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Comment by mcv | Hacker News Reader

How are there suddenly lots of these kind of accidents out of nowhere?

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.

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It turns out that these incidents are actually incredibly common [1], about once every 3 days. But 'undersea line disrupted temporarily in mundane way' wasn't exactly international news until it could be tied into geopolitics.

[1] - https://blog.telegeography.com/what-happens-when-submarine-c... (telecoms intel service/site)

25 a year due to 'Anchorage' according to the image in your source.

That's once every 14.6 days, worldwide.

Yeah I was considering all issues rather than just anchor. Another source [1] gives 100-200 incidents per year with 16% as anchorage, so 25 a year (from anchors alone) is probably a safe estimate.

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...

This is a fair point. Turns out dragging anchors are a lot more common than I expected. I guess what matters is whether these cable breaks in the Baltic are statistically significant.

I have to think that some areas are more impacted than others. Say, shallow china sea area in asia with lot of small fisherman using drag nets and anchors and ignoring cable locations..

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.

The reason for these accidents to happen more frequently is explained in the WaPo article linked by the parent: Russia is smuggling oil out via the Baltic to fund the war, and it's hard to find experienced crews for these smuggling operations:

> 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 is not a plausible explanation. Even inexperienced crews don't accidentally drop anchor. This requires a specific set of actions by a crewman on the bow. It's not like just pushing a button.

> This requires a specific set of actions by a crewman on the bow.

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/...

I thought so too, but apparently anchors are a significant cause of cable damage, and were so well before the war in Ukraine. I don't know why anchors are such a problem, but apparently they are.

Near anchorages there are lots of signs showing where cables land so boats can avoid dropping their anchors on them. Yet still it happens.

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.

Some context. Lithuania/Latvia/Estonia electric grids, as of now, still connected to (part of) Russian grids due to soviet era infrastructure. This is coming to the end as Lithuania/Latvia/Estonia grids should detach from Russian grids on February 8th and synchronise with Western Europe grids. The main link is land cable to Poland. But underwater power cables to Sweden and Finland are quite important too.

Does it still look like just a coincidence that suddenly there're many more accidents in this region? :)

The national waters are a few hundred nautical miles wide, they do not cover all of the sea. I guess international waters is where the incidents happen.

The territorial sea is 12nmi (22km) from the coast. Even where this covers the whole distance (e.g. Denmark and Sweden) foreign ships still have the right to pass through.

You are thinking of the EEZ, exclusive economic zone, but that's only the rights for fishing and mining and so on.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_waters

Yeah, but ships can't get to the center of the Baltic without passing through the national waters of Denmark, Finland or Estonia. Current treaties allow all ships through those waters, but if that access is abused for sabotage, maybe it's time to revisit the treaties.

Be careful what you wish for. Blocking the waterways would provide Russia with a legitimate reason for war or at least lead to a resolution of the blockade with force. That is insane. Nobody even considered that during the Cold War. If the damage to the cables wasn't an accident, the damage was pretty minor. This is in no way comparable to the blowing up of the Nord Stream gas pipeline, which was certainly not an accident.

What legitimate reason they had in Ukraine?

The Cold War was, well, cold. The war in Ukraine isn't.

May be, but Ukraine does not control the straits, is not a member of the European Union, and is not yet the 51st US state. Other European countries are unfortunately or fortunately only in a state of cold war for the time being.

I don't think we could comment on HN if that was not the case.

I'm not sure legitimacy matters here. Their war in Ukraine is not legitimate, but that's not stopping them. And a legitimate reason to attack a NATO country does not mean they will. Keep in mind that Russia has also blocked sea traffic to and from Ukraine.

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.

I think actions have consequences. I'm sure the consequences of your proposed actions will be simply catastrophic for everyone.

Russia has no problems to find a reason. Yet if there're no consequences for their actions, they'll keep pushing the line.

The rights that UN provide for international waters is under the condition that nations, for which the ship flags under, protects undersea cables (among other things). International waters are not a free-for-all space where anything goes.

Would you know if, when the conditions are not respected, the owner of the cables could actively counter the activities? It would be a ship of a country vs a ship of another country on international waters. (I am wondering about that in the context of the international law.)

Well that's more of a political question. Nothing in the treaty explicitly states what a nation can do if another nation's merchant vessel appears to be intentionally damaging property. So then it becomes a matter of whether they want to escalate the situation, or pursue an international legal case, or retaliate clandestinely, or some other option.

> Personally I think nations on the Baltic should simply ban Russian or Russian-originating ships from their waters

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.

Why don’t they bill the repairs plus a fine to the ship’s owner. If they don’t pay, sell the the ship to cover it.

I bet it will stop real quick.

I am not a shipping lawyer, but, assuming this happened in international waters, my guess is that there is probably already some set-in-stone maritime law in place that covers scenarios like this, and one that probably isn't modifiable by mere national governments. This is complete speculation though.

That wouldn’t surprise me.

Doesn’t mean you can’t do it, just that people will object - but not likely with actions, just words, which can be ignored.

It's entirely possible that the owner of the ship is some fake company that only exists to own this particular ship, and the company will vanish if there are fines to be paid. There's still a lot of shadiness in international shipping.

I guess that would be a seize and sell the ship outcome then

That's a dangerous precedent to set.

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.

That happens anyway. The claim is legitimate, so objections would be half hearted. It may well invite the aggressor country to return the favor though (in that case stop trading with them completely)

Nobody would buy it, except maybe some anonymous shell company…

… 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.

Then you sell it for scrap.

Sure, why not?

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.

I disagree that things you assert would be true, but even if you lose money doing it, you should do it.

The point is not to recover losses, although ideally it would help. The point is to have severe financial consequences so it stops happening.

> How are there suddenly lots of these kind of accidents out of nowhere?

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.

Those cables are becoming more interesting as Lithuania/Latvia/Estonia are about to switch from soviet-era electric grids network controlled in Russia to european grids network.

> simply

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.

> 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

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.

Why does it have to be a Russian port? If they're trying to be sneaky, why would Russia deliberately choose a merchant ship entering or leaving one of _its own_ ports?

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?

It doesn't have to be a Russian port, but these have been.

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