Yi Peng 3 crossed both cables C-Lion 1 and BSC at times matching when they broke

October 2023 there was similar incident where Chinese cargo ship cut Balticonnector cable and EE-S1 cable. Chip named 'Newnew Polar Bear' under Chinese flag and Chinese company Hainan Xin Xin Yang Shipping Co, Ltd. (aka Torgmoll) with CEO named Yelena V. Maksimova, drags anchor in the seabed cutting cables. Chinese investigation claims storm was the reason, but there was no storm, just normal windy autumn weather. The ship just lowered one anchor and dragged it with engines running long time across the seabed until the anchor broke.

These things happen sometimes, ship anchors sometimes damage cables, but not this often and without serious problems in the ship. Russians are attempting plausible deniability.

What are some concrete reasons why someone would want to damage these cables? Who benefits?

When Trump becomes President next year he is expected to demand that Ukraine settle the war with Russia or risk losing US aid and military support. It is why Russia is throwing everything at re-taking Kursk and US is now allowing long range strikes.

If the EU decides to join the US the war is over and Russia will keep the occupied lands. If the EU decides to support Ukraine then because of the devastating sanctions there is a strong chance Russia loses.

So it's in Russia's interest to make life as difficult as possible for Europe over the coming months in order to convince them that ending the war is in their best interest.

Plausible.

But alternatively, it is the outgoing Biden administration that do not want a freeze, and are escalating their involvement in the war, by giving permission to use their long-range missiles to attack inside Russia, in order to derail any potential 'agreement'.

And they are now sewing the press with 'hybrid war' mania. I see news sites are now plastered with fearmongering stories about embassies being closed in Kyiv, that Ukraine front might collapse without aid, and so on and on. Note that none of it is actual Russian attacks or any actual events, just fear of them. It looks very much like a media campaign to me.

edit: oh dear, a few people on HN really do not like this take, without offering any take-down, which just makes me think there's probably something to it.

Russia has been striking civilian targets throughout Ukraine with ballistic missiles since the beginning of the war.

How is allowing Ukraine to use ATACMS on military targets in Russia an escalation?

That's beside the point.

It is a very clear escalation in US/European involvement. Ukraine were prohibited from using long-range western weapons to attack targets inside Russia up until now.

I'm not saying if it's right or wrong.

But it's a very clear escalation in western 'participation'. Russia have for a long time been saying that such action would be tantamount to a NATO attack, and so everyone involved surely understands that this is an escalation in the NATO-Russia face-off.

That is a very particular use of the term 'escalation' which is bound to mislead people.

Normally, if we show up at the flagpole at noon to confront each other, and you throw a punch, you have escalated things to a fistfight, and then my return punch is not an escalation. If I pull a knife, I have escalated things to a knife fight. We escalate from fist to knife to gun. Reciprocation - self defense - does not count.

The only way to torture the term into contextual use is to suggest that Russia is not firing rockets at NATO because Ukraine is not NATO, but NATO is firing rockets at Russia because all these missile systems are not Ukrainian, but NATO. This is Putin's framing, and it incorporates the idea that the missile systems are actually being manned but US & EU soldiers.

If you are not adopting that frame, "escalation" only really works if you explicitly define the context as a Great Powers proxy war with a potential nuclear endpoint, where Ukraine is stipulated for the sake of argument to have no agency.

Ukraine is very clearly a proxy war between NATO and Russia, merely framed as a plucky country defending it's sovereignty, though it is that too, of course.

With all the backlash here, I feel like some kind of radical, but here is a BBC article from 2 DAYS AGO that basically says what I'm saying: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2nrlq1840o

Although they miss out the bit about a media campaign, and so on, of course.

This is the BBC, pretty much the mouthpiece of the UK government.

And although they frame recent actions as trying to give Ukraine an advantage in any Trump negotiations with Russia, the truth is that these missiles will probably not advance Ukraine's military position, but will certainly change Europe and America's standing, possibly to the point of derailing any possibility of negotiation.

Your link backs up what people here are trying to get across to you:

> Russia has set out “red lines” before. Some, including providing modern battle tanks and fighter jets to Ukraine, have since been crossed without triggering a direct war between Russia and Nato.

This is the latest of a long list of small, slow, racheting-up responses to unilateral Russian aggression. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_lines_in_the_Russo-Ukraini...

no.

And no-one has been 'getting anything across to me', inferring that I'm 'not getting it'. They've been throwing incomplete or irrational arguments, like yours, or simply downvoting.

Sure there have been 'red lines' by Russia, and the US has continuously pushed across them.

But this one was also a US 'red line'. Consistent with keeping a proxy-war in-theater.

Why have they crossed it, now?

What do they hope it will achieve?

Most likely very little militarily.

But maybe quite a lot in shaping or constraining future US policy.

> But this one was also a US 'red line'. Consistent with keeping a proxy-war in-theater. Why have they crossed it, now?

For the same reason they crossed all the others - continued Russian aggression.

Each expansion of US aid or reduction in restrictions on how that aid is utilized has followed logically from Russian actions. Obama started with non-lethal aid; we've initially balked at every single step since that before eventually going "ok, now it's warranted".

It's very clear the US is keeping responses small and incremental to take the wind out of Russian bluster about nuclear holocaust if they do this one more little thing to piss Putin off. It's also very clear the Russian "no don't send Javelins/HIMARS/Patriots/Abrams/MiGs/F-16s/ATACMS, we'll be very mad" has lost a lot of its potency.

So what, would you say, triggered the US to cross their own red line, and a rather obvious principle of proxy warfare?

And, backtracking, how aware have you been about the situation in Ukraine, or baltic sea infrastructure, in the past few months (even year), compared to the last week? Just a marginal increment, no doubt.

> So what, would you say, triggered the US to cross their own red line...

I'd first reject the use of the term "red line" entirely for the ATACMS situation.

"No, not ever" is a red line. The Russians love issuing these for other people, but it's embarassing when they're crossed without significant consequence.

"No, not now" is not a red line. The US tends to shy away from issuing them - one of Obama's biggest mistakes was proclaiming one in Syria and then looking a bit feckless when they violated it. (https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/the-president-bli...)

Letting Ukraine hit Russian territory with ATACMS is like the fourth or fifth expansion of how they're permitted to use that weapons system so far, as was giving them ATACMS in the first place after HIMARS (which saw a similar set of gradually reduced limitations; https://www.defensenews.com/land/2022/07/08/us-to-send-more-...).

> And, backtracking, how aware have you been about the situation in Ukraine, or baltic sea infrastructure, in the past few months (even year), compared to the last week? Just a marginal increment, no doubt.

I've closely followed the situation in Ukraine since Euromaidan.