←back to thread

Two undersea cables in Baltic Sea disrupted

(www.cnn.com)
577 points mooreds | 7 comments | 18 Nov 24 14:31 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source | bottom
Show context
staplung ◴[18 Nov 24 20:22 UTC] No.42176496[source]▶
It's worth mentioning that cable breakages happen quite often; globally about 200 times per year [1] and the article itself mentions that just last year, two other cables and a gas pipeline were taken out by an anchor. The Gulf of Finland is evidently quite shallow. From what I understand, cable repair ships are likely to use ROVs for parts of repair jobs but only when the water is shallow so hopefully they can figure out whether the damage looks like sabotage before they sever the cable to repair it. Of course, if you're a bad actor and want plausible deniability, maybe you'd make it look like anchor damage or, deliberately drag an anchor right over the cables.

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...

replies(11): >>42177868 #>>42178949 #>>42179789 #>>42181124 #>>42181825 #>>42182141 #>>42182166 #>>42182377 #>>42183002 #>>42184314 #>>42187800 #
belter ◴[19 Nov 24 11:42 UTC] No.42182377[source]▶
"Germany’s defense minister says damage to 2 Baltic data cables appears to be sabotage" - https://apnews.com/article/germany-finland-baltic-data-cable...
replies(3): >>42183619 #>>42185086 #>>42186558 #
cwassert ◴[19 Nov 24 16:15 UTC] No.42185086[source]▶
He just wants more funds for his department.
replies(1): >>42185582 #
dralley ◴[19 Nov 24 16:59 UTC] No.42185582[source]▶
Reflexive cynicism about the military isn't as warranted in 2024 as it might have been a decade ago. And it wasn't really warranted a decade ago either, when Russia was blowing up Czech ammunition depots, airliners full of Dutch people, conducting assassinations in the center of Berlin, and sending "little green men" to Ukraine.

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.

replies(1): >>42186044 #
coldtea[dead post] ◴[19 Nov 24 17:34 UTC] No.42186044[source]▶
[flagged]
dralley ◴[19 Nov 24 17:51 UTC] No.42186247[source]▶
Russia and Russia alone is responsible for "kick-starting" this war.

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.

replies(2): >>42186847 #>>42186987 #
loandbehold ◴[19 Nov 24 19:08 UTC] No.42186987[source]▶
Russia is responsible but not alone. This war could have been prevented by not pushing Ukraine into NATO. It's THE reason for the war.
replies(8): >>42187167 #>>42187202 #>>42187376 #>>42187404 #>>42187648 #>>42191418 #>>42192208 #>>42198658 #
threeseed ◴[19 Nov 24 19:53 UTC] No.42187404{7}[source]▶
So then the resolution to this war is simple:

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

Strange that Putin hasn't proposed such a deal.

replies(1): >>42187884 #
eptcyka ◴[19 Nov 24 20:43 UTC] No.42187884{8}[source]▶
Not joining NATO is just a way of deferring the genocide. A regional power has no chance to stand against a global superpower on its own. If not NATO, then a different coalition.
replies(2): >>42187937 #>>42188605 #
1. dralley ◴[19 Nov 24 20:49 UTC] No.42187937{9}[source]▶
I understand what you mean but Russia is not a global superpower. They are not the USSR. Acting and speaking as though they are is part of how we got into this mess, the US and Europe didn't show any real backbone during the decade following the initial 2014 invasion, or during the Syrian crisis before that, or the 2008 invasion of Georgia before that.
replies(3): >>42188347 #>>42188709 #>>42193402 #
2. eptcyka ◴[19 Nov 24 21:35 UTC] No.42188347[source]▶
Fair, but even if they are not a global superpower, they are a tier above most of their bordering countries. 2014 was a direct result of Germany being dependent on Russian gas.

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.

replies(1): >>42193815 #
3. Terr_ ◴[19 Nov 24 22:18 UTC] No.42188709[source]▶
> They are not the USSR.

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.

4. aguaviva ◴[20 Nov 24 12:38 UTC] No.42193402[source]▶
Acting and speaking as though they are is part of how we got into this mess,

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.

replies(1): >>42198615 #
5. InDubioProRubio ◴[20 Nov 24 13:35 UTC] No.42193815[source]▶
Saudi Arabia with snow instead of sand
6. dralley ◴[20 Nov 24 22:08 UTC] No.42198615[source]▶
I think you misunderstood what I was saying. Of course Putin is an imperialist. But for two decades his grievances were treated as though they had legitimacy, or as though Russia should be given the same level deference and appeasement that the USSR was. Even holding Putin's opinions constant, the US and Europe should have pushed back harder against the aggression rather than pretending it wasn't happening.
replies(1): >>42199416 #
7. aguaviva ◴[20 Nov 24 23:49 UTC] No.42199416{3}[source]▶
Indeed I did. I thought the referent of "as though they [were]" was "the USSR", rather than "a global superpower".

The second possibility makes much more sense (and is more informative), so I should have assumed that one instead.