Sweden Seizes Ship Suspected of Baltic Sea 'Sabotage'
barrons.com
barrons.com
This is very much at odds with the government stances in the Baltic.
So what is the political messaging happening in the US and why?
If it quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, it is a Russian spy.
[0] https://www.lloydslist.com/LL1151955/Russia-linked-cable-cut...
But also yeah, the opinion of authorities I see quoted in Swedish and Finnish press has been very clear they don’t think this is accidental.
I’ve lived by the Baltic for much of my life, had many many years of nothing like this, then suddenly every week Russian ships “accidentally” cuts critical cables.
No reason to spread rumours, that’s how seeds of doubt are sown; the evidence is plain as day without manufactured stories
This comment is correct & shouldn't be downvoted.
It did not say that the trip where the ship was seized was one of those sailings.
Has there really been no other accidents like these? It feels like this is something that been happening for a long time, but not until recently the news started reporting on it.
I seem to remember some event back in 2022 already, around Bornholm I think. I'm sure there are more as well, damaged communication lines seems to happen all the time.
Have any of them actually been confirmed to be deliberate actions, or is this your hypothesis? Last time I checked on older incidents, they seem to all have been proper accidents, but I haven't checked on the last ones.
> There have not been this many accidents in such a short timespan, limited to such a small geographical area.
Yeah, ~7 events in the last 12 months (or what it is) does sound like a lot. I'm having a hard time finding some credible source listing all incidents though, so we could compare year-by-year, because I'm sure the news also reports a lot more about it, than before.
Linked from another comment: https://blog.telegeography.com/what-happens-when-submarine-c...
> Cable faults are common. On average, there are over 100 each year. [...] Unintentional damage from fishing vessels and ships dragging anchors account for two-thirds of all cable faults.
100 each year would be one every three days, but of course you don't read about all them in the news.
I'm not saying none of the cable breakages are sabotage, I/we don't know. As far as we know, I don't think we have any cases (with or without confession) where we can be 100% it's intentional, at least yet.
https://blog.telegeography.com/hs-fs/hubfs/2017/submarine-ca...
74% human caused (38% fishing, 25% anchorage, 11% other)
14% environmental (8% natural, 6% abrasion)
12% neither human nor environmental (6% component failure, 6% other)
"Deliberate sabotage and shark bites are exceedingly rare"
Some European countries are very aware of the Russian threat. Germany is very much dragging behind on this, possibly due to Russian money.
(also thinking of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plame_affair - US "burned" the cover of one of their own spies as retribution for making a politically unacceptable statement)
But why must it fail here, when it worked in germany? Why must it fail in syria, egypt, libya, over and over?
Japan and South Korea ended up as "one and a half party states": peaceful, not a lot of overt oppression, but not exactly diverse democracies either.
I could write an essay on how Iraq failed, but I'm sure others have done a better job out there.
I understand pro-Russian outlets want people to believe that, but I find it very hard to believe that intelligence agencies would honestly believe that.
Personally I think nations on the Baltic should simply ban Russian or Russian-originating ships from their waters. And if they really want to pretend these "accidents" are caused by a sudden use of inexperienced crews, set some standards for crew training and expertise for ships sailing through their waters. Require them to hire experienced crew that know these waters well. Inspect them at the very least.
Just allowing the sabotage to continue is a bad idea.
You are thinking of the EEZ, exclusive economic zone, but that's only the rights for fishing and mining and so on.
And it is kinda weird to sanction a country because of its illegitimate war, while still letting their ships through your waters. And it's not like Russia has no other access to the sea.
> A Nordic official briefed on the investigation said conditions on the tanker were abysmal. “We’ve always gone out with the assumption that shadow fleet vessels are in bad shape,” the official said. “But this was even worse than we thought.”
The last thing Russia wants is to draw attention to the boats it's using to keep its economy afloat. These seamen really didn't know what they were doing.
That's not true. While well maintained equipment would require a specific action, it is not uncommon for accidental anchor drops to happen, typically due to poorly or improperly maintained equipment. It's also common that ship is unaware that it has dropped the anchor (depending on the depth of the water, the anchor may not even have much effect, but even if it does it's not always identified).
For example, here's a report from a US based ship accidentally dragging anchor for a couple days: https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/...
Anchors are something you drop when stationary or nearly stationary in order to stay stationary. They aren't something you drop accidentally as you are going along.
So legitimate accidental anchor damage is generally close shore.
Does it still look like just a coincidence that suddenly there're many more accidents in this region? :)
[1] - https://blog.telegeography.com/what-happens-when-submarine-c... (telecoms intel service/site)
That's once every 14.6 days, worldwide.
I think most of us thought these incidents were exceptionally rare, so a recurring pattern of incidents itself would be suggestive of nefarious behavior. 'Oddly' enough the frequency datum was omitted from seemingly every single article on this topic.
[1] - https://www.iscpc.org/publications/submarine-cable-protectio...
It'd be good to know what the frequency is in the baltic area and if this is abnormal. Seems the locals think it is.
Last incident involved a Bulgarian ship that was Maltese-flagged. Before that it was a Chinese ship I think. I don't even Russia would be stupid enough to send Russian ships to do Russian sabotage, but maybe I underestimate their willingness to "show off".
> Just allowing the sabotage to continue is a bad idea.
Plenty of information to learn by not run into situations without observing the behavior first. It seems like the last incident they were watching on standby as soon as they dropped their anchor, but they were standing by and observing until they tried to dock.
Two things to temper this mentality:
1) It is possible that we are seeing more news of this because it’s politicised, even if it is as common as before.
2) It is possible that there are more ships using this route as land traffic is stymied by sanctions from the Eurozone.
Not making any statement, just steelmanning opposition to the statement you made.
I honestly think anyone using the words "simply" or "just" doesn't know enough about a situation.
> ban Russian
Do you mean the nationality of the ship's flag state, owner, beneficiary owner, constructor, charterer, captain, any of the crew, the origin of any of its cargo?
I'm not an expert in shipping and I've probably missed a few other sources of nationality. The point I'd like to get across is that merchant ships are very international. Unlike warships, which are built, owned and operated by a specific nation's navy, there is rarely a specific nationality merchant ship.
If your nation bans merchant ships (based on some specific criteria), all it means is they get fewer goods by sea and they'll be more expensive.
A specific nation's maritime interests are chiefly that any merchant ships get to and from them, as well as their explicit warships having passage.
This issue is about cable damage by the Chinese-owned, currently (but not formerly) Chinese-flagged, Chinese-built, Chinese-captained merchant ship the Yi Peng 3. Some nations accuse it of committing sabotage, for which they don't have hard evidence, and they don't accuse China, they accuse Russia, and they claim that somehow the evil Russians influenced the Chinese captain, or one of the crew, to drag their anchor on the seabed. But only after they departed a Russian port... even though these nations' evidence is supposedly encrypted transmissions between the ship and Russia, which could also have been sent before docking in Russia... or even sent to any ship in the area, including ones not docking in Russia. Any nation can send messages to any ship, regardless of who owns, runs or hires it.
> or Russian-originating ships
Do you mean a full naval blockade of Kaliningrad and Leningrad oblasts? By who? All of Denmark, Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Sweden and Finland? That'd be enormous, hard to enforce, and would almost certainly be taken as a declaration of war.
Or were you imagining just a blockade of the Baltic Straits by Denmark, in violation of the Copenhagen Convention of 1857? The last time the straits were shut was by the Nazis when they occupied Denmark, because they were at war with most other nations.
Or do you mean, by "Russian-originating", any ship that has docked at any Russian port in its recent history? Merchant shipping is the Amazon delivery of the sea, they just keep going, taking on cargo and offloading it in different countries on the most cost-effective route possible.
> set some standards for crew training and expertise
Already exists: the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STCW_Convention
> Inspect them at the very least
Already the power and duty of harbourmasters, and a ship can already be stopped or escorted by a nation's navy if it's in their exclusive economic area or territorial waters.
Dropping the anchor could have been done by any one of the crew, bribed by Russia after meeting with Russian intelligence officers at a Russian port. A randon crew member probably wouldn't know exactly when to drop the anchor though, so receiving a message shortly before it was time would make sense.
You can get Russian intelligence officers in many other country's ports. Russia is more than capable of doing this same supposed bribe elsewhere. Let's imagine it was Latakia or Tartus in Syria. They can then track the ship and deliver a message. They don't need to use Russian ships to deliver the message.
Any nation deliberately causing sabotage would not want to be blamed, and would want any "clues" to mislead and point in the direction of of their enemies.
All we know for sure is that we believe the Yi Peng 3 likely damaged two submarine cables, and it was boarded and its crew were interviewed on 18 December 2024. The rest is speculation.
It's similar to the Nordstream pipeline sabotage. It was already deactivated due to European nations agreeing not to buy Russian gas because of their invasion of Ukraine, but it was then, we believe, deliberately sabotaged. Russia was accused (by nations that don't like Russia and support Ukraine). The US/UK were accused (by Russia). Ukraine was accused. 2 years later and the current status is: we're fairly confident it was sabotage, but we're still not sure who did it. Everyone denies doing it. Everyone fingers their main enemy as the one who did it. Does that sound familiar here?
I bet it will stop real quick.
Doesn’t mean you can’t do it, just that people will object - but not likely with actions, just words, which can be ignored.
The initial claims might be legitimate but I worry that trumped up claims would soon escalate into an excuse for state sponsored piracy from other parties.
… who will tell the crew that their past wages are the responsibility of the old owner, who they’ve never heard of. The fact that their new destination is exactly the same is a complete coincidence.
It will have to be towed/sailed to some suitable location and then people have to actually go about the process of scrapping it. Unfortunately the cost of all of this exceeds what you can sell the scrap for, so again, nobody is going to buy the ship.
The point is not to recover losses, although ideally it would help. The point is to have severe financial consequences so it stops happening.
That sounds like a reliable source from a reputable publication. /s Once is an accident. Twice is carelessness. Three times is enemy action. What are we up to now? 4 or 5 in as many months?
Anonymous US intelligence officials have told me that I am the greatest and most attractive person ever to have existed.
https://www.bridgemi.com/michigan-environment-watch/report-t...
So what sounds to me like an unbelievable level of incompetence is not that unlikely.
Basically, I’m not sure the reporting is properly distinguishing between “no evidence of wrongdoing” and “it was an accident”. It wouldn’t be surprising that it would be very difficult to find evidence that an anchor was intentionally dragged across a cable vs. accidentally.
Same as with Musk doing nazi salute and no official can call him out on this.
Russia can break cables, and no official can call them out on what they are doing.
Don't be so gullible.
> "The most important thing in any hybrid operation is deniability," Toveri said, explaining how the incidents might have an accidental appearance. He pointed to the ships' anomalous movements and the well-funded, decadal Russian intelligence effort to map out NATO's seabed infrastructure vulnerabilities.
> Finnish National Bureau of Investigation inspector Sami Liimatainen, who is involved in the ongoing inquiry aboard Eagle S, gave a dismissive reply when asked about the Post's accidental-damage explanation. "I'm not even going to comment on that, I'll leave the information from foreign newspapers at their own value. The Finnish National Police is investigating the crime," Liimatainen told YLE. "Crimes are being investigated and solved. Nothing has changed."
https://maritime-executive.com/article/report-u-s-convinced-...
> Russia-linked dark fleet tanker Eagle S, seized by Finland on December 25 2024
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42524174
Which government is failing to uphold their property rights basically?
I am not saying that it is an accident; personally I very much doubt it. But they're not exclusive. You don't have to rule out "accident" before you investigate "crime".
I agree, that's why I very much doubt that they're really accidents. Isn't the captain responsible for the ship regardless of what they intended or what they personally knew?
And yet they still didn't see them. I suspect HM Naval Service knows what it's upto and what its limits are.
It's a different class of vessel than I expect is used in these types of incidents, but I recently read an article about the Coast Guard's purchase of a $125m icebreaker[1].
[1] https://www.propublica.org/article/aiviq-icebreaker-military...
Edited: grammar.
The hi-tech equipment on board was abnormal for a merchant ship and consumed more power from the ship’s generator, leading to repeated blackouts, a source familiar with the vessel who provided commercial maritime services to it as recently as seven months ago."[2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_warfare [2] https://www.lloydslist.com/LL1151955/Russia-linked-cable-cut...
Skyrocketing electricity bills is something ordinary people feel.
I did not know Norway was looking at exporting it too
It looks like Norway has about 8.5GW of export capacity, vs about 13GW of production.
Overall, exports significantly outweigh imports, but the times Norway is importing mean lower prices in Norway. The average price for Norwegians will have increased, but the variation in price will have reduced.
Particularly a couple of years ago we had record low levels of water in our storage lakes, causing very high prices for a long time. Had we not exported energy earlier prices would not have gotten so high.
Of course, saving and then having massive rainfall means you could have exported but didn't so yeah.
Just saying things are a bit different than say France which gets a lot from nuclear which has very different price dynamics.
The northern zone is not completely detached from the rest, but the the transfer capacity is very poor, and thus lots of power that goes to the northern zones actually gets imported from Sweden. The northern zone has sort of been shielded from the export cable, and still pay rates which are close to the "old days".
Now, when the gov. planned for these cables, a big selling point was that IF Norway was to need extra energy, these cables would make it easier to import from other countries.
Wat has happened, though, is that the energy crisis in Europe has made it very profitable to sell our energy to them, and make Norwegian households/customers compete against the foreign buyers. So say in the west region, where people were used to pay on average 0.12 NOK / kWh one year, suddenly they faced bills with 2.6 NOK /kWh - or a 20x increase.
Of course the gov. did implement programs to subsidize the bills ("strømstøtte"), but they were still high enough for people to feel it in their pocketbooks.
Another factor which MAY have played a role in the increased demand, is that we've had lots of green projects which have been quite energy expensive, like making our oil rigs electric (rather than using gas to produce electricity). I'm honestly not too much in the loop on that though, but it is a popular populist argument you see all the time, often in combination with the export cables.
But in either case, it has become such a hot potato, and the populist party/parties have embraced the anti-export cables stance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertec
Because yes, their main disadvantage are instable human societies. Some terrorists longing for stonge age, are enough to destroy it.
And sure, nuclear also works. But the more nuclear there is, the more targets you also have for the idiots.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrT1Pl3pR6Y&t=268s
Earlier in the video is a quote from Finnish authorities calling the reports of these incidents being accidental BS. Later is a walkthrough of the telling variations in speed of the ship after leaving port in Russia.
Another undersea cable damaged in Baltic Sea
For example, on Jan 7th 2022 the undersea cable between Spitsbergen and Norway was severed. https://www.twz.com/43828/undersea-cable-connecting-norway-w... Turns out a Russian trawler had gone back and forth over the cable until it broke. This was covered in a nordic languages documentary called skuggkriget ('shadow wars') https://www.svtplay.se/uppdrag-granskning-skuggkriget
Of course history of this goes all the way back to the very first thing the British did in WW1 was to cut the telegraph cables between Europe and America https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-42367551
Ultimately, international law has to be enforced by someone. Russia broke it many times before NS2 blew up, it's not like they were holding up before.
There was a period when a law based international order theoretically could have been implemented by the US but since 1991 it's always just followed the principle of "fuck you my guns are bigger than yours" with some bullshit legalistic pretext.
Just let me know in advance, so that I can be on a one-way flight to Argentina, or some other southern nation.
My point is that the calculus for Russia isn't "is there a precedent for breaking this type of international law?", it's rather "can we get away with it?". NS2 didn't figure in the Russia's calculus when planning the undersea cable interruption.
And who has more moral right to do that than the superpower that supports a genocide, invaded iraq for no actual reason (and the whistleblower who called it "suicided")?
USA doesn't enforce "law", they enforce oppression and the interests of a few rich guys.
Even a murderer can, and should, stop another murderer from killing people.
It's really annoying to be honest. Makes me wish for stricter laws for international waters when it comes to undersea infrastructure.
It seems like just another chapter in the hybrid warfare. NATO countries can respond in other ways, more sanctions, more military support for Ukraine, undercover actions, restricting Russian vessel movement in the Baltic Sea etc.
Basically, Russia's goal is not so much to cut some cables but rather to create fear in order to reduce support for Ukraine. A loud public response is not necessarily in our interest because it makes their attacks more effective.
But it feels like this has become the new normal and isn't particularly effective anymore.
Seeing Sweden seize suspected sea sabotage ships.
This is only news now because Russia is the current bogeyman, and the claims of Russia doing it fit the propaganda.
If I were Ukraine, I'd cut such cables to encourage my Western sponsors into more action, but that narrative is a bitter pill to swallow for the Western taxpayer's funding conflict.
Still, in 50 years, we may well be reading about exactly that.
I'm open to the argument, but then someone would need to show some numbers, some trends, reasons and that the current cable breaking is just the same as in the last 20 years.
Just the same numbers "with an average of 150 to 200 faults occurring globally each year" thrown around again - again with no source.
I would wish for
Year Number Fishing Anchor Earthquake ...
2022 128 15 2 5
2021 133 22 8 2
etc.
[Citation Needed]
Damage is normal, sure, but multiple ships dragging anchors for many miles is not. I'm not sure what you're trying to argue.
And that Russia has a long history of doing these types of sabotage (including assassinations!).
And that these boats have incriminating circumstances.
Nope, there is no conclusive evidence to support your claims.
It's just as likely to be NATO ships doing the damage as it is <insert NATO adversary>.
https://www2.telegeography.com/submarine-cable-faqs-frequent...
https://www.submarinenetworks.com/en/nv/insights/itu-launche...
Given the increase in cables plus the increase in shipping, it is no surprise to find an increase in cable damage.