Cable repairs are certainly annoying and for the operator of the cable, expensive. However, they are usually repaired relatively quickly. I'd be more worried if many more cables were severed at the same time. If you're only going to break one or two a year, you might as well not bother.
1: https://www.theverge.com/c/24070570/internet-cables-undersea...
If I asked you for an answer to a math question, then you showed me the answer with how you got there, on a very quick glance I might say: "That appears to be correct."
It could mean they've seen more evidence to make that assessment, or are basing that assessment on the same evidence we have. Regardless, "appears to be" is hedging in the absence of certainty.
> Bundesverteidigungsminister Boris Pistorius vermutet im Fall von zwei in der Ostsee beschädigten Kabeln zur Datenübertragung eine vorsätzliche Aktion durch Dritte. Man müsse davon ausgehen, dass es sich um Sabotage handle, sagte er am Rande eines Treffens mit seinen EU-Amtskollegen in Brüssel. Beweise dafür gebe es bislang aber nicht. Er betonte: "Niemand glaubt, dass diese Kabel aus Versehen durchtrennt worden sind."
> Federal Minister of Defense Boris Pistorius assumes the case of to damaged baltic sea data cables to be the intentional action of a third party. One should assume it to be sabotage, he said while at a meeting with EU colleagues in Brusseles. Proof, however, is not available yet. He emphasized: "Nobody believes that those cables were cut by accident."
So while carefully not saying anything definitive and firm, he very strongly hints in the direction of sabotage.
On the other he is framing a conspiracy theory: "Something happened that appears to be sabotage and sabotage would be done by the enemy. " and the European media has been stuffed full of conspiracy theories during the entire conflicts.
Educationally you can look at the Nord Stream pipelines sabotage.
Nearly every EU and US source writes in big letters that Russia was behind it. After a while, it became nearly impossible to keep that conspiracy theory alive.
Sweden and Denmark ended their investigation into the matter with no conclusion drawn The present narrative is that the sabotage was done by a Ukrainian team with a shoe string budget:
A Drunken Evening, a Rented Yacht: The Real Story of the Nord Stream Pipeline Sabotage Private businessmen funded the shoestring operation, which was overseen by a top general; President Zelensky approved the plan, then tried unsuccessfully to call it off https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/nord-stream-pipeline-explos...
https://www.zeit.de/politik/2023-09/nord-stream-pipelines-at...
In this case, this is a government official speaking to the press (i.e. in an official capacity). If they were to say "this was sabotage," that is a definite declaration that the government believes - again, officially and on the record - that an outside party has deliberately done material damage to their country. Given the general situation, it is not a huge leap to come to the interpretation that "this was an attack against our country, and possibly an act of war."
No government official would want to be within miles (or kilometers) of that sort of statement unless they have pretty much already internally decided from the top-down to escalate the situation. Almost no single government agent has the authority to escalate the situation in that manner. So what we end up with is "appears to be." This overtly says 'all available evidence points to this being the case, however something else cannot be ruled out.' (As a sibling comment suggests, it can also act as a type of propaganda). So it is not an official government declaration that another nation has damaged them, but they have reasons (probably both apparent and not) to believe what they are saying publicly.
What the latter actually said was much stronger and less ambiguous.
As detailed in the helpful sibling comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42187127
We’ll go around in circles until it’s irrelevant.
It could be an accident, sure, but suspicion of sabotage is not paranoia.
And also, like, the German government (and European governments generally) DOES need to spend more on their military. They underinvested for decades and are now stuck needing to catch up very quickly.
And providing Ukraine with aid so that they don't get steamrolled is not morally wrong. Nor is refusing to do so so that Russia can more quickly get around to torturing and repressing the population a moral right.
Indeed it's not, because that's an extremely distorted and misleading narrative. For example, on multiple occasions (notably 1994 and 1997) Russia signed treaties validating NATO expansion long after this supposed "explicit promise" (which also wasn't quite what you seem to think). We also have statements from the two most important players on the Soviet side (Gorbachev and Shevardnadze) thoroughly discounting this version of events.
Whatever source you got that narrative from is simply misinformed, or worse.
>prepared to fight their proxy war to the last of them
The natural corollary to this ridiculous "fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian" argument, which you guys never seem to acknowledge, is that it already assumes that Russia will murder every last Ukrainian and take their land. That's just a given, and you then try to blame the West as though they stuck their hand into a lawnmower or something.
None of this holds up to any scrutiny, though. The whole NATO expansion narrative barely exists in Russia, they don't talk about that, they talk about standard-issue Imperialist narratives like "Ukraine doesn't exist, it's not a real country, not a real language, not a real ethnicity, Ukrainians are 'little brothers' to the superior Russian spirit, everything good in Ukraine is Russian and everything Ukrainian is bad, and we Russians must liberate them from their mental delusions of being something other than Russian and restore Russia to our natural greatness & place in the world"
Yeah, nothing like nato when it comes to anti-imperialism...
In any case, disputin Kremlin propaganda in an otherwise well-regarded forum doesn’t feel wrong. One certainly wouldn’t bother on Twitter, for example.
> goat ...lovers in Afghanistan
or outright, unfettered racism
> something that they have repeatededly said they consider a casus belli
or fawning gullibility.
Ukraine isn’t a member of NATO and until 2014 was dead-set against it. Same for Finland and Sweden until 2022. Whatever happened in those years to trigger such a change in public sentiment, I wonder.
> It must be because they thought, "hey, what better than to get in a costly war", have hundreds of thousands of their own die
“Meat waves” are a decades old Soviet military doctrine that has not changed, and Putin is an ex-KGB thug. Regard for human life isn’t in that picture.
The 2014 orange revolution was carried out, for starters, to put a change to that. And even when later the current leader was elected promised to normalize relationships, he was "convinced" promptly to push for the opposite direction. As for Finland and Sweden, when told to jump, they ask "how high".
Cries of "Whataboutism!" is basically "our shit doesn't stink, let's focus on the others' farts, and treat them as some unique case of foul smell producers!".
You’re right about one thing, though. There’s definitely a stench here.
Ah, your oddly-vague wording must of course be referring to how Russia explicitly promised to respect Ukraine's borders [0], a line they are violently crossing as we speak. First with an undeclared guerrilla-war and annexation, and more-recently with a massive "surprise" invasion--after spending several weeks of lying about their buildup and pretending that other countries were just trying to make them look bad.
If you are sarcastically suggesting something else... Well, go ahead, share the evidence for whatever-it-is, the kind of documentary evidence which countries ensure is always abundant for any remotely important international promise. (That is in contrast to self-serving lies from the Kremlin, which rely heavily on refusing to explain.)
After it was itself promised NATO wont expand eastwards and Ukraine will not be used to get their bases next to its borders. Not really strange how they broken this agreement after 30 years of broken promises, sanctions, open threats, an orange coup in their neighbor, among other things.
But sure, nothing more anti-imperialist by a coalition formed by the foremost imperialist power with its client states, expanding for "democracy"...
Also, why haven't you paid me the $50,000 you promised, you disgraceful deadbeat? You say you don't remember it? It doesn't matter if I can't provide any kind of document or recording that would be standard for that kind of thing, it must have happened--or else why would I keep bringing it up?
How about Russia? Whose proxy are they?
Anyone parroting that phrase is simply repeating Kremlin-sourced propaganda, intended to wrench at the weak minds of “useful idiots” and supply a pretext for what they truly wish: lily-livered appeasement that rewards aggression with recognition.
Life under Russian occupation is one of rape, torture, kidnapping, looting, execution. Would you like to be raped and tortured? How about your family, in front of you, before they are executed? No? No.
That is why Ukraine fights.
“Proxy war”, my ass. Ukrainian resistance to Russian aggression is existential.
That may be true in the most narrow and mechanical sense, but the way it presents blame is very wrong.
NATO membership has never had anything to do with it. Note how Finland has joined NATO since 2022, and faces no repercussions from Russia, despite a third of their land-based nuclear missiles within 400 km of the Finnish border.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_2021_Russian_ultimatu...
Inofficially, of course the U.S. wanted Ukraine in NATO and the EU all the time. Merkel opposed NATO membership at some point, but Germany is just a vassal state.
Indeed, russia started this war by refusing to be neutral. Thus, Ukraine will perhaps show neutrality if russia shows neutrality first.
Although Russia has obstinately described NATO expansion as a threat, Putin was actually more concerned about the loss of Russia’s perceived sphere of influence in former Soviet republics which were aligning themselves with the West economically and politically
So it wasn’t about NATO, it was about maintained a decaying sphere of influence.
Boris Bondarev, a Russian diplomat who later resigned in protest of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, recalled that the draft treaties had shocked many Russian diplomats and that he immediately viewed the demands as non-negotiable.
Even the Russian diplomats knew it was posturing while Russia added to the 100,000 troops already staging on the border with Ukraine. Demands made at the point of 100,000 guns pointed at you are not good faith negotiating positions.
What right does Russia have to formalized neutrality, to control Ukraine’s foreign policy? Do you think that, since “Germany is just a vassal state” that Russia deserves one too?
[ETA: formatting]
Was Ukraine candidate for NATO?
Yes, Ukraine has been a candidate for NATO membership. In 2008, during the Bucharest Summit, NATO members agreed that Ukraine would eventually become a member of the alliance. However, no formal invitation was extended at that time. COMMONS LIBRARY
In 2010, under President Viktor Yanukovych, Ukraine adopted a non-aligned status, halting its pursuit of NATO membership. This policy shifted after the 2014 annexation of Crimea by Russia, leading Ukraine to renew its aspirations for NATO integration. In 2019, Ukraine amended its constitution to enshrine the goal of joining NATO. NATO
In September 2022, following Russia's annexation of parts of southeastern Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced that Ukraine had applied for NATO membership under an accelerated procedure. WIKIPEDIA As of November 2024, Ukraine remains a NATO partner country and has not yet achieved full membership.
Between 2010 and later 2022 (i.e., not in 2014 or in February 2022) Ukraine was officially not pursuing membership, and France, Germany and the US were all unofficially making it clear that NATO membership was not being pursued and would not be offered.
Ukraine applied for NATO membership after Russia's invasion. It cannot therefore be a cause of Russia's invasion. At the time Russia sponsored and supported internal revolt in Crimea and Donbass, it was 2014 and Ukraine was officially and unofficially not in or applying to NATO--so how can that be the cause of Russian intervention then?
Thank you, though, for using ChatGPT to support my contention that NATO membership had nothing to do with Russia's invasion.
BTW, Russia has shared borders with multiple NATO countries, starting with Norway in 1949 when NATO was founded, and the Baltics since 2004. A neighbouring country's membership in an alliance is not a casus belli.
The first rule of kremnology is that Russia always lies without a shame, as lies are usefull and they incur zero cost on the liar.
Russia invaded because they felt Ukraine was showing a bad example of slavic people becoming a democracy.
Also Russia has always had an affinity towards Ukrainian genocide. See Holodomor.
Also there is the narrative of lost colonial honor, Crimea, Catherine the great, and other idiotic pseudo-historical ramblings of a demented autocratic propagnada.
Useful word: Revanchism [0], for people who want to conquer places they claim they once-owned.
you’re describing international relations, none of this is specific to russia. people are indoctrinated from birth into nationalist propaganda. when these mouthpieces speak they aren’t lying, but it’s not the truth.
It’s the ”i know they are lying, they know i know, and yet they lie”. One of the points is not to convince but to confuse.
https://mearsheimer.substack.com/p/who-caused-the-ukraine-wa...
But Mearsheimer's arguments are convincing.
We may find it ridiculous to be afraid of NATO or the USA. Others do not.
They're not all, and are in fact easily debunked.
One just needs to read between the lines a little bit.
See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42197501
We may find it ridiculous to be afraid of NATO or the USA
Russia isn't "afraid" of either -- it just considers them to be annoyances.
Its regime pretends be "afraid" of both, for the benefit of its internal and external propaganda, and of course to entice its people to sign up for the meat grinder. But that's just its delusion, which we are under no obligation to honor or validate.
Putin's actions do not line up with this portrait of him as a hyper-rational long-term strategist acting on the interests of the Russian state. They line up very well with what you would expect from an aging, deeply conspiratorial cold warrior with widely publicized nationalist beliefs [0], a desire to have a legacy that compares against the likes of Peter the Great [1], and the type of delusional thinking that is the near-inevitable result of not having anyone that is willing (due to brownnosing) or able (due to corruption) to tell you hard truths [2].
Even when someone like Tucker Carlson sits down with Putin and practically tees him up to blame the war on US, he goes on ridiculous historical tangents to try to justify why Ukraine isn't real, as opposed to saying anything related to NATO. And that's not a fluke. Russian internal narratives are vastly more focused on nationalism than on anything resembling "NATO made us do this".
You also just have to look at the assassinations carried out on NATO soil - including using chemical and radiological weapons - blowing up Czech ammunition depots, etc. Years and years of unilateral kinetic escalation directly against the west. And then no response whatsoever when Finland and Sweden joined NATO.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/21/world/europe/putin-ukrain...
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/10/putin-compares...
[2] There's far too many instances of this to even count.
What we do know is that they've been in close contact, and that he is sincerely grateful to them:
In John Mearsheimer's 2023 book "How States Think", the foreword acknowledges him receiving a small financial support from Valdai in conjunction with Best Book award for his 2019 book "The Great Delusion".The war is what caused Ukraine to restart its previously-repudiated attempts to join NATO, so this isn’t just wrong but entirely backwards.
Russia returns Crimea, Donbass etc and Ukraine promises not to join NATO.
Strange that Putin hasn't proposed such a deal.
One strand of BS I've seen is "Ukraine now is a different country than the one we promised never to invade."
If that's really how it works, Russia should be ejected from the United Nations and apologize for fraudulently casting votes in the UN Security Council, because it's a different country than the USSR.
Actually it was Putin's acting and speaking as if he could partially restore the glory of the former Soviet empire (whose collapse he called "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century") that got Russia into its current mess in Ukraine.
He does, in any case, consider the current Russian Federation and the Soviet Union to be continuations of "historic Russia". So it's not Western rhetoric. And it isn't the West that is making him invade Ukraine and menace other countries.
The second possibility makes much more sense (and is more informative), so I should have assumed that one instead.
I wouldn’t argue that EU and the US did not screw up in 20{08,14} though. We did. Massively. We did underestimate Putins long game - had we known how far he wants to go, and I’d argue most post soviet countries knew, this would’ve been nipped in the bud.
They gave up their nukes in exchange for protection from Russia and the US. Both countries have failed to keep up their end of the bargain, so it's sensible for Ukraine to get back what they gave up.
And I wouldn't blame them.
The West promised to protect them and failed.
"Oh, sure, they engage in extra-sketchy forms of state-sponsored violence and chronically lie about it... but that just means they know the material! They'd never lie to me, because we have a special spiritual connection."
https://www.anritsu.com/en-us/test-measurement/products/mw90...
Currently, all points to a deliberate act of hybrid warfare
IF this was an officially sanctioned mission by a NATO country, then you're part of the "we".
That's kind of the deal with alliances.
A random Lithuanian person is not Germany.
Hope this helps.
You can certainly go "Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos" during domestic discussions of displeasure of the ruling party. But, in international affairs, we are accountable for our government's foreign policies.
I'm Canadian. "We" are in a proxy war with Russia. "We" need to win lest Putin thinks he can just take sovereign nations like Ukraine without the rest of the world stopping him.
Appeasing dictators is a losing policy. "We" need to do everything possible by having Europe fund Ukraine, and now while "We" have Biden agreeing to do so, until Trump takes over and "we" have infighting between NATO nations about what to do about Ukraine.
Let's instead say there are roughly 20 ocean regions we would post hoc consider "the same". Now, given a breakage, what is the probability of at least two more in the same region and day? This is a Poisson distribution with lambda=200/365/20. The probability of two more independent breakages is 0.04 % for that specific day.
But again, picking a specific day would be p-hacking. Zooming out, an event that rare is expected to happen every seven years or so.
Now, "every seven years" is a far cry from "1 in 36 million." Whenever you get crazy p values like that, there is often an error or overlooked assumption in the analysis.
----
If you like this sort of thing, have a stab at forecasting competitions! I can recommend the Metaculus Quarterly Cup. The current one is in full swing so use the remaining 1.5 months of the year to practice and then you're set for when the January edition starts.
Having said that how would the odds look like if we factor in the fact the Baltic Sea is one of two zones with the most geopolitical tensions (along with Taiwan).
---
Thanks for the Metaculus recommendation. I was a bit disappointed in the lack of maths in the comments in general. Can you recommend something in the vein of Leetcode with various degrees of difficulty, from very basic to advanced problems ? I'm both interested in probability and statistics
https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/lithuania-sweden-...
>Lithuania-Sweden subsea cable cut, was 10m from severed Finnish-German cable
The C-Lion1 cable is predominantly North-East - South-West whereas the BCS cable is NW-SE. They do meet, but the C-Lion1 operator Cinia says their cable broke about 700 km from Helsinki, east of the southern tip of the Öland island. That's easily over 150 km south from where the cables meet.
Also, C-Lion1 was reported broken at 4m, and the BCS cable at 10am the previous day.
I am leaning towards sabotage but that two cables were cut means very little.
/s
I’m stealing this to use for grad-student mock-interviews—thank you!
That’s what makes this one so good—lots of opportunities to extend or roll-back difficulty.
My take is that in face of coincidences supporting the emergence of intelligent life, we should expect to observe coincidences unnecessary for the emergence of life too.
An analogy: imagine you have lost the key to your mansion and try to cut one at random out of a metal sheet. If it can unlock the door, then chances are that you cut unnecessary notches (the analogy only holds for warded locks and the key you crafted is a master key).
See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42178306
I'm wondering where I'm wrong in my reasoning because the implication is weird.
Tangent: an attacker trying hard to provoke that kind of accident would likely not have a very fast success feedback. "Let's try once more, for good measure"
For example, the 2011 earthquake in Japan resulted in damage to 7 cables[0]. But it wasn't the quake itself which instantly broke all 7 cables - they were destroyed by underwater avalanches triggered by the earthquake. Avalanches can occur hours after a seismic event, and some underwater avalanches go on for days.
I highly doubt that's the case here, but if you're asking about chances it's not as unlikely as you'd think!
[0]: https://www.theverge.com/c/24070570/internet-cables-undersea...
What I should have said:
By clever GP most probably meant funny (with a hint of self-deprecation) rather than smart (or even correct).
Clusters are a thing.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/16/russian-spy-sh...
The spy ship is alleged to be able to go 15 knots which means it could make the distance in 2.5 days.
https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/russian-spy-ship-present-off...
Yes, by a chinese ship that dragged around a huge anchor over the seafloor of whole baltic ocean, widley suspected to be ordered by Russia to do so.
This is in no way a reasonable argument for "shit happens".
I don't understand. That's how I'd expect most accidents to happen. Someone decides to anchor too close to an undersea cable, the anchor fails to hold and the drifting ship drags the anchor over the cable damaging it.
I'm not saying it wasn't sabotage, but there needs to be something a bit more than that.
Source: have dragged anchors - thankfully never near undersea cables
IMO very very likely sabotage, and brushed under the rug in fear of Russian escalation.
Sanction Russia? Fire a few missiles at Moscow? Write a sternly worded letter?
It's just added to the pile of "shit that Russia does without repercussions" which is opened when (not if) they actually cross the border to Finland and find out what happens when you fuck around with a country who's been preparing for Russian invasion for 100 years.
Plan is clear: continue suppporting Ukraine, continue Russian isolation.
But what can they do? Imagine you are the leader of a small European country like the Netherlands, and one day Russia decides to shot down your passenger plane with 300 people on board. You can do absolutely nothing.
But once a proxy war started, of course the Netherlands are doing their best to make Putin pay for the lives of these innocent people. He basically alienated many countries in this way and then complains of "Russophobia".
https://english.defensie.nl/downloads/publications/2024/09/2...
Or the Netherlands section here:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_aid_to_Ukra...
350+ APCs, 150+ MBTs, Patriot bateries, SPGs, F16s - I'm sure those on the receiving end do think that their Donbas proxies could have been a bit less trigger happy when the loaned them that Buk AA system back in 2014.
Those 298 inoccent victims, 193 of them citizens of Netherlands will be avenged many times over.
No russian starlink sats. No russian fiber lines. No anything. Just backwater countries, slowly bled dry to have that heap of loot called moscow polished.
The heap of pillaged academics with nowhere to go has wandered off towards the west.
All there is, is vandalism and downfall while high on nostalgia. The aggressive train station HasBeenHobo of international politics.
Is this true?
Or
Are we now in a world where we are all living in fear of actual military retribution for speaking out?
Can you give a link to some information on this please?
I see you are repeating the favourite tropes while avoiding the point - a colonizer attempting to strike down again at an old victim.
The point is not about not making mistakes. Everybody does those. They key thing about being among the good guys is a) recognizing those mistakes and b) not intentionally repeating them. Also not treating your own citizens as worthless pieces of flesh to throw in to the meatgrinder is a clear ”good guy bad guy” indicator if we want to use low brow moral qualifiers.
I guess you conveniently forgot to mention that Finland joined Germany only because Stalin was about to roll over Finland and nobody else was willing to oppose the invasion. The key thing what displays the character of Finland as country, is that Finland never let Germany take our jewish population. The only thing that made Germany truly evil was the holocaust. Finland did not participate in the holocaust. Jewish men served in the Finnish armed forces. When Germans wanted to implement their holocaust in Finland, the finns said basically ”piss off”.
You are quite right on the historical treatment of Sami. You forget to mention that Sami rights as a minority are now quite well protected, and we feel quite bad of this historical ill trearment.
This is in contrast with Russian values, for example, where the state not only refuses to admit the historical mistakes made, genocide, but happily sends hundreds of thousands of men to a pointless meat grinder. This is what true evil looks like. One needs to be a very special kind of fool not to see state institutions clearly being ”better” or ”worse” and Russia being of the very worst kind. The propaganda attempt you posted tries to argue in an off-hand manner that Russia can’t be the worst since all are equally bad. The claim is false. There is a clear gradient of human quality in state institutions and the Russian state is objectively at the worse end of the spectrum, and sliding ever lower sadly.
Let me quote Wikipedia:
After invading Poland, the Soviet Union sent ultimatums to the Baltic countries, where it demanded military bases on their soil. The Baltic states accepted Soviet demands, and lost their independence in the summer of 1940. In October 1939, the Soviet Union sent a similar request to Finland, but the Finns refused these demands. [1]
At that point Finland was neutral, but Soviet Union had a treaty with Nazi Germany and invaded Poland together (and also split the whole Eastern Europe between themselves in secret protocol of Ribbentrop-Molotov pact. See [2]
After the ultimatum Finland refused, Soviet Russia invaded, got repelled, and only THEN Finland allied with Nazi Germany.
> Nothing different than any other country.
One country invaded other. The other country defended itself. These are objectively not alike. Stop repeating russian propaganda. There is objective truth and it's not that hard to know it. People who try to make it fuzzy do it because they know it's not painting them in a good light.
Remember how Russia was pretending situation in Ukraine in 2014 is "complicated", and Ukrainians are "nazis" and these "green men" are just Ukrainian separatists, and westerners can't really know what's going on. They also pushed "both sides are bad, let's just ignore it" - and it worked back then. Thousands of people died because of useful idiots believing these lies. Nowadays Russia openly admits it was their army pretending to be Ukrainians.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Finland#Finland_in_...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pac...
* Which pipeline?
* Last year (2023), not 2022?
But using your heuristics, that catamarang crew should probably have been interviewed.
The comment means nothing, neither mine nor the one I commented on so I won't even bother looking up the spelling.
It's more important to understand why the comment is there.
The GP asked what boat, parent effectively said "a boat" which doesn't answer the question. My comment was one of the least likely options, but hey I could have said sailboat...
Not an excuse either but realistically I on a daily basis speak two languages and often interact with people who can barely speak one of those two so I have some basic understanding of a third... Sometimes I can't remember which one spelling rules come from. Not an excuse, it's easy enough to look it up but just context.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newnew_Polar_Bear#Damage_to_un...
The internal Chinese investigation indicated that was an accident.. LOL
I don't care to convince folks in this thread one way or another, but yes, there are reason a commercial ship would drop anchor while underway, including bad weather and a narrow / shallow channel. The circumstances from last year had both.
In most of these cases, it's Russian ships dropping their anchors in areas where the cables are known to be and then driving around in circles until they snag and break it. It's not even slightly plausible that they'd be doing it accidentally.
Whoopsy, well would you ever!
> Swedish-Estonian telecoms cable at 1513 GMT, then over the Russian cable at around 2020 GMT, the [Balticconnector gas pipeline] at 2220 GMT and a Finland-Estonia telecoms line at 2349 GMT.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-says-telecoms-ca...
(But really, it clearly has “Russia” written all over it)
Of course, Russians used false flag as usual, to blame Ukraine, but Ukraine doesn't hide successful attacks on Russian infrastructure, because Ukraine has legal right to defend itself.
> Nobody had incentive to blow up empty pipes except Russia.
I disagree: Russian gas was the one leverage Russia had over Germany. Blowing the pipeline ensured that Germany wouldn't be able to get out of the conflict quietly - "Germany still receiving Russian gas" would not receive as much condemnation as "Germany repairs Russian gas pipeline".
> Ukraine doesn't hide successful attacks on Russian infrastructure, because Ukraine has legal right to defend itself.
True, but Ukraine doesn't have a legal right to sabotage the infrastructure of its allies. I live in Germany and I can tell you: that first winter was pretty bad for everyone, with plenty headlines about people who could no longer afford their heating costs. If it had been known that it was Ukraine's doing, popular support for the war would have sunk a lot.
Maybe, $20 billion is pocket money for you, but it's big money for Russia. A false flag operation is much much cheaper.
[1]: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/european-countries-demand-us-...
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/energies/article/2023/03/12/french...
What about the U.S., which is always holier than thou?
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/14/climate/enriched-uranium-...
The U.S. banned it this year, 2 years after Nordstream was blown up, to the amusement and applause from Nuland etc.
Then the Russians played coy and came up with counter-bureaucratic reasons why the repaired turbine could not be installed. Presumably to put pressure on Germany, which was afraid of the 2022/2023 winter at the time.
Then two pipes of NS-1 and one pipe of NS-2 were blown up. Since no gas was flowing at the time, Russia had no reason to blow up its bargaining chip. Ukraine or the U.S. did have a reason.
Russia also delivered gas to Austria through a pipeline that goes through Ukraine and for which Ukraine collected transit fees until this year. Russia didn't shut down or blow up that pipeline.
From the point of view of the U.S. and Ukraine it does not make sense to blow up the Austrian pipeline because Austria is neutral anyway, so just let Ukraine collect the transit fees.
Germany of course must be pressured to be the second largest financial and weapons supporter for Ukraine, so hey, let's blow up the pipeline of our "ally".
Apart from Hersh's "the U.S. did it" theory, the Wall Street Journal recently blamed it on Zalushny. No other theories have emerged, but rest assured that if there were a credible Russia theory the Western press would shout it from the rooftops.
Putin has offered multiple times to either open the remaining pipe of NS-2 or to route gas via Turkey:
https://www.dw.com/en/putin-offers-europe-gas-through-nord-s...
This is completely wrong. It involved German/Russian infrastructure, and if confirmed, it would rank as the worst terrorist act in the history of the FRG (Germany) since the Munich Olympic Games. In fact, it could, should, or would lead to the activation of Article 5, as one of NATO's members was attacked.
BTW from the Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nord_Stream
" In June 2024 German authorities issued an arrest warrant for a Ukrainian national suspected of the sabotage.[13] "
This (in German) shed even more lights on that https://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/ukraine/roman-tscherwins...
Is this supposed to imply the story is implausible because the couple wasn't in on the plot and would rat the third guy out? If so, all 3 are suspects and presumably are in on the plot, so this argument falls flat on its face.
>The two other suspects, a married couple who do not have warrants issued in their names, have denied knowing Z. and said that they were on vacation in Bulgaria when the attack took place.
Are you saying it was actually Russia that did it? They blew up own pipeline?
https://www.dw.com/en/nord-stream-explosions-germany-issues-...
Russia is a probable candidate.
Germany has issued an arrest warrant for a Ukranian national [2] who along with two accomplices was on board the yacht Andromeda, which was located at the blast site days before the blast and on which traces of the same explosive was found as used on the pipelines, as well as DNA evidence.
I suppose it's not "actual evidence Ukraine did it", but it's more than enough evidence to make a Ukranian national that since fled back to Ukraine a suspect.
[0] https://nos.nl/artikel/2478770-vs-waarschuwde-oekraine-nord-... [1] https://nos-nl.translate.goog/artikel/2478770-vs-waarschuwde... [2] https://www.dw.com/en/nord-stream-explosions-germany-issues-...
:-/
So, one diver moved and installed 500kg of explosives in 4 places in front of a married couple?
Are you taking the married couples' claims at face value? The article mentions two divers, not one.
German investigations found that the Andromeda trail leads to Russia[0].
[0] https://www.tagesspiegel.de/internationales/nord-stream-spur...
Nonsense. Biden had a great deal of incentive to destroy that pipeline.
But far too many more obvious counterincentives.
Unlike the Ukrainians, NATO/US were smart enough to see that blowing up NS2 would be hugely stupid, providing precisely zero strategic advantage while simply provoking Russia to respond assymetrically (in exactly the same way as it is apparently doing right now). In addition to the huge methane release.
So if anything, the standpoint of "incentives" points squarely in the opposite direction (that is, against the idea that the US/NATO must have done it).
>Unlike the Ukrainians, NATO/US were smart enough
I do not concur with this glib assessment one bit.
Nobody in the West wants any war. The usual tactics of Putin is to do what he wants whether on his or foreign soil, using poisoning etc. in a way that everybody knows it's him but he will politely deny. It's a kind of a silly game, the GRU could just have put a bullet in Lytvynenko's head but they choose a slow death to show off.
I have a different take on this, basically parroting Perun on YouTube. The lame duck period is the perfect time for escalatory steps, as the Russians always have the option of waiting until the new administration comes into office rather than responding aggressively. Trump will be free to re-impose whichever restrictions he wants, but he'll be starting from a stronger position. He'll have the "stop UA use of long-range weapons" bargaining chip, _and_ he'll be able to relatively costlessly blame Biden for the "bad decision" of allowing them.
Russians, yes
Which parts of those are "good" in your opinion? Do you believe Russia's "denazification" claim?
There are no international laws that legitimized Russia's invasion of Ukraine. If Ukraine was in violation of something, there's procedures in place to declare war legitimately - but before that there's the nonviolent approach, which Russia skipped.
And yet you are commenting. Ignorance and a lack of curiosity are not compelling arguments.
Maybe it's time to grow up and start paying attention.
Lot of Russian Apologist.
Russia invades Ukraine -> It is Biden's fault, he ordered it.
Russia actually invading and killing -> It was NATO's fault for discussing admission.
Like, Russia is actually 'doing the bad things'.
Yes, Russia is doing bad things.. But do we really need or want a third World War because of it? It’s not Ukraine’s fault that Russia invaded, but Ukraine bears responsibility for having been so corrupt over the past 20 years and for being irresponsible given its proximity to Russia. We still don’t know how much of the aid sent to Ukraine is being lost to corruption... So I am not willing to fight this War.
Military leaders are pragmatic people and this is a pragmatic approach. We have a problem. We see that the problem has grown in time and will grow further if ignored. So it's better to deal with the problem now rather than waste valuable time and face an even larger problem in 5 to 8 years.
Military leaders are politicians. I am in the Military. The official position, is inline with what the political leaders want. Internally, the same Military leaders disagree with the politicians. Internally all say the same: There is no accountability and responsibility in Ukraine. Better is to concentrate our resources where matters: NATO. Ukraine is necessary strategically to consume Russian men, artillery, etc.. That's the military opinion that we hear internally.
That's not the case in countries bordering Russia, starting from Finland and heading south, where military leaders take a lot of pride in being constitutionally independent like supreme court judges. Politicians would very much prefer to hide behind NATO guarantees and pretent that the risk does not exist and that the Americans would come to save us (without specifying any details), whereas military assessments are much more calculated and take into account hard facts like redeployment speed of a brigade or daily ammo expenditure. Assessments from military circles have so far been consistently the closest to how events have actually unfolded.
They case they are presenting is a no-brainer. It is by all measures significantly cheaper - by orders of magnitude - to support Ukraine in halting Russians in Eastern Ukraine than to fight invaders on our home turf.
Even if you don't care one bit about Ukraine, it's still a really smart thing to do for our own sake.
"USSR, why bother pushing back, not my problem, can't I just go to the mall and hang out?"
During the Cold War, the US and Russia were not 'At War'. But US did financial support a ton of countries, with a lot of money.
So why not do that now? Still fighting Russia. Still not 'head to head', but with Proxies.
This seems like arguing to stop supporting our Proxy and let Russia take them. But there is still an argument to not give up.
Lets say Russia wins, and re-integrates Ukraine.
Now what does the world look like in 20 years when Russia is eye-balling Poland?
It won't happen. If you think so then, you are not well informed about this topic. Russia has no manpower to "re-integrate" the whole Ukraine. Ukraine will always exist, but for the next years, maybe not as big as in 2014. Ukraine can still prepare itself to take the lost area back in the future. That's up to Ukraine, not to Europe.
Said that, one possibility, for now, which is part of the negotiations is Russia keep the conquered land, Ukraine joins EU/NATO. Realistically, it would be Ukraine joins EU and US won't block Ukraine applying to NATO.
> Now what does the world look like in 20 years when Russia is eye-balling Poland?
Poland, other than Ukraine, isn't one of the most corrupt countries in the World, and did their home-work. Beside it, other than Ukraine, Poland is NATO.
War and killings turn up the contrast, converting shades of gray to black and white, people to friends and enemies.
I rather would live in peacetime, where it’s less obvious who is good and who is bad.
Ukraine has never infringed on Russia's sovereignty or territorial integrity before it was attacked. Therefor this war is entirely Russia's fault.
The world is mostly shades of gray. But this case it black and white.
I am neither Russian nor European, so I don't have any horse in this race. But Russia's concerns sure seen valid from the outside.
If anything, Russia has put themselves in serious shit for invading Ukraine. If they hadn't started this, over 600.000 of their people wouldn't be dead or wounded.
How many countries has NATO invaded?
Not to defend the regime in power then (nor now!), but if you ask Serbia they might offer some other lived experiences on how consensual Operation Allied Force was.
Thought of course you knew that already since you obviously know what the operation was called, a fact basically nobody today knows (without looking it up).
Just because they weren't "defending a NATO member" doesn't mean that the operation was "offensive".
But there is a reason, which curiously enough you neglected to mention. As the other commenter pointed out, it was to stop an active genocide which was being prosecuted by Slobodan Milosevic’s military and paramilitary forces.
> NATO was founded to defend against invasion from e.g. Russia
Would you feel threatened if your neighbours set up weapons right outside your property line, ostensibly to defend in case you attack? And especially if they've already invaded your property twice (France and Germany both invaded Russia).
Russia refused to withdraw from Moldova to implement CFE II. This is not the action of a state worried that it's disadvantage in conventional arms will lead to invasion.
This has nothing to do with NATO. Only with Russian imperialism.
Except that never happened in Ukraine, or in any of the other NATO countries close to Russia.
You know that, right?
Somebody is refusing to pay protection money and is forming a “neighbourhood watch”. We need to make example of them.
The actual Russian perspective is "Let's quickly grab Ukraine before they completely turn towards Europe, otherwise Russia cannot be an empire again."
It may be strange to modern western minds but Russians still consider their imperial project as wholesome, good and nearly sacred. To get into the correct mindstate, you can read for example how Churchill venerated the British empire. The Russians hold this same veneration to their imperial project today. They also know western audience probably would not appreciate this reasoning so they need to invent laughable excuses like ”we were afraid of NATO expansion” that clueless western commentators happily repeat as the foundational reason.
From Russia's perspective, NATO has been infringing on both Russia's sphere of influence and on her buffer states. Russia has _twice_ been invaded by the Europeans, she hasn't forgotten that. And with Ukraine in NATO, there are no natural barriers between European powers and Russia.
Need I remind you how the US responded when the USSR set up missile positions in Cuba?
We can safely say "no", as the US never set up missile positions in Ukraine, or had any plan to.
There's simply no analogy between the two situations.
I have already asked you in another comment to tell me how long NATO has been literally on Russia’s border.
Why are you dodging the question?
In any case, I'm not on HN constantly. Maybe once every hour or so I'll take a look. Aggressiveness and impatience are not appreciated on HN, if I get around to answering you I will. And maybe not if I don't feel that _I_ have something to learn from the conversation. I'm not here promoting some dogma, and I don't have to answer your questions.
You were absolutely, unequivocally were dodging the commenter's question.
I don't care one way or the other.
If you plainly don't care, and won't answer questions, and since you obviously don't invest the time to keep even basic tabs on the actual situation on the ground anyway -- then it's extremely difficult to see why you're bothering to engage at all, here. It looks like you're just out to stir the pot, basically.
> You were absolutely, unequivocally were dodging the commenter's question.
Again, you are dodging the question.
Either you will say they aren’t, in service of your argument that russia invaded Ukraine to prevent NATO from coming up to their border, in which case you would be wrong since NATO has shared a border with russia in Europe for at least the past 24 years.
Or, you will say at least the past 24 years, which undermines your argument that russia only invaded Ukraine to prevent NATO appearing at their immediate borders, since they were already there. For at least the past 24 years.
We can do this all day.
I’ve got another question for you. Almost certainly you will dodge it, because it is blindingly obvious that you are not impartial as you pretend to be, and that you have a strong bias for the Putin regime and its illegal war and genocide, but let’s go through the motions anyway.
How did the Moskva sink?
> How did the Moskva sink?
> Some other guy already answered you on your post with the original question: "4 April 1949 the day NATO was founded"
It also doesn’t explain why earlier you said “And with Ukraine in NATO, there are no natural barriers between European powers and Russia.”
How does that make any sense at all? There have been “no natural barriers between European powers and russia” for decades already. It has nothing to do with Ukraine.
> Didn't the Ukrainians shoot it with either an anti-ship missile or a drone jetski?
> I really don't care who's right. But I do listen to both sides of the story.
No, you don't.
And neither do the Russians.
So, are you going to be so superficial when Cuba gets Kalibr's deployed?
As in uses depleted uranium (because of density characteristics) or radioactive waste stuff just for being radioactive?
(Obviously mass of tomahawk is too low for any chain nuclear reaction)
Would you want nuclear-capable missiles deployed on your borders, within 7 minutes flight time of your capitol city?
Tomahawks are designed to carry nuclear weapons.
I find your ignorance of this fact deplorable. Please inform yourself.
Would you find the deployment of Kalibr (the Tomahawk analog on the other side) to your borders, within 7 minutes flight time of your capitol city, to be an acceptable state of affairs - especially if the deploying party had recently torn up any involvement in the treaties designed to reduce their proliferation?
Actually it was effectively impossible, as NATO's bylaws prevent the admission of states with active border conflicts. This is most likely (a large part of) why Putin invaded both Georgia and Ukraine -- to create permanent border conflicts, to prevent them from becoming NATO states.
So in fact there was no imminent possibility of Ukraine becoming a NATO state at the time of the 2022 invasion. Which makes perfect sense, as it was never the reason Putin chose to launch the full-scale invasion, anyway.
It's not even that there was absolutely no active process of joining NATO when Russia attacked Ukraine in February 2014 and started all this. No; if Ukraine wants to join NATO, that's entirely Ukraine's decision. Russia has no say in it. Ukraine is sovereign and can join any military alliance it wants. Just as Russia is free to do so.
No nation has extra-territorial security interests that it needs to defend by attacking a neutral, peaceful and friendly neighbor.
You have been fooled into defending imperialism. Or worse; you're consciously defending imperialism.
> Russia's "concerns" are not valid.
> It's not even that there was absolutely no active process of joining NATO when Russia attacked Ukraine in February 2014 and started all this. No; if Ukraine wants to join NATO, that's entirely Ukraine's decision. Russia has no say in it. Ukraine is sovereign and can join any military alliance it wants. Just as Russia is free to do so.
> No nation has extra-territorial security interests that it needs to defend by attacking a neutral, peaceful and friendly neighbor.
Then you know nothing of US doctrine. The Central Americans will tell you how the US will even invade just to lower the price of bananas - no joke.
> You have been fooled into defending imperialism. Or worse; you're consciously defending imperialism.
> NATO stated in the 2008 Bucharest Summit that “Ukraine will become a member of the Alliance” and reiterated that statement in the 2021 Brussels Summit. I didn’t even remember those details, it was easy to find with google and a vague idea that NATO had shown interest in Ukraine.
A little bit more competent Googling would fill in the context you’ve clearly missed:
(1) The 2008 statement was a way of mollifying Ukraine after acceding to Russia’s demand that Ukraine and Georgia be denied NATO Membership Action Plans at the 2008 summit. (Russia responded, by the way, to this accession to their demands by invading Georgia. Might have done the same to the Ukraine soon after, except by the time they were at a stable point with Georgia, they’d already managed to get a Russia-friendly government in Ukraine.)
(2) Ukraine publicly abandoned any interest in a foreign military alliance between the 2008 summit and the 2014 invasion by Russia.
(3) Ukraine abandoned its neutrality stance and restarted attempts to join NATO only after the 2014 invasion.
(4) The 2021 statement was, again, a way of putting a nice face for Ukraine on NATO again rejecting Ukraine’s attempts to join in the near term.
Provided one accepts that those concerns are valid.
And that its stated "concerns" were in fact its actual reasons for starting the war.
But there is no compelling logical basis for us to accept either of these premises.
I don't have time to fully dissect what you're saying about the NATO issue -- other than that you are leaving out some very important details which for some reason were not presented to you in whatever sources you are reading from. (Which is a polite way of telling you: your sources are apparently misinformed, or worse).
But the main point is: none of the NATO stuff ever amounted to an actual physical threat against the Russian state, or otherwise any rational reason for Russia's regime to start a war.
More to the point, it wasn't the real reason it chose to the start the war. It's just something it says, for internal and external propaganda purposes.
So no - we don't have to "accept that Russia's concerns are valid".
The Russian viewpoint is that Eastern Europe would be much easier to conquer if they were internationally isolated and could be picked off one by one like in the 1940s. The current war against Ukraine is an excellent example of this; international cooperation is a leading reason for the failure of the invasion. All the complaints about NATO lead back to the fact that for Russia it elevates the cost of invading Eastern Europe. Without NATO, they would face only limited conventional forces in Poland. With NATO, an attack on Poland go as far as activating American carrier groups or even a nuclear response.
No. Russia invading a peaceful, friendly and neutral neighbor with unmarked military units is what lead to this war.
> NATO stated in the 2008 Bucharest Summit
FR, ES and DE made it clear that Ukraine would not be a candidate for NATO and nothing came of it. The first step in admitting a nation into NATO is a Membership Action Plan (MAP) - there never was a such for Ukraine. NATO membership for Ukraine was dead in the water in 2014, when Russia heinously attacked with unmarked military units.
But that is besides the point, really; Ukraine is sovereign. It is a sovereign nation that can itself decide which alliances to join. Ukraine is not beholden to Russia and Russia doesn't get a say in Ukrainian politics. Russia is not the Soviet Union and Ukraine is not the Ukrainian Soviet Republic.
> Then you know nothing of US doctrine.
Ah, yes. The "this one over there is a murderer too" defense. You're still defending imperialism, you're just defending imperialism with more imperialism.
> I'm simply presenting Russia's viewpoint as I understand it.
Russia's viewpoint is that Ukraine has no right so sovereignty. That's in direct violation with multiple treaties with Ukraine that Russia has signed.
Russia does not want an independent Ukraine. That's why they have been attacking Ukraine for 10 years now, first clandestine and then ever more openly. That's why they have been bombing civilians, that's why the formally annexed Ukrainian territory, that's why they will not grant peace to their neighbor.
Because without Ukraine, there can be no Russian Empire.
How long has NATO been on russia's border? This is an important question. Please try to answer it.
Haven't reported anything.
Declined requests to explain themselves.
Sorry but it's bullshit.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/chinese-ship-investigat...
Is it though? From my understanding it's clearly sabotage, but who's responsible is open to some debate. Compare to NordStream, it's still not officially determined who's responsible.
Hence investigations, good detectives, good hunches, etc.
I’m not sure whether you are serious with that xenophobic comment.
Bandit state.
1) Russia hastily retaliated, which is out of character. You can accuse Russia of many things, but not of retaliating instantly (against the West, in Ukraine they probably do).
2) False flag in order to drum up pro-war sentiment in the West.
If Biden escalates in the last weeks of his presidency, presumably to make it more difficult for Trump to negotiate, why would Russia take the bait and escalate? It does not make any sense.
If anything artificial limits have been placed on Ukraine that are not placed on other nations (or in some cases proscribed terrorist organisations) purchasing or being "gifted" weapons. Whether those weapons are from the U.S., UK, France, Germany, Russia, RoK, whoever.
As for what Russia may do, they've been told publicly and privately by multiple nations: from the U.S., UK, and France, even China and India to wind their necks in with regard any nuclear escalation. However, they are very adept at asymmetric responses, and Putin has already said he would consider arming groups with anti-"western" sympathies - he probably already has.
It is now up to Russia on how to respond. And as you noted, one scenario being talked about, at least in social media, is some groups houthis, hezbollah or others getting Russian missiles and those being fired at western targets, ships or others. And I assume it would be Russian military who would control the targetting in that case depending on the missiles used. Or the Russians don't go for direct escalation with the intent of not jeopardizing the chances of Trump ending support to Ukraine in few months from now.
But either way Russia's deterrence against Nato has been challenged yet again, and the chances of escalations and counter-escalations going out of hand remains a more nearer scary possibility in the unfolding scenario in process.
It's basically a "Putin tax" on the industrial democracies in the reason. I don't see how this helps Russia at all, honestly. Putin has a real shot, given the state of US politics, at salvaging something approximating a "victory" in Ukraine and getting back to peacetime economics. Why rock the boat?
The goal at this stage is not the outcome of some minor outage, but signaling that they are prepared and ready to go ahead with major acts of sabotage. This is the local thugs smashing some furniture in your store as a warning.
Can we not make the cables resistant to this? Like if someone drags an anchor over a cable, it instantly locates the break based on time-of-flight over the cable and instantly dispatches a drone from the nearest shoreline to spray nasty sticky shit all over the ship?
That said, radar systems and sattelites should be active at all times too keeping track of every ship on there, especially if they don't have a transponder active.
> We are deeply concerned about the severed undersea cable connecting Finland and Germany in the Baltic Sea. The fact that such an incident immediately raises suspicions of intentional damage speaks volumes about the volatility of our times. A thorough investigation is underway. Our European security is not only under threat from Russia‘s war of aggression against Ukraine, but also from hybrid warfare by malicious actors. Safeguarding our shared critical infrastructure is vital to our security and the resilience of our societies.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/18/telecoms-cable...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/16/russian-spy-sh...
Like there's real physical stuff destroyed (or in most circumstances digital stuff). How hard is it to impound ships that break stuff and etc so that the ones responsible are actually punished?
Not hard. Not done. Because we're cowards.
NATO has forward deployed forces to assure that to take Riga, Tallin, and Vilnius, Russia will have to attack and defeat armed forces of the UK, Canada, and Germany respectively. More than that, really, those are just the lead nations in the NATO forward-deployed battlegroups in those countries. There are also five other forward-deployed battlegroups, four of which — as well as reinforcement of the original four in the Baltics + Poland – were deployed in response to the 2022 Russian escalation in Ukraine.
Cutting undersea cables is not going to prevent (or even meaningfully slow) a response given that.
Are you suggesting Russia has a full invasion force they’re not using in Ukraine? Or to liberate their own occupied territory?
There are no scenarios in which Russia can have any significant victories. The only thing they maybe have is nukes, but nobody wins if those are deployed.
And you're both changing the goalposts, and setting a ridiculous standard (WWI/WWII) for the minimum standard of what constitutes a "serious" war.
In Kursk Russian forces can't maneuver much, they have to directly push on Ukrainians. The density of Russian and Ukrainian forces in this war - like ~500K each on the 1000km of the battle lines - is order of magnitude higher than that of the Baltic states militaries. Potential invasion in the low density situation of the Baltic states would make sense by cutting through un/low-defended areas with encircling/etc. of the more fortified areas without direct assault of them, at least initially.
And that is not a fight I think Russia can win and they know that.
Trump also got out of the Intermediate Missile treaty - which was beneficial for Russia (and Western Europe) and a non-issue for Americans.
Trump is not the Putin-puppet Hillary made him to be.
Apparently you haven't seen the map going around with Trump's proposed solution. Ukraine gives up all of what Russia is occupying right now, and doesn't keep Kursk. Ukraine can't join NATO for "20 years" (aka never). "European" troops are supposed to sit on a "DMZ" (which they will never agreed to).
Aka Ukraine surrenders, and Russia will just organize a hybrid-warfare coup to get a Lukashenko-style puppet gov't back in in Ukraine. Or come back in with troops in a few years.
Basically it's crappy bargaining, from a weak president. If you were Putin, and you saw that map... why stop now? You'd be laughing. No consequences.
Trump is a puppet not so much of Putin, but of the oil and gas sector. And Russia is an energy superpower. They both speak on behalf of the same global financial interests. They are very tired of this conflict and care little about Ukraine.
I cannot see Trump playing along with an Article 5 reaction to Russian aggression. And Putin is not stupid enough to use direct conventional warfare against a NATO state anyways. It's just more and more hybrid provocations, to wear down western solidarity, to topple gov'ts or undermine response, and all excused by useful idiots in the west.
Because apparently there isn't one. It seems some Republican "strategist" put out a map, but it has since been disavowed by the incoming administration.
"Bryan Lanza was a contractor for the campaign," said the spokesperson, who declined to be named. "He does not work for President Trump and does not speak for him."The Trump - Zelensky call was about discrediting Biden not about appeasing Putin. OK, moving on...
Trump is not longer Putin's puppet but the puppet "of the oil and gas sector". OK, moving on...
This thread is about about Russian military invasion in the Baltics and you reply with "And Putin is not stupid enough to use conventional warfare against NATO".OK, moving on....
"topple govt's" - Putin cannot even topple Ukraine...
https://x.com/Jonpy99/status/1856776568057565284/photo/1
There's no secret real russian army just waiting to invade some another country, or just chilling in Urals. If russia did not have nuclear weapons, road to moscow would be open.
Any how many of those tanks go straight to Ukraine? Do you think Russia can afford to stockpile tanks (and everything else necessary) for several years for an invasion of Europe while simultaneously engaged in the their current war in Ukraine?
Multiple NATO countries should invoke Article 4 of NATO already, but they don't.
I mean, they are doing pretty good for a total NATO deployment of 0 combat forces. Funny to describe the only country with troops involved as “helping” and treating the nonexistent NATO presence as the primary force.
> NATO have no enough tanks, shells, soldiers to stop 2 million army in few first weeks, even if Russians will just march with their AK-s in hands.
In the event of a Russian invasion of Eastern flank NATO members and the NATO forward-deployed battlegroups in those countries, NATO policy, unlike in Ukraine, would not restrict the use of long range weapons against command and control, logistics, and combat aviation facilities in Russia, nor would NATO forces be short on their own combat aviation to use against the invasion itself.
Ukraine isn’t NATO, and while impressive for their conditions, what Ukraine can do is not a model for what NATO can do.
Long range weapons will hit hard for sure, but millions of soldiers still must be defeated in close combat to take ground. Ukraine has western tech, it good, but it not good enough when Ukrainians are outnumbered. To win the war, Ukraine must dominate in the war, but western allies fail to deliver anything that will dominate over Russia.
No, its not. Russia is at war with Ukraine. No NATO countries are fighting Russia, Russia is fighting no NATO countries.
> Ukraine is invaded because Ukraine wants to join NATO
Even if that was true, invading Ukraine is war with Ukraine, not NATO.
But it is not true, you have cause and effect reversed. Ukraine had a legal dedication to neutrality when Russia invaded in 2014, that provision was eliminated and its pursuit of NATO membership, which had been abandoned years before in favor of neutrality, resumed after the invasion. Ukraine wants to join NATO because Russia invaded it, not vice versa.
Meanwhile US AirForce has about 900 F-16s... and a whole bunch of F35s. This it not a serious comparison....
I actually do think that the US and Europe should be moving faster to increase their military manufacturing capacity, especially Europe given the situation they are now facing. But to say that NATO countries have been throwing everything they have to Ukraine is wildly off the mark.
...and that assumes Russia still has enough tanks to even mount an offensive, in sufficient numbers to capture several capital cities, belonging to nations with a fearsome grudge against them.
(Three years ago, I would have fully agreed with your assessment!)
And I guess there is still some paranoia in Russia. The NATO Neocons are busy feeding it.
Not really. The USSR was scared about what they perceived as Anglo-led forces and so united with Germany against them and attacked them first. The invasion of 1941 came from Germany who was still an ally even just the night before the invasion - Hitler even fed Stalin (and Stalin went for it!) the fake that the German forces got accumulated on the USSR border to mislead Britain into thinking that Germany plans to attack USSR while instead Germany was supposedly preparing to invade Britain.
>And I guess there is still some paranoia in Russia. The NATO Neocons are busy feeding it.
The Russian paranoia hasn't changed much since Ivan The Terrible, long before neocons.
Munich was an "alliance" of Great Britain und Germany (and sort of Poland).
Then Germany and the Soviet Union allied against Poland.
Then Great Britain and The Soviet Union allied.
>The Russian paranoia hasn't changed much since Ivan The Terrible, long before neocons.
Prisoners of Geography is pop science but I like the chapter about Russia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoners_of_Geography
https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/106335/blood-and-ruins-by-ov...
And everyone next to the Soviet Union was right to be scared since Soviet Union invaded Finland and Poland in 1939.
The invasion from Nazi Germany, the USSR's ally in the invasion of Poland, and the one it signed extensive trade agreements with and helped to avoid sanctions.
And what happens if they actually go for that distance?
Another example of BTG driving deep and getting decimated: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4g68MmLrGvM
I made such comment here in the first hours of the invasion :)
>If they weren't stopped at Voznesensk, they would be stopped somewhere else
if they were able to take the bridge at Voznesensk, that BTG would keep it, and more forces would come that way.
However, at this point it's only speculation, probably not worth getting deeper into it.
While theoretically it's possible that Russia would simultaneously dismantle or jam the internet, mobile phones, radio, sattelite, and runners in fast cars, if that does happen it's already red alert everywhere.
RU spent months gathering forces on the UA in Jan, Feb 2022. All the while, the US was publicly telling UA the odds of invasion were high.
Moving atoms at that scale doesn’t happen without lots of visible signs. The border nations already know what to look for.
And some border states have already built barriers at the border with RU, notably Poland.
And how long does it take for the F35 to fly across all Baltic States? 30 minutes at max speed. Without air supremacy, Russia would be dead in the water.
> That is the time Russia wants to buy. Once Russian forces are already in Riga, Tallinn, Vilnus, the NATO will have a decision to make on whether to bomb the Russian forces already placed by that time among the Baltic states population.
If you think Poland and Finland would sit on their hands and do nothing, you're being naive.
Besides NATO already has a large land based army as well. US, Turkey, Poland , Finland all have large ground forces
Similar tactics was used by communists in Vietnam and Korea.
https://labs.ripe.net/author/emileaben/does-the-internet-rou...
20": English notation for twenty seconds
I'm not being snarky, but from what I gather, Isreal could have prevented that.
Any build up on those borders is now going to be interpreted in that way and you'll have a likely reaction from NATO all across the eastern front.
I doubt they would get very far.
Russia was concentrating troops alongside the border for months. It started on October 2021, invasion began on February 2022.
Invading the Baltics or Poland or Sweden... not on the table.
"Hybrid" warfare, yes. But that's been going on for two decades.
Thing is: cutting people's fiber optic lines isn't going to get them out of this sanction regime.
Russian ships ‘plotting sabotage in the North Sea’ [1]
[0] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/uk-undersea-...
[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russia-ships...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/16/russian-spy-sh...
[0] https://www.colt.net/resources/colt-successfully-completes-t...
Now, what the British Navy would do about this I'm not precisely sure. But even to escort the ships away would put a stop to it, and the UK wouldn't be cut off.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/nato-jets-in...
Also with cables, they can be destroyed with "innocent" ships that have a right to be there actually :)
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65309687
Russia has a programme to sabotage wind farms and communication cables in the North Sea, according to new allegations.
The details come from a joint investigation by public broadcasters in Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland.
It says Russia has a fleet of vessels disguised as fishing trawlers and research vessels in the North Sea.
Not in international waters, which is where submarine cables are largely located.
And even if they could: The oceans are... kind of big. If it were that easy to "just patrol" shipping lanes/submarine cable tracks etc., why would piracy still be a concern?
And even if it works, this will only give attackers pause that are deterred by attribution.
That said, there is a limited amount that can be done in international waters without creating an international incident. Law Of The Seas, Freedom Of Navigation, etc.. It is to our advantage for example, when we want to prevent CCP's from denying access to international waters around Taiwan or Phillipines, but to Russia's advantage when scouting undersea cables in international waters.
They can field more "research" vessels than we'd typically field mil vessels, but I'd bet real money that that ratio just changed a lot in the past few weeks, as it hits the press.
Back during the cold war, there was very often a Soviet "fishing boat" trailing after any substantial US Navy fleet. Said fishing boat may have had far more antennas than any fisherman would expect, but far less interest in catching fish.
Fast forward - what would be the cost of having cheap western drones hanging around nearby, when suspected Russian assets were close to undersea cables, pipelines, and such?
That said, satellite tracking shipping is pretty easy - It's interdicting ina timely fashion which is not.
But cheap drones can transmit "don't do that!" warnings. And also video footage of the situation. Which would seriously change both the maritime law and political situations.
If the suspicion is high enough, it's pretty standard for a US submarine or surface group to shadow whatever it is. It's free practice for the submarine crew.
This happened when the Russian ships visited cuba earlier this year.
However, another one will be along soon.
I'd assume, at the moment, that the primary goal is intimidation rather than anything else.
Why did Putin take crimea under Obama's watch, parts of Ukraine under Biden's watch, but then not make any huge moves like those while his "asset" was in the white house?
Also, he needed a green light. Which was provided in the form of the chaotic Afghanistan pullout in 2021. Not that he was counting on it -- but once it went through, it seems very likely that tipped the scales in his mind in favor of deciding to actually go through with the full-scale invasion in 2022.
Imagine how quickly ukriane would have collapsed if the US was not providing support, and the US was preventing European nations from providing support. And then imagine how well off Russia would be if there were no sanctions placed on it by America. All in all your point doesn't make sense. You don't get an asset sitting in the oval office and then not use them.
You may want to think about the chronology again.
And then ask yourself if your statement above still makes sense.
I'll leave out whether this was intentional or because he saw peace in putin's eyes (as he himself claimed).
But yes, russia couldn't successfully invade in 2018.
They didn't invade successfully in 2022, either. Meaning they were never able to invade successfully at any year before that. The whole war is a gigantic delusion for them, remember.
But as for evidence that they needed about 7-8 years to build their resources to a point where its regime thought they could invade successfully:
One of the pieces of evidence in favor of this view is the graph of the CBRF's (that's the Central Bank of Russia) holdings of foreign cash reserves, over the past 20 years. It shows oscillation or decline up until 2014, and then from 2014-2022, steady increases each year, resulting in a net increase from about $100b to $300b by 2022.
Military analyst say that Russia engaged in similar purchasing patterns internally (building up its reserves of shells and missile stocks, for example).
If they invaded in 2018, they wouldn't have had to deal with any of those things. That is, if Trump actually is a Russian agent. So why did they wait until the situation was much worse for them in order to invade?
I considered it, but I just don't think it adds up to what you think it does.
On top of what the GP listed, there was also the post-pandemic uncertainty, soaring inflation and increase in the support of far-right/isolationist politicians in Europe. The Russians probably expected a slow start from them and a quick takeover of Kyiv[0], which would likely mean game over for a big chunk (if not all) of Ukraine. To be fair, they almost succeeded: it came down to the single battle that saved Kyiv from a quick occupation[1].
Last (but not least), there was the Putin's isolation during the pandemic when he might have read too much of Russian fascism philosophers'[2]. To me, the open all-out invasion at that time seemed very much out of his style as he had always preferred covert probing and sabotage before that.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Antonov_Airport [1]https://kyivindependent.com/opinion-russias-failure-to-take-... [2]https://thebulletin.org/2022/03/inside-putins-head-paranoid-...
This is all Trump had to do.
He was able to leverage the media's reporting on him that he was reckless, dangerous and prone to rash behavior and they were convinced he was going to start WWIII with? Yeap, you guessed it, the Russians. Putin believed what the media were reporting because Trump himself had verbally warned him.
He didn't need forces and cash. He did what OP recommended, he threatened Putin with force and Putin complied and just waited out Trump. It was a gift that Biden was elected in 2020 and if you go through the news reports, literally months after Biden was elected, Russia started massing troops on the border and readying their troops to invade. Its a strange coincidence that they didn't invade in the four years Trump was in office. He leaves and less than a year later, Russia is preparing to invade? C'mon man.
Your timeline is completely wrong.
- Biden's inauguration took place on January 2021.
- The Russians were amassing troops by December of 2021 (less than a year after he took office).
- The Afghan pullout wasn't until the Summer of 2021
- The Russian officially invaded in February of 2022
The green light wasn't needing forces and cash built up, it was Trump leaving office. The Afghan pullout had no effect on when they were going to invade since they were already massing troops and air support to the border regions where they finally launched their invasion from. Its not like the Russians decided to invade during the Afghan disaster as you insinuated, the invasion plans were already established by then.
Again, the tipping point was Trump leaving office.
Yeah. Trump talks a lot. Like his best friend, Melon.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-putin-no-way-ukraine-mu...
"No way." "Way."
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/17852964/donald-trump-threaten...
“They're all saying oh he's a nuclear power, it's like they're afraid of him,” Trump said in a recording of the phone conversation with Daly. “You know, he was a friend of mine, I got along great with him. I say, Vladimir, if you do it, we're hitting Moscow. We're going to hit Moscow. And he sort of believed me like 5 per cent, 10 per cent - that's all you need.”
He's also said the same thing in several interview. That he told Putin he would make it very difficult to take Ukraine and it cost them economically and militarily. You can infer that meant could mean several things depending on your point of view.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JpwkeTBwgs
NOTE: I mostly don't like Trump. But the "Russiagate" angle is ridiculous.
Spot on.
The other pipelines. Their shadow oil fleet. There are lots of options. But to my knowledge, only the British, French and Americans are capable of the long-range clandestine operations.
https://windward.ai/knowledge-base/illuminating-russias-shad...
> Parliament calls for an EU crackdown on Russia’s ’shadow fleet’
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20241111IP...
Would be a shame if they started having engine troubles in the middle of the ocean.
2. It's not exactly in the interests of NATO to have those ships start spilling tons of oil in the North Atlantic
The problem of that "shadow fleet" is precisely that those are old, uninsured vessels that cause environmental risks.
Since when did engine troubles cause an oil spill?
The real question is, should security and defense concerns be placed on hold? If our basic freedoms and rights are being attacked, how big of a deal would be a shadow fleet tanker catastrophe?
As long as we're all playing silly only-kinda-deniable games, that's an option on the table.
Plenty of targets in the Gulf of Finland.
The gas sold by Russia to France, Germany, etc. is transported using normal vessels, AFAIK.
Plenty of targets in the Gulf of Finland.
If the CIA or US Navy don't have the technical means to blow up the Crimea bridge with plausible deniability they haven't been paying attention.
Add to that a natural conservative tendency in the US to jump at isolationism whenever there's an easy excuse (the guy you like is doing the "bad thing" so you don't actually want to stop him, the war is literally somewhere else and doesn't exactly involve us)
So it's hard for people like me, who used to be pretty pacifist, to decide that yeah maybe violence is the right option sometimes?
Also, the entire time we are trying to shake off bullshit "Democrats are warhawks" nonsense from the party that did the desert bombing just because Bush wanted to defend his daddy's memory. The same people who call the Dems warhawks spent the 2000s screaming that "you're either with us or against us" and calling anti-war people pussies so I guess they don't have very good memories.
So for various reasons, some good, the US is extremely gunshy right now. Even those of us wholeheartedly in support of Ukraine, wishing we gave them a thousand Bradleys and tanks, feel uncomfortable with the idea of boots on the ground. Meanwhile Europe has forgotten what intervention is, and seems utterly unwilling to do anything, lest they have to get off their holier than thou pedestal.
Appeasement definitely doesn't work, but the middle east is full of examples of "just bomb them all" also not working very well. Everyone is very nervous. It sure seems like Russia won't stop their horseshit until someone makes them stop, but that's going to require a million dead.
unfortunately, "we" didnt have to pay a sacrifice to the economy for it, because germany paid it.
The US is too afraid of nukes, and won't escalate. The russians rightly predicted this.
https://www.dw.com/en/germany-to-hit-nato-budget-goal-for-1s...
> Exports of motor vehicles and motor vehicle parts to Kyrgyzstan grew particularly strongly in the first quarter, soaring more than 4,000% from a very small base to over 84 million euros... That came after a six-fold rise in German exports to Kyrgyzstan last year following Russia's February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
https://www.reuters.com/world/german-exports-russias-neighbo...
I know people in Kyrgyzstan, trust me they did not suddenly become industrialized when Russia invaded
Anecdotally, as a Russian, some of my craziest interactions with foreigners who support the thugs in Russian gov, blame US/NATO for Russian aggression and totally buy the propaganda were with Germans. (Not a proper data point, just venting frustration, Germany get your act together...)
I can't help but suspect that russian influence and covert action behind the scenes, most of which might be decades in the making, is kicking into high gear.
This means that a good part of especially the general former East German population as well as the academic and cultural upper class are left-leaning (in USian terms: deep red communists), soviet/russia-supporting and antiamerican by default. This got even stronger the farther we got past the 1990s, because the view back on the communist times naturally lost the memories of the bad parts.
You can't defeat them, the NATO strategy has failed.
I sympathize with the Russian opposition, but I think it is wrong to interfere in Russian domestic politics.
Apart from that, I have always been suspicious of the West's favorite oligarchs.
Cut trade? But everyone likes Russian dirty money too much
So Denmark can start assuming every vessel (or at least more vessels) are in violation. Russia can take that to some international court if they so desire. Inspect every ship. Question the crews. Take plenty of time doing it. Perishable goods on board will perish before reaching St Petersburg and Kaliningrad. Tankers will be refused entry, limiting or delaying export income for Russia.
That we still have oligarchs and bratva members walking around on NATO soil in the open this far into things is insane.
https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/12/11/afghanistan-papers-detai...
Imagine if every bad thing USA did... people want USA to "pay dearly"...
When thug attacks, what do you do?
First off, whataboutism is a logical fallacy.
Second, Afghanistan is nothing if not a bunch of people who wanted to make the US "pay dearly", even if to their personal and national detriment.
Third, there's a way for the Russians to avoid consequences: stop attacking Western digital infrastructure.
If it happens repeatedly, declare the passage of all Russian ships (or possibly starting with ships of the type involved in the incident, allowing other shipping and giving Russia a chance to stop abusing it) "prejudicial to the peace, good order or security of the coastal State" and deny passage through territorial waters. Extend the territorial waters between Finland and Estonia to the full 12 miles without the current corridor in between.
Russia understands and responds to strength better than to diplomacy and appeasement.
The ships involved aren't warships. They're ostensibly civilian vessels. Also other people mention that accidental fiber cuts happen all the time. Are we going to drone strike Russian civilian ships on the off chance is malicious?
>Russia understands and responds to strength better than to diplomacy and appeasement.
The best way to stop someone committing war crimes is... to commit war crimes ourselves?
That has hardly stopped people before.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Rainbow_Warrior
>The sinking was a cause of embarrassment to France and President François Mitterrand. They initially denied responsibility, but two French agents were captured by New Zealand Police and charged with arson, conspiracy to commit arson, willful damage, and murder.
There's unlikely to be anywhere near as much outcry if Russian trawlers lurking around undersea cables start getting holes in them.
There seems to be consensus that this was not an accident (politicians have stated as such), and treating it accordingly would show Russia "no, you can't just pretend it was an accident and expect us to do nothing".
On the off chance it actually is an accident at some point - that's the downside (for Russia) of having pretend-accidents too many times.
The alternative is ignoring it "because we can't be sure" until we get to ignore the "little green men" that totally aren't Russian when they come across the border...
http://www.hisutton.com/Yantar.html
http://www.hisutton.com/Belgorod-Class-Submarine.html
http://www.hisutton.com/Russian-Spy-Submarine-BS-64e.html
and so on
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/09/06/politics/us-sees-increasi...
Good times creates weak men.
But also the Russian MO has never been to do things where it's not obvious they did it: the spate of critics of the Russian government dying by falling out of windows isn't because they lack creativity in assassinating people.
> has never been to do things where it's not obvious they did
They could still shot them or something like that, the window thing still grants them some plausible deniability. e.g. the ship that (unclear if intentionally) damaged the cables last year was Chinese.
You literally just described a program of falsifying documents! If you're buying and operating a ship, then to have "no ties to Russia" while using Russian money, someone is showing up with forged paperwork or some off-the-books bribes to make that happen.
Drawing down those sorts of sums from a country's treasury isn't something you can actually just "do" - people have to take actions, funds transferred, meetings held and operations authorized.
You are describing a system of resources which likely does exist, but is by no means easy to use or acquire and would not be expended unnecessarily.
> funds transferred, meetings held and operations authorized.
It's Russia... I doubt there would be a lot oversight. But they might just as well get the money from one of the "private" companies run by Putin's cronies with zero direct involvement by the Russian government.
Anyway, I still think that acquiring the ship itself is still a relatively trivial problem to solve.
The US can barely enforce its sanctions against Iran. Despite the sanctions, they can still move tens of billions of oil proceeds. What makes you think any country is going to be any more successful at preventing Russia from renting a rogue ship?
https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2024/10/17/i...
Hybrid warfare - the infrastructure is offline, and the repair resources are consumed. And you gather intel what the resource impact and offline time is.
Message - we can do this. Now think what else we can do.
Of course the message is also pushing EU closer to war footing. But China and Russia don’t see it that way - they think the lack of popular outcry means weakness.
NSA's OAKSTAR, STORMBREW, BLARNEY and FAIRVIEW
And eavesdrop is one thing but I'm not clear how you could MITM an undersea cable without the operators noticing.
Except it's not silent because you need to expose your misissued certificate every time. Sure, the average joe won't spot it, but all it takes is one security researcher to expose the whole thing. AFAIK there are also projects by google and the EFF to monitor certificates, so the chances of you getting caught are really high. Combined with the fact that no such attacks has been discovered, makes me think that it probably doesn't occur in practice, or at least is only used against high value targets rather than for dragnet surveillance.
You typically encrypt anyway because you just lease the line and buy the b/w. It's operated by a different company and you share the wire with other customers.
ping hel1-speed.hetzner.com
Russia has a programme to sabotage wind farms and communication cables in the North Sea, according to new allegations.
The details come from a joint investigation by public broadcasters in Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland.
It says Russia has a fleet of vessels disguised as fishing trawlers and research vessels in the North Sea.
Also: Internet cables today, essential power distribution cables tomorrow. Infrastructure is fragile, and human lives will eventually be at stake.
Especially as navies are just fundamentally not constructed to defend extended things like a cable: starting a war over them is the best way to ensure every cable is cut.
Cables getting cut is only dangerous because it’s an escalation that may lead to bombs. There aren’t thousands of civilians dying because Finland doesn’t have high speed fibre to Germany.
>>"“We put in place a National Maritime Information Centre in about 2010 and we needed a Joint Maritime Operations Coordination Centre alongside it, because we said very firmly we have to take threats to our territorial seas and exclusive economic zone very, very seriously.
They are now in place, which is good, but they need to be really reinforced and the departments involved need to fully man them, because otherwise we are not going to be able to counter what is a very real and present threat and could cause major major damage to our nation.”" [0]
[0] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/uk-undersea-...
Can you elaborate?
"You can't seriously be telling me that governments are threatening to--"
"The Chinese have already done it. They cut an older cable--first-generation optical fiber--joining Korea to Nippon. The cable wasn't that important--they only did it as a warning shot. And what's the rule of thumb about governments cutting submarine cables?"
"That it's like nuclear war," Randy says. "Easy to start. Devastating in its results. So no one does it."
"But if the Chinese have cut a cable, then other governments with a vested interest in throttling information flow can say, 'Hey, the Chinese did it, we need to show that we can retaliate in kind.' "
"Is that actually happening?"
"No, no, no!" Avi says. They've stopped in front of the largest display of needlenose pliers Randy has ever seen. "It's all posturing. It's not aimed at other governments so much as at the entrepreneurs who own and operate the new cables.”
I'm all for finally showing the Russians a response for their covert warfare... but this is not the right opportunity. This kind of situation happens many times every year (and the causes are almost always the same, with a few cases of submarine landslides or seismic events).
If it's "he who shall not be named", gotta admit, that's a clever strategy: ramp up sabotage and see how NATO/EU will feel about their "red lines", and how well does that article 5 really work in practice. Is it worth more than the paper it's printed on? Let's find out!
People have been laughing at the West crossing multiple Russian "red lines" and the Russians not doing anything. So the Russians can follow a similar route: a cable torn here, a warehouse blows up there, maybe a bank website is hacked, water supply or power station company blows up "randomly". Is anyone going to launch nuclear bombs because of that? That's absurd, of course not, yet NATO/EU just looks weak and pathetic in the process.
Ideally, these countries should ramp up similar acts of sabotage on the Russian territory if they confirmed that's exactly who it is. A dam fails in Siberia, maybe the payment system goes down for a week, a submarine catches on fire while in port for repairs. Honestly I don't think they have the guts to do that.
Some regimes only speak the language of power. They have to be believably threatened; calling them on phone to chat and beg for them to behave, is just showing more weakness. Scholz just called Putin. Anyone remember Macron talking with Putin for tens of hours at the start of the war? A lot of good that did. When they see a credible fist in front of their nose, that's the only way they'll stop.
It doesn't happen anymore for legal reasons.
NATO will 100% not be the first to declare war despite even very serious provocations. Maybe they'll take a leaf out of Russia or Israel's book and declare a 'special' or 'limited' operation though...
As you yourself just pointed out a few lines line above this, there's no need to take a leaf out of anybody else's book: all the US' and NATO wars of the past decades have been presented as "special operations": e.g. the war against Serbia, the war against Iraq, the war against Afghanistan, etc.
Comparing Russia to Serbia, the cliff of inaction seems almost insurmountable.
Just claim your advisors to South Korea are taking care of extra-territorial combatants from that war. No reason to declare a war on Russia when it's clearly part of the existing conflict.
But if it doesn't declare war, it now looks weak. That article 5 isn't worth very much all of the sudden. At the same time it's stupid to start WW3 over a village in the Baltics, a town in Romania, a cut cable or a few blown up warehouses. The Russians took the same "red line" idea and are playing it against the NATO and the EU. I can't interpret as any other way. And on one level, it sort of works.
> Maybe they'll take a leaf out of Russia or Israel's book and declare a 'special' or 'limited' operation though...
I'd like to believe. But remembering how much hand wringing was needed to send a few tanks to Ukraine and some F-16. Somehow, I doubt they'll be able to do anything as bold as a "special" military operation against Russia. Heck, they can't even provide air defense for Ukraine's skies. (As in use NATO's own defense systems to stop the Russians destroying apartment buildings). That's the point the Russians are providing. They are destroying NATO's reputation without even trying to too much, and I posit, so far it works.
Turns out looks and optics are much less important than money and munitions.
Really? Russia, with the 6th largest army in the world, had to pull in Iran and Pyongyang to not get invaded by the 13th largest [1][2].
Moscow is being a nuisance. That doesn't make NATO or Europe look weak, it makes Russia look pathetic.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/13/world/europe/ukraine-russ...
The West didn't really help Ukraine in the first month [1]. We thought the Russian army was competent and would ride into Ukraine like we did in Iraq. It wasn't until after the weakness was made apparent that aid started dripping in.
Ukraine repelled a Russian invasion on its own. Our generations-old anti-air systems are downing their latest weapons. Meanwhile, our generations-old missiles are taking out their state-of-the-art systems.
To the degree Russia has been able to claim any victory, it's in not being demolished. That's the standard. Not winning. Simply surviving.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_aid_to_Ukrain...
And it's even without mentioning the direct role of Boris Johnson in tanking the Istanbul accords.
Stil far from closing the gap between the 6th and 13th largest armies. Russia invaded an inferior force and got stymied. This would be like America's Vietnam being Cuba, where we fully committed the U.S. military and economy to the task and still continued to fail. The fact that Russia has never even established air superiority knocks it out of the category of running a modern military.
Also note that the Russian army was not "fully committed", it was not using conscripts (there was a small scale deployment of conscripts, but after the public scandal they were quickly removed from Ukraine) and did not fully pull forces from all its military districts.
Meanwhile Ukraine was fighting in the total war mode from the first days (they do not pull "recruits" from streets in the broad daylight into military buses just for the fun of it) with huge external support. And having the well trained by the West ideologically charged army backbone with 8 years of practical warfare experience has helped immensely in the first months.
Did they do that during the first few months of the war? I recall them having more volunteers than they could use in the early days.
US cannot claim a single victory in the past 4 decades, it's been debacle after debacle.
The 2000s invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were pretty successful. The holding of Afghanistan and Iraq, not so much. Russia doesn't seem to be having nearly the level of success in invading Ukraine (although invading Crimea seemed to be pretty successful).
Militarily? You've got to be joking. Russia is still struggling with the military part of the campaign.
Russia's "top of the line" weapons are routinely being potted by decades-old NATO kit. They are a spent force, conventionally. The military turned from a fighting force into a propaganda tool, aimed at projecting masculinity to a domestic audience over maintaining martial capability.
The problem in the West is there are a lot of Soviet-era talking heads who make money when Russia gets attention. There is no money to be made if Russia is a loser. So it's in the interest of that foreign policy wing to trump up Moscow as if it's a competent military versus the dumpster fire that it is without Pyongyang and Tehran.
Technically no, but a more forthright assessment would be: "Russia has been winning the war of attrition, but very slowly, and only for the past year. At current rates, it would take several decades to reach Kyiv. Meanwhile, for the sake of these extremely modest gains, it's spending about 10 percent of its GDP."
Context it is everything.
Another approach which is more likely to work is for NATO countries to step up and really hurt Russia through every means short of war. That mainly means finding a way to reduce their fossil fuels export income.
Which is happening now.
EU is about to impose sanctions on the shadow fleet of Russian tankers.
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20241111IP...
Which is a myth - oft repeated, but with precisely zero substance.
Regardless, you can believe that the West did not provide any assurance to Ukraine during the Istanbul talks and that Russia has blown its own pipeline. It's your right.
It was speculated as a possibility by that article, but then it was looked into by others, quite thoroughly, and the narrative fell apart. That happens, you know.
The Foreign Affairs article in the aforementioned thread has a pretty good writeup about the whole thing, if you are interested.
You can believe that Russia has blown its own pipeline
You can change the subject as many times as you want, and speculate, falsely, about what you think other people believe about random topics, all day long if you want.
But this has absolutely no bearing on what we were just talking about.
You are moving the goalposts, though. Support between 2014 and 2022 wasn't even remotely close to:
> They send almost everything they can outside
Also even now they aren't exactly sending everything they can, rather everything they want to.
Equipment from the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s isn't "almost everything they can outside of nuclear weapons."
But you're 100% right, Ukraine should have received more, especially because we asked them to surrender their nuclear deterrence.
There is still a lot of equipment Ukraine could use, like long-range cruise missiles would help them a lot to stop from being attacked by Russia long-range cruise missiles.
We are doing no such thing. Unfortunately.
Oh come on now, you know this isn't true. The US and it's allies have a mountain of military tech they haven't sent for a variety of good and bad reasons. Ukraine regularly begs for more and better weapons, if they were "sent almost everything" would they be begging for more?
We sent a couple hundred tanks, out of 8k. We sent a couple hundred Bradleys, out of 6k. We sent literally expiring missiles. We sent the tanks missing it's best armor, because we are squeamish about giving away uranium I guess. We sent a few extremely dated F16s, instead of the thousand F35s we have. One of the main ways things were donated to Ukraine was former Soviet powers donating their old trash and getting IOUs from NATO to replace it.
With this sample platter of western equipment, Ukraine has dragged a supposed bear to its knees. With this smattering of 80s vintage, anti-soviet equipment, Ukraine has forced Russia to massively draw down their old soviet inheritance to replace the 2500 Russian tanks lost (plus several hundred essentially donated to Ukraine a couple years ago) and 1000 AFVs destroyed, and nearly 4000 IFVs destroyed.
Like it's not some bombastic victory of course because both sides are so short on equipment that it's basically 1 million men vs 1 million men, and Russia CAN build artillery shells in quantity, so they are advancing at a snails pace in some areas.
But the insane ROI on vintage NATO equipment is hilarious. The Soviets were always afraid of the West invading them, and it appears their opinion was accurate, they would have had a very very bad time. We built this stuff to mulch soviet equipment, and boy were we good at that.
The Patriot is old enough to have been embarrassed during the first gulf war by a SCUD missile. HIMARS/ATACMS is even older. The tanks and Bradleys we sent are the scraps that didn't get upgraded after Desert Storm.
That's exactly how the Russians perceive the EU. They are perceived as weak. There is no way they would have started the invasion if they were afraid of them. They are engaging in asymmetrical warfare because they are convinced they can demonstrate that to the world as well "look what we are doing there and well we get is phone calls form Sholz" [1]
> Scholz condemned the war of aggression against Ukraine
> The German leader called on Putin to withdraw Russian troops from Ukraine ...
[1] https://www.dw.com/en/germanys-scholz-calls-putin-for-first-...
That might look like a "power move" by Germany but it looks absolutely weak in the eyes of Putin.
Europe has been weak. The difference is Russia is weak while trying its hardest. Europe is weak because it can't bother to try.
> That might look like a "power move" by Germany but it looks absolutely weak in the eyes of Putin
Nobody considers condemnations power moves. Also, Putin's track record in reading who's too weak to do what doesn't look too hot right now.
So it would seem.
> There's nothing left to squeeze out of it and they're headed for a meltdown in 2025/2026.
Promises, promises. By the time 2026 rolls around, nobody will remember this comment to tell you how wrong you were.
I mean, you could be right. Who knows. The point is the future is uncertain, and using predictions as proof or arguments is stupid. Nobody knows what's going to happen 2 years out.
Did you know ahead of time they would get NK soldiers, NK artillery ammo, Iranian drones? What if Putin finds some clever ways of compensating for the losses? He's actively trying to improve his situation, not just sitting on his ass watching, as these predictions imply.
Current Russian interest rates are 21% on cash, 15% on 10 year bonds[1] and the government is increasing spending on the war.[2]
The wheels aren't going to come off immediately, but they've been reaching the peak of their ability.
Or to put it another way: you're not clever for going "nah uh" and there's no such thing as magic. For the next 3 years Russia's economy is being tossed at the war entirely, and every dollar which is is coming at the expense of everything else.
And this is all based on the heavily massaged Kremlin figures: they're not easy to lie about, but they're certainly also only ever going to be reported to try and shape a message of the type you're now parroting: you can't win so don't even try, Kremlin-strong, authoritarianism is just plain tougher then you decadent westerners.
[1] https://tradingeconomics.com/russia/government-bond-yield
[2] https://cepa.org/article/russia-budgets-for-its-forever-war/
Calling and talking with Putin as acting as some kind of "power broker" or "decider" (Bush junior's classic). I think that's the context there. That's after years of hand wringing, should we help, or shouldn't help, maybe help, but not too much and so on.
> Europe has been weak. The difference is Russia is weak while trying its hardest. Europe is weak because it can't bother to try
I agree, and I don't know if now it finally woke up or it hasn't yet. It's not over till it's over, as they say.
If Europe won't protect Poland, Poland will defend itself.
Europe mostly learned its lessons after WWII and is more interested in commerce and trade, not in battling over colonial possessions and ethnic partitioning. The games that the US (in Iraq, Syria etc.) and the Russians are playing have had nothing but negative effects on the world. US poked the hornets nest in Iraq/Syria and now Europe has had a refugee crisis for 10+ years. Russia butchering Ukraine the same.
To say that Russia is just being a nuisance.... They have just won a war. That is clear as day now.
Trump's election is the nail in the coffin. Immediately we saw Schultz call Putin and Zelensky declare that the war will be over early next year - implying a negotiated settlement.
It's done. The Russians won. Exactly what they won is all that is to be decided.
Ukraine still holds a part of Kursk region after months of Russia failing to take it back, is that what winning looks like?
Putin has destroyed Russia's population pyramid and driven away all sensible educated people. Their society is screwed for a generation.
Trump is a wildcard and may try to pressure Putin if he thinks it will get him the Nobel Peace prize he so desperately desires. But even the most conciliatory Trump cannot save Russia now.
Macron is rallying for major support.
Poland is building an extremely strong army, and is having none of Russia's BS.
Rutte is head of NATO now, and he has peace as his nr. 1 goal.
There are so many ads for cybersecurity and military on tv here in the Netherlands.
Ukraine received ATACMS (long range missiles) a while ago. This is why they are able to invade Russia back.
We are "weak" because Putin has been destabilising our peaceful politics over the past 20 years.
Russia isn't a fucking bear, it's a drunk wasteland with plenty natural resources, but with fucked up leadership. The Russian oligarchy is desperate, and it's showing.
And yes, I _am_ mad. I am 100% going to protect the EU. What we have and what we had is beautiful, and my Russian friends and my Ukrainian friends deserve better.
I am picking up math, Nix, ML, geopolitics, nature, sports and more because of these idiots in Russia. And I'm exactly what they fear most. A transgender person.
I'm so, so done with Putin and Lukachenko's BS.
The problem is that defensive capability cannot be just built all of a sudden if it turns out to be needed after all.
Of course the reason that has become a problem is Putin's aggression and authoritarian rule.
But Europe has indeed been weak in the sense of not having maintained defensive capability. Perhaps that is, both fortunately and unfortunately, changing. (Fortunately for obvious reasons, unfortunately because it means significant spending on something that should not be necessary even though it is.)
Hopefully EU societies will remain strong and resilient in the sense they've been strong all along: strong civil society and democracy.
Not nearly as much as the drop in the Soviet Union / Russia. European military spending is significantly larger than Russia’s.
It doesn't matter. It attacked one of the largest countries in Europe, captured territory and is still holding it and making progress. Right under EU's nose. It can brutally throw men in the meat grinder and doesn't worry too much about it. Calling Putin like Sholz did or like Macron didn't help. Showing him a fist that's ready to strike, only that works. Anything else is showing weakness.
> We are "weak" because Putin has been destabilising our peaceful politics over the past 20 years.
The weakness is not accidental, they've been weaving in their agents all over the place and shaping public opinion. Now they are engaged in asymmetrical warfare. Germany has been doing deals with the Russians buying gas and oil from them. Merkel laughed at the US for being worried about it:
[1] https://www.ft.com/content/aa2afe9f-0b5d-45b7-a647-cc61f6d01...
> If we’d known then what we know now, we would of course have acted differently
Yep.. When Merkel was German chancellor, I thought she was amazing. Not a big fan anymore :(
> It doesn't matter. It attacked one of the largest countries in Europe, captured territory and is still holding it and making progress. Right under EU's nose. It can brutally throw men in the meat grinder and doesn't worry too much about it. Calling Putin like Sholz did or like Macron didn't help. Showing him a fist that's ready to strike, only that works. Anything else is showing weakness.
Yeah. I agree. Putin is not interested in anything but power. And he doesn't listen to anything but power. Europe is slow and timid, but the impacts of ww2 are still deeply embedded in our cultural memory.
If you accidentally pick a fight with a BJJ fighter, hope they are a black belt instead of a purple.
Or to paraphrase Vladimir Kara-Murza, democracy will come to Russia. So far the west has been better off letting Putin tie his own noose.
Unfortunately the noose is a tie and it's soaked in Ukrainian blood so far.
Of course Ukrainians should be grateful for the help they got, and no doubt they are. But they should also be worried about how little they got and based on that rate where this war will eventually end. I am afraid it will end with bleeding all of Ukraine. I wish Western leaders, especially West European leaders were more bold. Where are the Margaret Thatchers, François Mitterrands, and Helmut Kohls of yesteryear. We got milquetoast Sholzs and Macrons instead.
There is nobody in russia to make democracy happen. Their "opposition" is just different shades of putinism.
The west won the cold war without firing a shot or blowing any bridges or sinking any ships.
I do agree Putin will change course if he feels he can lose power but it's not clear how pressure on Russia leads to that. He holds the country in his iron fist. He's not going to care about losing some ships or bridges as long as he thinks that he can come up ahead in the long run. He'll just use that as motivation to send even more soldiers to Ukraine and ramp up arms productions.
Which is why I think it's insane that both US political parties have made "trade war with China" a major policy plank. I think the CCP is as awful as the next person, but cutting trade now means cutting leverage later.
If what you say is true then there should be no problem with China to stop supplying Russia in return for the west not cutting a similar amount of trade with them. However I think you'll be surprised to find there are things that China cares about more than commerce.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/melissacristinamarquez/2020/07/...
Baltic? A tiiny tiny area of water. Critical infrastructure?
It’s sabotage.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/6869
Can anybody comment on how fragile the Starlink protocol would be during a war? If its line-of-sight, presumably it would be hard to jam?
How much can a constellation offer say between many points in both countries? Seems unlikely it could get close but I would like to know.
1: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/16/world/europe/russia-antis... 2: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/24/technology/ukraine-russia...
0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMPRNet
1: https://amprnet.se/images/Kriskommunikation-2014-01-27.pdf
Getting more and more Footfall vibes these days with Spacex already having a full orbital dominance. ;-)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink_in_the_Russo-Ukrain...
Source?
I guess they warned in their own way, of "nice cables you've got there, it would be a shame if someone... sabotaged them".
We have it. It's almost 100%. They've been threatening WWIII and nuclear armageddon since 2022.
In my experience, the problem is also that one group of people refuses to act on what the other side actually says (because it’s inconvenient/dangerous).
It does not, and you're misreading the one sentence in the article where that word appears.
Nope. He said it would be "ended", meaning the one thing that it obviously means -- that it would be shut off.
everybody said "it was Russia"
Nope -- some people said that.
The reasonable, level-headed people said: "We just don't know yet".
When Biden said that he was talking next to the person with the power to legally shut it off, the German chancellor. If he and Biden were in agreement on that point, that Nord Stream would be shut off if Russia invaded Ukraine, why did Biden say that explicitly but not Scholz, even after being asked directly by the journalists present? If they were not in agreement on that point, how could Biden promise that they would put an end to it?
> The reasonable, level-headed people said: "We just don't know yet".
Agreed.
Typical politician nonsense.
None of which means he was intending, or suggesting the idea of actually blowing it up.
People have been convicted of murder on less evidence.
The approval of long-range strikes by the US & co likely means that Ukraine’s position was getting even worse than expected.
Furthermore, it became clear from the leak of German military communications that it would be German soldiers who would have to operate the weapons.
All in all this seems like a case of Scholz knowing Germany’s capabilities and risks and the public overestimating the former while dismissing the latter.
On the other hand with Germany and the EU acting so tough, Russia might believe them, so some military investment is probably wise.
Looks like an attempt to project your own views onto people you don't know.
Meanwhile, to the extent that we do have a recent, official statement from the European hive mind -- it points in the exact opposite direction of the sentiment you are attempting to assign to it, saying that "Russia is systematically attacking European security architecture". And in terms of ideology, it specifically cites the Russian regime's "reckless revisionism".
This decision might have been made earlier if the election hadn't been in the way.
That’s notably shrinking with no clear path to recovery.
We're stuck between having to do timid actions and full NATO escalation. This feels like constant creep.
No one ever seems to want to discuss what to do about the bear going around poking everyone else.
The state of Russia is essentially better understood as a criminal gang masquerading as a country.
Those people primarily care for themselves. They know they can get away with a ton of insane and inhuman shit, as they calculate the other well-behaving party will back off. They however do not want to get nuclear consequences themselves, it is pure bluff.
I wonder how effective the technique would be for the US government and our own oligarchs?
With nukes, which makes them pretty scary.
Lots of institutional checks in America that post-Soviet Russia lacked.
You're right but given enough time of the "right" type of people entrenching their power (which of course may not be "one term" but that could be enough to put things on a path), and even the best of checks and defense mechanisms start to evaporate or just become a tool against what they were intended to defend.
Sure. If the GOP sweeps the midterms and 2028, and also seizes most legislatures and governships, and they all remain loyal to Trump, we will see a situation resembling post-Yeltsin Russia.
A coup was attempted (doesn't matter how poorly or clown-like, the intent is all that matters). Influence and favours were sold to other countries. None of this had any impact, even if the "checks" should have resulted in treason sentences.
He said he has a mandate.
I really don’t know what you’re talking about when he or his party control the governors, congress, the senate, the presidency, and the Supreme Court.
America is about to speedrun some things and you won’t like it.
No, he doesn't. The GOP narrowly controls the House and Senate, and Trump has strong influence over them. That doesn't mean he controls them. And that's before we get to the states and lower courts.
Sure. This takes time. You also can’t remove state cases to any federal court, it has to be in the circuit.
Also, once you are 12 miles offshore, technically you are in international waters and thus cannot be stopped by any Navy except your own unless there is UN Sanctions. If NATO Countries decided to violate that, it obviously opens up massive can of worms that could impact worldwide trade.
(a) the ship is engaged in piracy; (b) the ship is engaged in the slave trade; (c) the ship is engaged in unauthorized broadcasting and the flag State of the warship has jurisdiction under article 109; (d) the ship is without nationality; or (e) though flying a foreign flag or refusing to show its flag, the ship is, in reality, of the same nationality as the warship
Which one would you like to use to board and/or force the ship to depart against Russian cable cutting ships?
But the answer to your question is a. Referring to UNCLOS 101(a)(ii) the cables are "property in a place outside the jurisdiction of any State".
High seas (which is what that list applies to) is not the EEZ. I don't think anybody could legally argue thar a country wouldn't have the right to board (or fire at, if it didn't comply) a foreign ship from it's coast 24 nautical miles if it suspected it was doing something illegal. Whether that right extends to the entire EEZ isn't exactly clear.
However there are no "high seas" areas in the Baltic so all of the listed items are irrelevant.
Of course the Baltic is very shallow so if the reactor started leaking it might be a bit more problematic than if a nuclear ship/sub was sunk in the middle of the ocean.
If only there was such thing.
But IIRC the TLDR is it has to do with indemnities and putting a vessel/person up for prosecution after the fact. And it doesn't apply if cable damaged while trying to prevent injury, which RU can always claim.
More broadly I think you're correct on paper... RU damaging subsea infra is under UNCLOS is technically punishable, but after the fact. And they're not going to lol pay damages to countries that sanction them. NATO kinetically trying to prevent RU damaging subsea infra (especially in highseas), in lieu of formal UN policing mission against such acts, is closer to act of war.
Of course, that would also be true of NATO doing so as part of a broader collective defense operation reported to the Security Council, directed against Russia and explicitly aimed at rolling back the Russian (UNGA-condemned) aggression in Ukraine under Article 51 of the UN Charter.
International law can be selectively applied for different party according to different scenarios (relative to different geopolitical power). NATO triggering art5 (self defense) won't make it valid / feasible to trigger at parallel UN art51. RU using UN art51 to target UKR a soveign territory, is also going to be different than NATO / or NATO country using art51 to do whatever they want on non-soverign / international high seas. All of which is to say while international law doesn't matter much to the motivated, not everyone is powerful enough to normalized/destablize with impunity. NATO might, but not without RU security council (trumps UNGA) approval, of course NATO can supercede from UN Charter framework which IIRC that NATO explicitly states they operate within. But then we have NATO going independant of UN, which goes back barrels of worms.
It’s probably not even a de jure crime, so what is there to punish on the record?
Edit: I’m pretty sure most, if not all, such countries don’t even ascribe any legal status to wrecked and sunken lifeboats, let alone anchors. Probably most countries don’t even have a formal penalty, of any kind, for lifeboats detached and sunken, for any reason, for anyone on the ship.
Vessel captains drop anchor all the time if they are caught out of port in a stormy area. And if it’s a big enough storm they are quite literally dragged around along with the anchor.
It literally happens every month on Earth.
It just’s implausible that dragging alone would be a crime in any flag country.
Edit: Maybe they can criminalize dragging it for a very long distance, say 10+ km, but I’m pretty sure the most popular flag countries do not, e.g. Liberia.
> In what country is intentional property destruction not a crime? You’re not arguing that it’s really accidental, right?
So you are arguing that it's an accident? Do you agree that it would be a crime if it was intentional?
I’ll repeat as clearly as possible, literally every single month on planet Earth many ship captains are intentionally putting very heavy objects into the water in areas that they know may contain some property that their anchor may hit/drag/snare/etc… on something.
This is usually done when the probability is very low, but in bad enough conditions they may just not care regardless of probability, and anchor anyways.
Why do you think your questions or assumptions even make sense?
What? No? How do you think we arraign pirates?
> it obviously opens up massive can of worms that could impact worldwide trade
No? Why? Worst case it would be considered an act of war. Practically, they'd just be arrested.
Because piracy is one of exceptions to "No stopping not your flag ships in international waters."
Here is list of exception: (a) the ship is engaged in piracy; (b) the ship is engaged in the slave trade; (c) the ship is engaged in unauthorized broadcasting and the flag State of the warship has jurisdiction under article 109; (d) the ship is without nationality; or (e) though flying a foreign flag or refusing to show its flag, the ship is, in reality, of the same nationality as the warship.
https://www.un.org/depts/los/convention_agreements/texts/unc...
>No? Why? Worst case it would be considered an act of war. Practically, they'd just be arrested.
So under which clause would you like to stop Russian ships cutting cables in international waters?
UNCLOS does have this provision around submarine cables: Every State shall adopt the laws and regulations necessary to provide that the breaking or injury by a ship flying its flag or by a person subject to its jurisdiction of a submarine cable beneath the high seas done wilfully or through culpable negligence, in such a manner as to be liable to interrupt or obstruct telegraphic or telephonic communications, and similarly the breaking or injury of a submarine pipeline or high-voltage power cable, shall be a punishable offence. This provision shall apply also to conduct calculated or likely to result in such breaking or injury. However, it shall not apply to any break or injury caused by persons who acted merely with the legitimate object of saving their lives or their ships, after having taken all necessary precautions to avoid such break or injury
But Russia is obviously ignoring the rules so now what?
Piracy. Duh. That or you'd break the treaty. (Like China has been [1].)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_China_Sea_Arbitration
Yes. We literally have a country willing to do this for us if we give them the weapons.
Otherwise, a country whose population is unwilling to fight for itself isn't a country, just a convenient demarcation on a map.
So when you say, "country willing to do this for you" (how nice!), what you mean is a bunch of politicians and officers are willing to go in the street and capture random civilians to conscript them. Because that's the reality of how Ukraine is "willing to fight".
My grandfather did it the last time, I'm ready any day for a rematch.
For now I'm hoping that our brothers in Ukraine slap Russia hard enough to deter any invasion plans for a few more decades.
You can send Ukraine all of the F-16s in the world, it won't matter if there aren't enough Ukrainian pilots with the linguistic skills to get them through the Western training pipelines.
The reality is that the West can't make the math work at a level of commitment/investment that it is willing to accept. To say nothing of the steadily-worsening problem of "lack of living, breathing Ukrainian men willing to do the fighting in the first place"...
More long-range offensive weapons and clearance to hit sites in Russia. Let Israel know that we wouldn't mind them taking out the Iranian drone factories supplying Russia.
"Go on my little goyim, go spill your blood so we can invest in a free Ukraine!"
And let's use some Feynman-style common sense: taking out airfields, ammunition depots, and logistics WILL help Ukraine's defense immensely.
I would go further and question which clowns are running the show in the Pentagon, but maybe I should keep my cool over that matter.
They’re not incompetent. But they do serve at the pleasure of the President. That makes their public communications political.
I mean yes, it’s also what the press secretary has been saying. They’ve been wrong at every step to date because Biden has been wrong about this.
Gonky and Mover, two veteran US fighter pilots on YT, had a video segment discussing foreign pilots flying for Ukraine....they both totally shit on the idea. The risks are too high and the potential compensation is too low. These guys have no desire to tangle with Su-35s and MiG-31s chucking R-37M missiles, likely from beyond the effective engagement range of the F-16 + AIM-120 combo.
https://www.eurasiantimes.com/mig-31-and-vympel-r-37m-a-form...
https://warriormaven.com/russia-ukraine/upgraded-russian-mig...
The West could definitely manufacture enough counter to the ballistic missile menace.
We've been drip feeding and hand tying Ukraine. Practically every military expert has said this is not the way to win a war.
No, it's not. For small-scale war, we are amply stocked. For large-scale war, stocks don't matter, production does.
The US has THOUSANDS of tanks and THOUSANDS of Bradleys. We have sent Ukraine 32 Abrams and 300 Bradleys. For reference, Australia was able to swing sending Ukraine 50 Abrams. The US has THOUSANDS of F16s, and is starting to build up thousands of F35s. We have full munition stockpiles for all missions for both platforms. We gave Ukraine about 1000 various "armored vehicles", like hundreds of M113s which are nearly useless on a modern battlefield except as glorified trucks. We sent Ukraine 200 "Strykers" that we considered a failure in the middle east. We sent a few hundred MRAPs. We sent 20 HIMARs systems, out of over 600 built. The US sent only a single patriot battery.
I encourage you to go look at the numbers the US put together for the various gulf wars. We sent a trickle of supplies.
The only substantial supply we offered was 3 million 155mm artillery rounds, which is a large fraction of our stockpile but the US (before Ukraine) did not care for tube artillery, preferring instead to lob JDAMs and other air launched munitions. This is also only a problem because American Industry refuses to invest in increasing production capacity unless we bribe them, you know, just like capitalism says it should work.
The people who said we were harming our weapons stocks were lying. Reconsider who shared that information with you.
I'm sorry, but this is the type of claim of someone who gets news from the Joe Rogan podcast.
Ukraine managed to defend its capital from annexation, liberated thousands of miles of territory, and managed to improve its protection of civilians thanks to air defense systems, has lower casualty rates than Russia, and now is starting to create a buffer zone into Russian territory.
How isn't this a sign that it didn't help?
Now... could, and should, Ukraine receive way more help, on time to help them even more? Of course. The drip feed has been one of the worse strategic decisions in this conflict, almost like there's no strategy in place.
But Ukraine needs to develop its deterrence.
The failure to protect Ukraine without it needing to develop nukes is the end of nuclear non-proliferation.
You either have nukes, or Russia will make up some bullshit to invade you.
Something that people seem to not realize is that the Minsk Agreements refer to two accords (Minsk I in 2014 and Minsk II in 2015) aimed at ending the conflict in eastern Ukraine, specifically in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, where pro-Russian separatists had declared independence with alleged support from Russia.
That said, while Russia claimed that Ukraine failed to implement the Minsk Agreements, this does not justify a military invasion. Diplomatic mechanisms were available to resolve disputes, and both sides bore some responsibility for the lack of progress on Minsk. It can be attributed to challenges and shortcomings on all sides involved. With the election of Donald Trump, there may be an increased opportunity to revive diplomatic efforts and achieve meaningful progress, given his emphasis on unconventional approaches to negotiation and relationships with key stakeholders, potentially (and hopefully) providing a better opportunity to bring an end to the long-stalemated conflict.
> Now... could, and should, Ukraine receive way more help, on time to help them even more? Of course.
I am sorry but providing additional aid at this stage would likely prolong the war rather than bring about a resolution. This protracted conflict has already pushed global economies toward collapse, with ordinary taxpayers shouldering the financial burden of a war they never chose to participate in. It is irrational to continue pouring taxpayer money into a long-stalemated conflict without a clear path to peace or resolution, particularly when domestic priorities are being neglected in the process.
That would only give Putin time to replenish his forces and attack again. The time to act is now.
If the Russians lose, we might be looking at another USSR style dissolution of Russia: more breakaway Central Asian and Caucasus republics and maybe a break from Russian interference. Make no mistake, these are the people that Putin is grinding in this war.
This is a good opportunity for the US to weaken Russia without firing a shot and consolidate its power in Eastern Europe with reliable allies.
Have you ever considered that US giving Ukraine lots of money & weapons weaken the US, too? <conspiracy theory> Imagine if Ukraine and Russia worked together to achieve it. </conspiracy theory>
I simply stated that's the same level of shallow analysis and severe lack of understanding of what's at play, sprinkled with mystical thinking and conspiracy theories, which is prevalent in the right-wing media and amplified by Russian propaganda. I don't think it's inappropriate, it might just be a coincidence.
> (...) where pro-Russian separatists had declared independence with alleged support from Russia. That said, while Russia claimed that Ukraine failed to implement the Minsk Agreements, this does not justify a military invasion. Diplomatic mechanisms were available to resolve disputes, and both sides bore some responsibility for the lack of progress on Minsk. It can be attributed to challenges and shortcomings on all sides involved
Just to point out two red flags here:
- The separatists didn't have alleged support from Russia, there were Russian troops in both Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk. By the way, those regions were at peace until Russia sent "little green men"[0]. The same happened in Georgia by the way, in 2008. Where do you think "separatists" got a Buk 9M38 to shoot down a commercial airliner killing 300 people? [1]
- Russia did not just claim that Ukraine failed to implement UNCONSTITUTIONAL parts of the Minsk agreement, Russia itself failed to comply with the agreement - and they were the ones on sovereign Ukrainian territory, killing Ukrainians. An agreement goes both ways, so the general sense was that Russia never looked to abide by the agreement, just gradually turning Ukraine ungovernable with cancer from within, by subverting the Ukrainian constitution.
From the words of Macron in the talk with Putin before the escalation of 2022:
"They are in front of my eyes! It clearly states that Ukraineʼs proposal should be agreed with representatives of certain districts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions in a trilateral meeting. This is exactly what we propose to do. So I donʼt know where your lawyer studied law. I just look at these texts and try to apply them! And I donʼt know which lawyer could tell you that in a sovereign state, the texts of laws are made up of separatist groups, not democratically elected authorities."[2]
> With the election of Donald Trump, there may be an increased opportunity to revive diplomatic efforts and achieve meaningful progress
So your idea of a diplomatic effort is to appease a dictator with the subversion of Ukraine, a sovereign country of 40 million people, and target of genocide, that was at peace and posed a threat to no one. To the point of surrendering their nuclear arsenal in exchange for the guarantee of their sovereignty - with the signature of the USA representatives.
> It is irrational to continue pouring taxpayer money into a long-stalemated conflict without a clear path to peace or resolution, particularly when domestic priorities are being neglected in the process.
The only irrational thing is to push the Russian narrative that Ukraine should be left on its own, for the illusion of internal stability that stems mainly from propaganda.
Again, this just confirms the same ill-informed narrative Joe Rogan-type podcasts are pushing around, some of these podcasts being funded by Russia Today operations.[3] I won't claim its deliberate, but as time passes it increasingly looks like so.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_green_men_(Russo-Ukrain...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_17
[2] https://babel.ua/en/news/80618-bloodbath-and-involved-zelens...
[3] https://apnews.com/article/russian-interference-presidential...
Are you in support of Israel too, by any chance?
It all began when President Yanukovych rejected an agreement he promised to sign with the EU (which was, and is, a public document with known the terms) in exchange for a deal with Russia, of unknown terms and vague promises, and framed with threats.
This was a 180 turn that led to the Maidan Revolution and the impeachment of the president. It was the decision of the President against the will of the majority of Ukrainians who voted to elect Yanukovych, who promised close ties with the EU including signing the Association Agreement.
This was followed by Russia invading Ukraine in late 2013/early 2014 with "separatists"/"little green men".
By the way - "pro-Russian" Ukrainians didn't revolt against the EU Association Agreement, it got Yanukovych elected.
So again, you have strong misinformed opinions aligned with the Russian narrative, of a subject you don't seem to know that much about. That happens to be oddly aligned with some alternative media like The Rubin Report, Tim Pool, etc.
> In the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, many residents harbored pro-Russian sentiments due to historical, linguistic, and cultural ties to Russia.
> Following Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014, separatist groups in Donetsk and Luhansk, supported by local pro-Russian factions, declared independence from Ukraine.
These statements are false?
> aligned with the Russian narrative
That is merely coincidental.
What matters is that it's a false and misleading narrative.
These statements are false?
Yup - either false, or misleading/irrelevant. Time is short so we'll just go over 2 of them for now:
> In the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, many residents harbored pro-Russian sentiments due to historical, linguistic, and cultural ties to Russia.
True, but irrelevant. Simply put, that wasn't was caused hostilities to happen.
> Following Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014, separatist groups in Donetsk and Luhansk, supported by local pro-Russian factions, declared independence from Ukraine.
Except there were no indigenous "separatist groups" driving the action. It was entirely coordinated by Russia from the very start.
In other words: a foreign invasion.
Whether or not it aligns with whatever you say it does, does not necessarily make it right or wrong.
"It is pro-Russian, therefore it is wrong" is wrong.
I do not dismiss you because your views align with the pro-Ukrainian narrative, nor do I claim that you are wrong.
In fact, I do not even claim that I am right. How would I really know? It is mostly hearsay.
It's wrong on its own merits, not on the basis of anything I say.
How would I really know? It is mostly hearsay.
Actually it's not. It's actually pretty easy to get a good sense of what's going on, just by reading whatever sources one does read with a reasonably critical eye. And if one is really bold, by taking the care to read diverse sources. What brought me to respond to you in this case is that you seemed be echoing talking points you had heard or read somewhere, but which were just not grounded in the basic reality of the situation.
Talking to people actually from the region (actual real, regular people) can be very helpful, also.
In fact to make this very simple for you: just completely forget everything you've read on the internet -- and just talk to people actually affected by the situation for a while. You'll definitely start to get a sense of what's hearsay and what's fact, very very quickly.
I wish I could provide specific sources, but my information comes partly from Wikipedia and partly from conversations with others, most of whom hold pro-Ukrainian perspectives. There is significant sentiment against Russia and China in general, and I understand why (I am pretty much in the anti-China camp myself and I admittedly hold a bias against China). I have not even heard of "The Rubin Report" or "Tim Pool". I am somewhat familiar with Joe Rogan, but I have only watched one of his popular podcasts, the one featuring Elon Musk.
The additional context I've provided (in regard to the initial causes of the conflict) is intended to be helpful, also.
Where can I find people who have lived through that situation as it unfolded? Are you one of those people by any chance?
Talking to people from the region may indeed provide valuable insights and perspective that might not come through in articles, reports, or podcasts, but it is important to remember that personal experiences, while genuine, are often shaped by individual perspectives, biases, and incomplete information. We know that people living through a situation may not have access to all the facts, may interpret events differently, or may even unknowingly perpetuate misinformation they have encountered. Even those directly affected by events might be influenced by propaganda, local media narratives, or their own personal hardships, which can influence their understanding. This does not mean their accounts are worthless, however. We need to cross-check details, separate fact from emotion-driven narratives as much as possible.
I believe it can be valuable for me to hear your personal perspective, for example.
Most large cities in the West by now have substantial Ukrainian expat/refugee communities. In general they're pretty easy to find, and are quite friendly. Talking with people from other Eastern European countries (especially Poland and the Baltics) can be very helpful, also. As with people anywhere, some will be a bit nationalistic or have other axes to grind. But proportionally they are small in number. The vast majority are just regular people trying to get on with their lives, and make sense of the current insanity just as you and I.
Are you one of those people by any chance?
My own background is unimportant, but I will offer that I've spent significant amounts of time in countries affected by both Hitlerian and Stalinist (and other) dictatorships, and have had all kinds of conversations with people about these topics. Hearing personal stories about what their families went through in those years (virtually none were not affected in some way) really helps to size things up in the bigger picture, and avoid the charms and traps of highly ideological narratives.
Finally, any amount of serious reading about pre-1999 (that is, pre-Putin) Cold War history, preferably by hard-nosed academic historians (and not pundits like Mearsheimer, Sachs et all; and unfortunately I have to say Chomsky also) can be very helpful also. (Technically the Cold War ended in by 1991, but another view is that it's still ongoing).
I believe it can be valuable for me to hear your personal perspective, for example.
I apprecite your forthrightness, and if I came across as browbeating or arrogant, I take it back and apologize.
This reminds me of videos from "Bald and Bankrupt" where people in villages have said that life was better under communism.
> I apprecite your forthrightness, and if I came across as browbeating or arrogant, I take it back and apologize.
No hard feelings. :) I did not read any arrogance into your comments. Thank you for your replies, I really appreciate them! I will need some time to reflect on them and delve deeper into what has been said.
It's part of the post-WW2 generation inductrinated by state propaganda who had access to food and gov't services through a network of connections doing each other mutual favours or poor people who were confortable with the state providing (job, living spaces) for them in exchange for doing what they were told. The other part which resonates well with Western culture and private enterprise absolutely hates communism, the USSR and Putin's Russia because they suffered under the communist regime. To them Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan are heroes.
Yes. The "separatists" were entirely a fiction created by Russian armed forces as a cover and pretext for their invasion. The lengthy verdict by the European Court of Human Rights[1] lays it all out and concludes that there is no reason to consider "separatists" anything less than unmarked members of Russian armed forces or security services. The entire story about ethnic tensions that resulted in "pro-Russian Ukrainians rising up against Kyiv government" and Russia coming to their support is a total bunk, a manufactured lie trying to misrepresent an unprovoked invasion by a foreign country as a stereotypical third world civil war that western audiences are accustomed to. Russians are playing directly into your stereotypes to erode support for Ukraine.
[1] https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng#{%22itemid%22:[%22001-222889%...}
This is a broad irrelevant statement. The signing of the EU Association Agreement was part of Yanukovych's campaign, and Ukrainians elected him. The "pro-russia factions" is a Russian construction.
A small fraction of the Ukrainians might have disagreed with the impeachment, but it was THEIR ELECTED OFFICIALS in the parliament that impeached the president - BY MAJORITY VOTE[0]. So the elected deputies did what they believed was in the interest of those who elected them.
That's democracy, and Ukraine is a democracy. Those who were unhappy could change their vote to elect other deputies on the following elections.
No Ukrainians wanted their families killed, and cities occupied and razed by Russia.
That's yet again, another Russian narrative spin, along with the "Ukrainians don't have agency/will of its own" implication.
> In the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, many residents harbored pro-Russian sentiments due to historical, linguistic, and cultural ties to Russia.
Ukraine was a former soviet state, where many Ukrainians have family in both Ukraine and Russia. I don't get the point you're trying to make from "sentiments" to a war of occupation with +1.000.000 casualties, 10.000.000 refugees, +25.000 kidnapped children.
> Following Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014, separatist groups in Donetsk and Luhansk, supported by local pro-Russian factions, declared independence from Ukraine.
Yes, there was a theatrical display of claims of independence, and Russia did some more of it in 2022 with the "referendums" of occupied territory - which of course no sovereign country recognized, except for Syria, and North Korea. What's your point here and why do you stand with Syria and North Korea in these recognitions?
----
So, overall those statements are decontextualized, rendering some of them wrong or irrelevant/misleading. If you were trying to make some point here, I don't see it, just confirms what I said before.
I may be wrong, and I want to get an understanding as to why that may be the case.
That is the type of opinion is passed on by the vast majority of alternative media podcasts - it's shallow entertaining stories that give the illusion of understanding a subject.
The invasion of Ukraine is probably the most documented war in History, and you can get a very good understanding of the event in a short time with little effort. You can even access original documents, yet you prefer a low-resolution misinformed version of it.
(FWIW you know "entertaining" is debatable, and I personally do not find either position entertaining).
It's fun to believe you have an understanding of reality, that didn't require much effort to understand.
This is the main problem we're facing at the moment with regard to information: people mistake a thin veneer of anecdotes and stories, for knowledge with some depth, but they don't care because it feels nice to know a lot of shallow things.
The result is a wrong understanding of reality.
Just for you to understand, your current stance - I want peace so we can focus on our "internal problems", let Russia keep what they stole and Ukraine needs to figure it out on their own - will make a direct conflict with China inevitable, and that will be a war where you won't be sending just weapons.
What do you think would be a strategically wise course of action? Should we consider peace talks, take drastic military action like using nuclear weapons on Russia or Ukraine, or explore other alternatives? I apologize for being so extreme, but I struggle to see how simply providing financial aid and weapons - which are finite resources - will effectively resolve the situation. Should we attempt to drain Russia's resources[1]? Is it even possible to achieve this without risking the weakening of the defense capabilities of the countries supplying the aid?
[1] Let us not forget history here though.
How do you go from peace talks to nuking Russia? What is the goal of nuking Russia? Do you want to go in and occupy the Russian Federation?
Ukraine is a sovereign country with borders recognized by 193 countries in the UN - including Russia by the way. No one, except Syria and North Korea recognizes occupied territory as being part of Russia.
The reasons are self-evident: if this precedent is opened, then it means we're back to pre-UN times where the strong can annex smaller countries. Countries might as well each get their own nuclear deterrence, and then you'll have nuclear proliferation. Which in case you might not be aware, was a victory to be able to prevent countries from pursuing this avenue.
What's wrong about giving Ukraine what it needs to defend itself, as we promised with the Budapest Memorandum?
They're not asking for nukes, they're not asking for troops on the ground, they just ask to be supplied with what they need on time. Don't make a theatrical display of it, don't drip feed it, just do what was done when we helped the Soviets win against the Nazis, but on a much smaller scale.
Providing financial aid and weapons is a small price when compared to the collapse of a global order that was won after WW2. Especially when you're giving them equipment that won't be used by the US and would be decommissioned - it's probably costlier to dispose of it than to give it to Ukraine.
> Is it even possible to achieve this without risking the weakening of the defense capabilities of the countries supplying the aid?
We can mobilize a global industry to produce mRNA vaccines in a short period of time, that requires specialized resources, we boast about being able to land rockets upright... somehow you think we cannot produce 155mm shells?
Are they asking for the means to achieve victory? If so, what does that entail specifically? When and under what circumstances would it be considered a victory for Ukraine? How much aid would Ukraine require for this to succeed? Would it be sufficient to deter Russia? Is Russia's production capacity worse?
Ignoring the passive voice, who do you suggest should deal with that, more precisely? And how do you suggest "dealing" with one of the two nuclear hyper-powers in existence? (the other one being the Americans)
If you're interested in how I think it should be sorted: the cables are between Finland and Germany. I think we start with Finland and Germany: - stepping updiplomatic pressure. - Expulsion of Russian and Belarusian diplomats. - Confiscation of Russian owned properties. - Freezing bank accounts. - Increasing tariffs on their goods - Reducing overall trade. - Increasing spending on national defense - And weapons production. - Increasing aid to Ukraine.
The military leadership is seriously considering that Russia might push for the Baltics (meaning, the EU) within 4 years. The EU is not at peace with Russia. They are biding time for a war they need to prepare for.
Of course, it dragged the United States into Vietnam as things slowly escalated.
That way, there's a clear line for what NATO will and won't do that Russia can understand. If attacks escalate it will be Russia that escalated every time. If Russia feels it's threatened, all they have to do is stop the attacks and NATO will stop. If Russia is going to nuclear warfare over not being able to unevenly harass NATO, because we can't read Putin and the oligarchs' minds, and what objective measure would allow that but not allow Russia to go nuclear warfare over not enslaving all of NATO, or claiming they can/others can't do everything not written unambiguously in a treaty (which would extend to new technologies like partitioning the solar system that we couldn't have thought ahead-of-time)?
But I'm no diplomat, so maybe I'm wrong and my idea would be catastrophic.
It's regularly done by both sides. And not only with jets, but also with nuclear-capable strategic bombers.
>over their airspace
Shooting it down will be a no-brainer for Russia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1960_U-2_incident
>If attacks escalate it will be Russia that escalated every time.
So sending jets into their airspace is not an escalation, but shooting down the plain is? Yeap, you are not a diplomat.
Should I remind you how US reacted to the Soviet military presence in Cuba? On the US scale Ukraine is somewhere between Mexico and Texas in importance for Russia from the military point of view.
In my idea it would be essential to confirm Russia is responsible for anything before the even counterattack. If there's an attack NATO can't confirm, the only thing they would do is defend and monitor more closely in case Russia tries the same attack in the future. Only the things that the Russian government definitely does to NATO, NATO would do to them.
Or in an ideal world, the US pays Syria more to not attack them, maybe even gets them to sign a treaty and commits to building Syria's economy and protecting them so they don't feel compelled to take Russian bribes. Although, it's certainly not so straightforward, prior US involvements in foreign countries have been disasters so it would have to be different somehow...
There are many other ways Russia could attack NATO that would be very hard to prove or evenly-counter. Russia could create a culture of NATO hatred and aggression, then set up "rewards" that are given out for obscure reasons, to get Russian NGOs and citizens to attack NATO in their own will. Then NATO can only encourage citizens to attack Russia, which I don't think any treaties forbid anyways, and creating a culture of hate is bad for other reasons. It's not a foolproof system.
But like for this event, there's evidence beyond reasonable doubt that the Russian government is directly involved (https://www.newsweek.com/russia-pipeline-gas-patrushev-putin...). And there are other ways NATO can weaken Russia's influence without even attacking them, like not trading with them, and (indirectly, by having a more liberal government) encouraging Russian citizens to emigrate.
Even worse, inside US and Russian governments there are groups with their own interests and agendas. The military-industrial complex can be interested in further escalation and fearmongering (i.e. "good war"), while civilian industry would prefer some kind of compromise as soon as possible (i.e. "poor peace").
If only there were someone applying pressure to Russia we could have fight for us!
To the extent there's a meat grinder, it's of Russians [1].
> What has that accomplished so far?
Russia's disqualifying itself as a conventional military threat for at least a generation. It's not yet there yet, largely because Ukraine has been unable to target its war marchine. But the startling inefficacy of its army and technology has been made clear. Moreover, the front line has been maintained in Ukraine: that keeps them further from NATO and thus American and European boys at home.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Russo-Ukrain...
It's of both. Why deny the fact Ukrainian men are dying in droves? This is disrespectful of those that paid the ultimate sacrifice. Pretending this is not extremely costly to Ukraine in manpower is denying reality. They have been increasing the age of conscripts as they're running out of young men.
Nobody is. Meat grinder means excessive loss relative to necessity. The Ukranians are being slaughtered, but not mindlessly. They're fighting efficiently in respect of manpower.
Also, had we given Ukraine all the weapons it asked for in 2022, we probably wouldn't have had a meat grinder.
That seems unfair. It's more of a meat grinder for the aggressor, but it's also one for the Ukrainians, by all indications.
But none of what you're saying means that Ukraine isn't also suffering from a very high loss rate.
Reliable estimate ranges are out there. They're easy to find. If you want to, you can find them.
They're all below 100k.
Yet you insist there are much more casualties in Russia. Where’s the logic here?
C'mon. Their funding is entirely US dependent. What business is that of ours? We are enabling it. How could you possibly ask the question "what business is that of ours"? Explain yourself, that question is absurd.
They clearly want to fight! This is like arguing giving someone chemo is enabling their cancer.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/ukraine-running-out-s...
Who do you think?
> A whole lot of Ukrainians do not want to fight
Yes, there is not unanimous agreement on a big political question. Shocking. By this measure, nobody should ever fight for everything.
A whole lot of people don't want to fight in any war.
What matters is the relative portion. Though they my differ in the views as to whether the lost regions can be regained, or on what terms a cease-fire may be acceptable -- by all indications, a very solid majority of the society in non-occupied Ukraine supports the fight.
Who is "they" and what is "clearly"?
About 60-80 percent of the population. "Clearly" as in according to reliable polling data I can pull up later. Or by spending any amount of time talking to Ukrainians.
There is a huge desertion problem,
It is obviously a significant problem, but a better source is needed on the "huge" part. The link you provided does not support that view.
If I hear "desertion is a huge problem", what comes to mind it the situation in Afghanstan after the notorious Trump-Biden pullout. The situation in Ukraine is nothing like that, not even remotely.
I believe you're misinformed about that.
The majority of committed support by country has come from the United States,
whose total aid commitment is valued at about $75 billion. The U.S. is
followed by Germany and the United Kingdom for highest commitments overall.
The European Union as a whole has committed approximately $93 billion in aid
to Ukraine.[0]
So no. Ukraine funding is not entirely dependent on the US. Not even close.
[0] https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/these-co...
[1] https://www.ifw-kiel.de/topics/war-against-ukraine/ukraine-s...
Many EU countries are now little more than US vassals.
They're nothing of the sort. Your perspective is seriously out of touch with reality.
Surely you must be joking about a first-strike nuclear provocation or larger. I would think almost anything other than a border incursion could be dealt with in other ways.
Should Putin be held more accountable for his actions? Absolutely, but a nuclear response is not going to go well unless absolutely justified.
I chose “provocation” because thats what russians often use (and call for nuking west pretty much every day for decades now).
Give nukes to Ukraine, even pretend ones and war will end in minutes.
This is the wrong answer. But it's clear non-proliferation has failed. If Ukraine had kept its nukes from the 90s, this wouldn't have happened. It would have had the ability to credibly threaten that it had reverse engineered the arming mechanisms.
Not only did the Russians have the codes, but they had soldiers in physical control with the ability to scuttle the devices.
No. The 43rd Rocket Army "became part of the Armed Forces of Ukraine" on 6 December 1991 [1]. Unlike American warheads, which are on U.S. bases, those were Russian warheads on Ukrainian bases.
> In early 1994, after the Trilateral Agreement, "General Vitaly Radetskyi, Ukraine’s new Minister of Defence, summoned Mikhtyuk and two of his senior generals to Kyiv.[10] Without warning, General Radetskyi told them they had 15 minutes to decide whether to take Ukraine’s oath of allegiance. General Mikhtyuk and one general took the oath, while the other refused. Then, the minister ordered [Mikhtyuk] to return to his headquarters in Vinnytsia immediately, and convene all of his subordinate commanders. ..He did so explaining his personal decision to remain in Ukraine, and asking each officer to take or reject the oath. “All of my deputies,” Mikhtyuk recalled, “except one, said they would not take the oath and asked me to transfer them to the Russian Federation."
You propose to walk up to him, have him released and give him a loaded gun.
The world would blame you, not the wound up man itching for revenge.
See my response to sibling comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42177029
Which NATO member was NATO defending when it bombed Libya into oblivion?
What kind of monster could possibly be against it?
Russia has enemies because for centuries it has attacked its neighbours repeatedly.
And then imposed its own idea of peace that involves tanks rolling through Budapest and soldiers executing students and poets.
Tiananmen square shocked the world, but that kind of behaviour was already familiar to Eastern Europeans. It was the same old song, different orchestra.
Russia is not your friend, no matter what the propaganda tells you and your countrymen.
You’re just momentarily useful to a warlike mafia controlling a country.
To be fair, historically Russia has also been a target of attacks and invasions repeatedly. (Generally not by the same smaller neighbours it has been attacking, of course.)
That history has nothing to do with the present-day conflict, though, except that it might be a part of what gives some Russians a feeling of being threatened. And Soviet-style aggression is of course just imperialism by any other name.
The same can be said of the French, English and Germans, that only stop destroying themselves after they united to fight Russia (which ironically saved the first 2 against the last one otherwise they would not even exist as sovereign states anymore).
I think you're forgetting somebody important? Another country that was actually on the beaches in Normandy?
Unfortunately russia has the strength to rape & pillage through neighbors once in a while.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circassian_genocide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chechen_genocide
No one is telling Russia (meaning its current authoritarian regime) to do anything.
Other than to pick up its toys, and get back to its own yard.
And stay there, this time.
What has NATO (or Western Europe) told Russia to do? What is NATO threatening or attacking Russia with due to it not doing what NATO wants?
NATO has engaged in a dozen wars and conflicts as aggressors.
A careful examination of the list below suggests that, in terms of your choice of the words "dozen" and "aggressor", the way they are usually meant in English -- you're definitely stretching things, here.
We have this thing going on in the west where we are the good guys, and every war we start is an anti-terrorist operation. For Russia, the term just now was “special military operation”.
It’s hilarious when you realise how the world works. Controlling words means controlling minds. We’ve grown quite good at it.
We went to Korea and took any of our allies who wanted to fight with us. We were already NATO then. Then we went to Vietnam. Then we meddled with some civil wars here and there. Did some “interventions” and took our NATO allies with us each time. Then we started proper pummelling the Middle East.
To our adversaries, every single bullet that is shot by a NATO country is a NATO operation. It doesn’t take a full scale mobilisation, and it doesn’t matter what we call it internally. NATO is a military alliance, and our militaries are NATO’s militaries.
Of course each time it was communists or terrorists we were killing so it doesn’t matter, right? It’s like these things happen in a vacuum and aren’t a result of our intrusive foreign policy. We don’t ever speak of the events leading up to 9/11. Crazy terrorists doing their thing, savages that they are? For some reason the Ukrainian neo-nazis killing people in Donbas aren’t that, though. Wrong side of history, I guess.
And to be fair, I’m no pacifist. What I detest is trying to change the cold realities of life and making them seem like something they are not.
Except your number is way off, and has no connection to reality.
Were it not for the nuclear concern, Russia could be dispatched by a modern military in short order. They're having enough of a challenge with Ukraine. Against a real military with SEAD/DEAD, you would witness an Iraq 1991-style collapse within weeks, perhaps less.
Of course, the problem is the nukes. Which is exactly why you see these countries work so hard to get them.
Other than the US....can you name some "real militaries with SEAD/DEAD" that actually have deep enough ordnance stockpiles, sufficient basing/aerial refueling to support a sustained air campaign against a country as large and well-equipped as Russia, etc..?
That’s not what NATO says: “NATO’s essential and enduring purpose is to safeguard the freedom and security of all its members. It does this through political and military means, ensuring the collective defence of all Allies, against all threats, from all directions. [...] NATO strives to secure a lasting peace in Europe and North America, based on its member countries’ common values of individual liberty, democracy, human rights and the rule of law.”
https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_68144.htm
Furthermore, I would suggest that the history of actual NATO action, particularly since “Russia” came back into existence as a sovereign entity not under the umbrella of the USSR, is more consistent with the offically-stated purpose than “to unite a front against Russia.”
It's true that in the last decade or so Russia has become, as the USSR had been for most of NATO’s existence, the primary threat to NATO’s purpose.
Priceless. Naturally, the only way to prove Russia wrong about NATO aggression is to prove them right about NATO aggression.
No, it's not; 9/11 was the only event that has led to invocation of the mutual defense commitments under Article 5.
It has, however, gotten involved in other conflicts, both in response to UN calls and as a result of regional security consultations under Article 4. These include, most notably, Libya beginning 2011, Kosovo beginning in 1999, and Bosnia beginning in 1992,
False. NATO Command led the bombing of Libya in 2011 (taking over from the French).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Unified_Protector
You can search for "NATO Libya Lessons" and get a ton of articles by analysts, many published in US military journals and/or written by US think tanks on the subject. For example, here's one from RAND:
https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2014/11/natos-campaign-...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_bombing_of_Yugoslavia
We don't want to invade Russia. In fact, we don't think about Russia at all.
Which absolutely no one thinks.
They do a good job of instilling fear, but we've learned from Ukraine that there are a lot of paper Tigers in that army that aren't as capable in a real fight as they are in a demonstration.
I can't see any Ukrainian interest an cutting internet between two of their supporters. Whether the support has been sufficient can be debated, but both are supporters. Germany among the top in absolute terms, Finland among the top relative to their own size. Yes among, there are stronger supporters in both categories.
The western economy is almost completely built using off-prem in Cloud PaaS environments. It should be pretty fun when WW3 starts and not a single hospital, school, laboratory, or factory can operate.
And the last scenario is the real problem: While there are enough cable repair ships to continuously handle a normal rate of simultaneous peak failures, fixing multiple cuts can quickly exceed their capacity. (There's nothing that says an attacker can only cut the same cable in one spot!)
Enlighten us then. How would suggest Russia should be treated?
3 years of stalemate war right next door is not impressive at all - how far can Russia really project its power ?
For a certain period of time, they definitely had significant influence.
They just refuse to acknowledge how Russia really operates.
By and large they have, actually, which is why one seldom hears the "oligarchs" mantra these days.
In other words -- though you're correct in response to the flagged commment, in the bigger-picture sense, you're railing against a straw man.
That would be like trying to cold start a power plant without any power.
I think you're missing my point. I'm trying to point out that there are 3 "infrastructure providers" that our economy CANNOT live without. In a world war situation, these 3 organizations are going to be the biggest targets. They are literally our crown jewels.
They will be under continuous attack from all angles. As we know with security, it is a game of time. Even the strongest bank safe has a rating in hours that it can resist direct tampering. Beyond that time rating the safe offers little to no protection. It is the layers of security that keep the safe from being tampered with beyond its rating.
What I'm saying is, no target can be secured with 100% security guarantee. Even the most secure systems will fail if met with a concerted attacker with unlimited resources.
If WW3 starts, we will lose Azure, AWS, and GCP within 5 days and it will be more or less completely destroyed within 30 days. They won't survive concerted attacks from nation state actors during war time.
Even if they can't be hacked, they will be physically destroyed with kinetic weapons. There is no Bitdefender plan that will save them from warheads.
The same probably applies to moist mainstream (public) datacenters. Only ones that will be safe-ish would be something like Scaleway's underground nuclear bunker/datacenter.
Actually seems like a hardish target.
US and lesser extent UK. Companies in France, Germany, Spain, Italy are much less likely to use public cloud providers, especially for critical (customer data, critical for the business, etc.) services. Not that it doesn't exist, one of the premier health tech startups in Europe, Doctolib, is full AWS; but it's rarer and much less prevalent.
Source: I work in a US tech company and cover EMEA, and compare notes with American colleagues.
Which may happen as some people just got Biden to authorize (honestly I don't think he can do that by himself), without congress approval, the use of long range missiles by Ukraine.
Some people are really hard at work trying to start WWIII.
I don't think it's the russian who severed those cables.
Russia knows that if WWIII doesn't start until a few more weeks, Trump is probably going to stop the US aiding Ukraine and stop the US giving its approval for total nonsense (like allowing these long range missiles weeks before handing over the presidency).
So why would Russia severe those cable?
I think there's a very high probability the bad actors here are the same that used Biden as a puppet to give Ukraine the greenlight to fire long range missile on to Russia.
Why not? They're not restrictions instituted by Congress. They were restrictions instituted by this and previous Presidents.
But damage to communications is a tangible thing, so if this is going to get worse, Putin's boats will be just sunk in such areas as a preventive measure. And Putin will do nada about it despite all this threats, except may be looking for other places to cut cables and engage in similar trash behavior until he is chased out of there too.
Sinking of his ships is something he very quickly understands, since he practically can't make new ones.
"Navy undersea cable showdown on Britain's doorstep: Warship forces Russian spy ship out of the Irish Sea after it was spotted over critical subsea cables - miles from UK coast" -- https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14090489/russian-sp...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/16/russian-spy-sh...
Why did Europe need Russian gas at all, when there's clearly so much right under-foot? Obviously the 'invisible hand' of the market will fetch the gas from where it's fracked.
And lol, I did misread China for Cinia. oops.
But the argument is the same. The western govts. and media are filling everyone's head with 'evil Russian saboteur spyships' when there's no evidence of history, intent, or even capability.
I highly suspect this case will be a dragged net, or other 'normal' cause, but if it's malicious, imho the culprit is far more likely that nation that has it's fingers in everyone's pie, for commercial, geopolitical or political reasons.
For example, it wouldn't at all surprise me that they first escalated the Ukrain war by sanctioning a missile attack on Russia with their missiles, then cut some cables to make it look like Russian retaliation, priming us all for further escalation. Just cutting some cables does not seem like Russian mo to me.
Someone should escort the senile old cold-warmonger out of the whitehouse before the brass pupeteer him to escalate too far. I can imagine they're keen to see some 'decisive movement' before Trump shuts the show down.
North Stream was blown up by the desperate defender in a war of aggression.
These undersea cables were (likely) severed by the aggressor in the same war.
Are you less puzzled now?
1. Anything sea based tends to be cheaper than land based, both in terms of sea transport and also lack of other interfering infrastructure, homes etc along the way
2. Shorter distance means lower latency
3. There surely is a land cable too. There's a lot of redunancy in the system
At the time there will be no more Earth, they will be no more problem with human.
But EU & NATO ante engaged in a hybrid war with Russia.
- It actively supports a military which is engaged with Russian forces
- It has seized Russian financial assets
- I doubt that attacks on Russian infrastructure are perpetuated (planned & executed) just buy Ukrainian forces
I do not try to support any side by this statement. My point is that by any rational account is a “hybrid involvement”. EU & NATO are part of an active conflict.
This makes them targets for symmetrical actions — economic warfare by means of sabotage.
- shooting down civilians planes is something quite common in military operations (see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libyan_Arab_Airlines_Flight_... ). A bunch of 20 somethings handling equipment designed for mass murder. What could possibly go wrong?
- extra judicial killings on foreign soil are more common than you expect (remember the Saudis ? Or the Indian assassinated in Canada recently)
Russia is an authoritarian system by any account it holds responsibility for repulsive acts. But the current narrative is at best naive.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/finnish-governme...
[2] https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/sweden-says-telecom-cab...
[3] https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/18/europe/undersea-cable-disrupt...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/16/russian-spy-sh...
