any links?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42268849

Big boats cannot turn? It just takes longer and is harder to hide but all boats can do it.

Do you have a source on that?

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.

best slam poetry contender I've seen on HN yet!

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

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

Well, the "big explosions" have led Sweden and Finland to apply for Nato membership (and actually get it after various delays caused by Putin's allies) after staying neutral for almost 75 years. And everyone knows that Russia has missiles, so Oreshnik only demonstrated that they actually work (which I think no one seriously doubted either). The question is just whether Russia is willing to use these missiles (and maybe worse) against other targets too...

> Oreshnik only demonstrated that they actually work (which I think no one seriously doubted either)

Actually, many people started to seriously doubt anything that Russia says, especially concerning their military power in the light of their spectacular failures especially at the beginning of the war.

Regarding their nuclear arsenal from Soviet times, we are right to doubt in what shape it is and whether it could pose more damage to other countries or Russia itself.

As for Oreshnik, we have no idea how many copies they actually have, but at least the USA have practiced successfully intercepting hypersonic missiles already several years ago. I doubt they would export the tech to Ukraine, though.

We were told that the Iron Dome works, yet the relatively slow Iranian ballistic missiles got through in large numbers.

Now the U.S. ships a small number of THAAD missiles to Israel, presumably in the hope of testing THAAD under real world conditions.

Patriot missiles in Ukraine do not have a 100% intercept rate. What is the new miracle weapon that is supposed to intercept 18 hypersonic MIRVS in a single IRBM?

Perhaps withdrawing from the INF treaty in 2018 wasn't such a great idea. Perhaps reverting to SS20/PershingII times is not such a great idea. Back then the German Green Party owed much of its existence to protesting both. Now it is an obedient war party.

Since the U.S. wants to station IRBMs in Germany, thereby making it the primary nuclear playground again while being safe itself: Will Germany also get these anti-IRBM wonder weapons and will they actually work?

> Will Germany also get these anti-IRBM wonder weapons and will they actually work?

Sure, you just have to pay ;)

-- Lockheed Martin

What big explosions are you referring to?

Wrong person, its tokai that introduced the term.

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

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

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

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

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

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

You think NATO doesn't do similar things? It's just that they don't tell us because it'd reflect poorly on the narrative that we're the good guys.

But for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93U.S._RQ-170_incid...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

> The crew on the ship were Russian nationals.

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].

1: https://archive.is/3weox

2: https://www.svt.se/nyheter/utrikes/kina-redo-att-samarbeta-o...

Good point. I think I am conflating this event with the Oct 2023 event, which was done by a Chinese flagged ship owned by Torgmoll [0] - the Russian operated that manages Russia-China export logistics [1]

[0] - https://www.thebarentsobserver.com/news/sister-ships-of-want...

[1] - https://www.dnb.com/business-directory/company-profiles.torg...

It wasn't a sailor, it was the maritime pilot from the port it departed. He left the ship before the incident.

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

Just like the Nord Stream, huh?

It's the Nord Stream even a topic anymore? It was a shameful project from the start with the involvement of corrupted politicians like Schroeder (the guy had the balls to sue the Bundestag after all this...). It's an embarrassement for everyone and it's good it's gone.

I hope one day after Putin dies Russia becomes a free country and at that point we could consider using this pipeline - or even build more! But now it's just an infamous piece of infra nobody wants to deal with.

Lol, because the other places we get fuel from are beacons of democracy.

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

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

In sweden a while ago they ran news about a "russian spy whale".

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.

> the first suspicion is a conspiracy throry about Russian involvement.

Would you agree that this suspicion is a good base hypothesis for most forms of suspected sabotage?

> the first suspicion is a conspiracy throry about Russian involvement

Its not war propaganda when there is actually a lot of proven "hybrid warfare" being conducted by Russia. This fits perfectly in their MO

Here is today's news piece on hybrid warfare Russia is doing

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/russia-behind-staggerin...

>conducted by Russia

Conducted by everyone, including the US and the west (in fact, I'm positive that we are the best at it).

Not the sabotage under discussion. Which can have only one actor behind it.

The closest what I can call it is whataboutism. Russia is actively trying to provoke the West in various ways. The most that West is doing is helping Ukraine to defend itself. We are not gathering poor immigrants into planes and transporting them to borders with Finland, Poland etc. instructing them to push their way to the other side. We are not sending inflammable materials via commercial airplanes. And we are not killing Russian spies in Moscow like they did with Lytvynenko.

As for Putin being upset with the West helping Ukraine: they can stop it at any moment. It's enough they stop attacking Ukraine and go home, as simple as that.

To be fair if we were the best at it, we would probably have less obvious / more easily deniable methods of getting our way.

> 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.

> Conducted by everyone, including the US and the west

No we don't unless you think helping a victim defend against an aggressor is on the same level

Biden said he'd explode the gas pipeline… then the gas pipeline blows up… And we can't even suspect USA was involved?

Exactly comrade, same when a personality that opposes Putin is assassinated on Putin's birthday all non Russians start with conspiracies when the FSB clearly told us it is a coincidence. Same when critics f Putin die from falling from windows, or when people Putin named traitors get posissoned with nerve gas, tons of consp[conspiracies.

Can;t it be just a coincidence that all this people die and Putin is not a giant criminal? Russians do not like criminals, they would not worship criminals like Stalin, Putin, the Wagner guy

/sarcasm

You realise putin isn't communist right?

>You realise putin isn't communist right? reply

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.

>The article cites Russian involvement again

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

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

Do you mock people in wheelchairs for not being able to walk also? Holy jeez man.

Paying the captain of a cargo vessel to damage an undersea cable by dragging his anchor for 160km isn't exactly a conspiracy theory that requires Russian "omnipotence".

Most people I know think the Ukrainians blew up Nordstream.

[flagged]

HN isn't actively censoring anything in that way, and we've always been clear that nationalistic attacks are not allowed against any nation or national group here.

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....

> HN isn't actively censoring anything in that way

Well dunno… you're responding to a deleted comment that I can't read. Maybe he had a point about censoring :D

Not deleted—we only ever delete comments when the author asks us to, and they show as [deleted], not [dead].

[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.)

Ah thanks, I can read it now.

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