Regardless, there are satellites covering the area, so you wouldn't get rid of being tracked anyways, would just be a bit slower.
Over 55,000 suspected intentional disabling events of AIS signals were identified between 2017 and 2019, obscuring nearly 5 million hours of fishing vessel activity. This phenomenon accounts for up to 6% of global fishing vessel activity.
I don't think Russia is trying to hide their sabotage, though. Even with AIS disabled, there's no way European intelligence agencies didn't know what ships were floating above these cables at the time they went down.
This was a warning, not a secret operation.
I think this depends a lot on the location, as different areas seems to make it different levels of "mandatory". Are you speaking about the Baltic Sea specifically based on experience?
One has Russia and their ports, while the other doesn't. So preparedness and military presence certainly is different between the two at least.