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Comment by handfuloflight | Hacker News Reader

What would Russia's interests be in putting these ISPs down, specifically?

Without making it too political and speculating on things I don't know, I, like many other Europeans, have seen plenty of cases of Russia ruining infrastructure projects in Europe, everything from internet cables on the ocean bed, telcos, water supplies, railways and more. Authorities are asking civilians in Scandinavia to be prepare their hiused with. Good and water and are actively hardening security around critical infrastructure, including their software. I won't comment more on this because it's gonna derail this discussion.

Is there a single proof? Like some Russian citizen was caught ruinining infrastructure project and it was proved that a) he is a citizen of Russia or was paid by Russian authorities, b) that the person in question had indeed done some damage to the infrastructure project.

I don't remember a single such case. I remember reading a lot of speculations like "it's highly likely that it was done by Russians" every single time without a trace of evidence.

Does it matter for the average business, if an infrastructure was brought down buy the Russian state or someone blaming it on the Russians?

It's undeniable that core European infrastructure is targeted currently

Okay, I mean, if you want to give poor ol’ Putin the benefit of the doubt, something that looks like a state actor but might theoretically not be Russia is doing a lot of minor to moderate economic sabotage in Europe.

Personally I think the amount of special pleading required to imagine that it is _not_ Russia is a bit much (particularly around the deep sea cable cuts; at that point you’re really claiming that Russia is deniably pretending that it is them, but really it’s someone else), but you do you. It doesn’t change the overarching point; both Hetzner and OVH would be obvious targets for, ah, whoever it is.

Russia likes causing trouble in Europe generally (and elsewhere; the Internet Research Agency was largely targeted at the US, say).

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