Two undersea cables in Baltic Sea disrupted

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...

https://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/en/newsroom/news/-/2685132

> 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...

https://mathb.in/80217

Clusters are a thing.

https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/lithuania-sweden-...

>Lithuania-Sweden subsea cable cut, was 10m from severed Finnish-German cable

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/16/russian-spy-sh...

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

I’m stealing this to use for grad-student mock-interviews—thank you!

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...

I’m not sure whether you are serious with that xenophobic comment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cnn2aGVcCEc

IMO very very likely sabotage, and brushed under the rug in fear of Russian escalation.

Hence investigations, good detectives, good hunches, etc.

Whoopsy, well would you ever!

Bandit state.

* Which pipeline?

* Last year (2023), not 2022?

But using your heuristics, that catamarang crew should probably have been interviewed.

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newnew_Polar_Bear#Damage_to_un...

(Source: https://www.hs.fi/maailma/art-2000010015226.html)

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.

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".

(But really, it clearly has “Russia” written all over it)

Plan is clear: continue suppporting Ukraine, continue Russian isolation.

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.

The internal Chinese investigation indicated that was an accident.. LOL

Russians, yes

Becuase they are afraid to figure out the truth. It might not fit the propaganda narrative.

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.

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".

That’s what makes this one so good—lots of opportunities to extend or roll-back difficulty.

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.

Are you saying it was actually Russia that did it? They blew up own pipeline?

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'.

Is this true?

Or

Are we now in a world where we are all living in fear of actual military retribution for speaking out?

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.

Russia is a probable candidate.

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"

https://www.dw.com/en/nord-stream-explosions-germany-issues-...

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...

> 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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

How long has NATO been on russia's border? This is an important question. Please try to answer it.

I am leaning towards sabotage but that two cables were cut means very little.

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.

https://archive.is/dPdoX

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.

German investigations found that the Andromeda trail leads to Russia[0].

[0] https://www.tagesspiegel.de/internationales/nord-stream-spur...

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.

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-...

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.

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?

Nonsense. Biden had a great deal of incentive to destroy that pipeline.

No, you don't.

And neither do the Russians.

So, are you going to be so superficial when Cuba gets Kalibr's deployed?

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.

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...

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.

/s

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.

:-/

So, one diver moved and installed 500kg of explosives in 4 places in front of a married couple?

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?

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

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-...

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.

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.

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?

  > 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'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.

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?

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.

> 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".

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.

Are you taking the married couples' claims at face value? The article mentions two divers, not one.

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.

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.

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.

Except that never happened in Ukraine, or in any of the other NATO countries close to Russia.

You know that, right?

Can you give a link to some information on this please?

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).

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.

Haven't reported anything.

Declined requests to explain themselves.

Sorry but it's bullshit.

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.

"USSR, why bother pushing back, not my problem, can't I just go to the mall and hang out?"

We’ll go around in circles until it’s irrelevant.

https://www.anritsu.com/en-us/test-measurement/products/mw90...

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

>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.

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.)

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum

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.

This has nothing to do with NATO. Only with Russian imperialism.

The actual Russian perspective is "Let's quickly grab Ukraine before they completely turn towards Europe, otherwise Russia cannot be an empire again."

> 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.

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.

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.

That may be true in the most narrow and mechanical sense, but the way it presents blame is very wrong.

That's known, and already implicit in what I said.

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?

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.

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.

Russia returns Crimea, Donbass etc and Ukraine promises not to join NATO.

Strange that Putin hasn't proposed such a deal.

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.

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.

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...

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.

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...

>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...

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.

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...

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.

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"...

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.

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.

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?

> 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.

Somebody is refusing to pay protection money and is forming a “neighbourhood watch”. We need to make example of them.

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.

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.

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.

https://www.zeit.de/politik/2023-09/nord-stream-pipelines-at...

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)

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.

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.

Useful word: Revanchism [0], for people who want to conquer places they claim they once-owned.

[0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/revanchist

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.

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.

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.

  > How did the Moskva sink?

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.

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).

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!".

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.

Just because they weren't "defending a NATO member" doesn't mean that the operation was "offensive".

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.

Even if you don't care one bit about Ukraine, it's still a really smart thing to do for our own sake.

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.

And I wouldn't blame them.

The West promised to protect them and failed.

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.

A random Lithuanian person is not Germany.

Hope this helps.

You’re right about one thing, though. There’s definitely a stench here.

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.

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.

    > 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.

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.

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]

Indeed, russia started this war by refusing to be neutral. Thus, Ukraine will perhaps show neutrality if russia shows neutrality first.

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.

https://mearsheimer.substack.com/p/who-caused-the-ukraine-wa...