HN Reader

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.

And 4 days ago a Russian spy ship was escorted out of Irish waters:

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

So definitely seems like a coordinated attempt to destabilise Europe ahead of anticipated peace talks early next year.

The Danish defense forces now confirms their presence but they are not providing any other information right now: https://x.com/forsvaretdk/status/1859195509866381402

(This is also a rare English-language tweet from an account that usually only tweets in Danish)

Title could be a lot more descriptive. Your average reader might scroll on by because that title makes no sense without context.

Much more information here: https://gcaptain.com/details-of-baltic-sea-cable-incident-re...

Also, Russia is sabotaging European satellites:

https://nltimes.nl/2024/11/15/dutch-childrens-channel-outage...

How much did Putin pay Xi Jinping for it?

C-Lion -> Sea Lion, but not the IDE from JetBrains.

Going from fishing illegally in south american waters to damaging internet cables in Europe.

YESS!! Finally a bsky link instead of X. Hope this is how it is from now on.

Botswana is well in the top half of least-corrupt countries. I suspect you know nothing about Ukraine or Botswana.

So, when do we know it's not just another operation Northwoods?

This is the 2nd time China did this in that Baltic isn't it? Both times look intentional.. maybe don't allow Chinese ships in the Baltic?

>Last ports: Murmansk - Port Said - Luga Bay (never docked, Ust-Luga, Russia)

All the way to Luga and decided to not dock. Large cargo ship pleasure wandering the sea like a yacht.

Looks suspicious, but there were 4 vessels in the area whose transponder signal was lost by public trackers during that night.

It has also been pointed out that this is a location with lively traffic. So if it turns out that is was an anchor (as in the New New Polar Bear case) that's extra suspicious because anchoring in such location is not normal. On the other hand if it were explosives like in the Nord Stream case, they could have been applied also weeks before.

Crowdsourced military intelligence offers some hope for the future.

Yi Peng 3 has been stopped in the Kattegat with Danish navy ships around it for about 11 hours now. Currently HDMS Søløven is anchored right next to it. HDMS Hvidbjørnen was also not too far away before its signal went dark.

What I don’t understand - if the yi peng was intentionally trying to damage the FO cables, why would they not spoof or disable their AIS data/broadcast (ship tracking transponder which is the source of this positioning data we see). Anyone have some insight on that?

Should be very easy to verify if this was the cause.

All you have to do at this point is go look at the cable near the crossings.

If there is evidence of an anchor hitting the cables in both of these locations then you've got pretty clear proof.

Someone should obviously be checking into this right now. No point speculating until it's confirmed really.

I guess you might still want to board just to find out weather there is any evidence of intent rather than negligence in the case that this is confirmed to be the cause...

So what would China's motivation be here?

I guess WWIV has been on a slow burn for going on three years now.

If a cable goes down, isn't the traffic just re-routed? Don't see the point of intentional damage here.

It looks like that the pilot ship Styrbjoern [1] came along side the Yi Peng 3 today. It traveled from the harbor of Grenaa to the ship and back. It possible that they took some people in for questioning or put a pilot and/or guards on the ship.

[1] https://www.vesselfinder.com/?mmsi=219003826

Do we need to get James Cameron and associates to design a DitchWitch that can operate at 2 miles down? How deep can ship anchors go?

It was crossing right on time for the interruptions, a Russian officer was on board, it slowed down while crossing, no other ships were slowing down in that area during that time (rulingnout headwinds) - it cannot get much clearer. China is now participating in hybrid warfare against Europe (unless they present stronger evidence against this assumption)

China will do more and more of this as the USA withdraws from policing the world.

It could be false flag operation to create pretext for NATO/EU to block shipping to Russian ports in Baltic Sea.

Similar to Nordstream destruction in 2022 it could have been either Ukrainians or CIA/NSA. This could be last attempt by current US administration elements to create leverage for the Ukraine before negotiations start.

Ahem... Cui prodest/cui bono?

What kind of interest Chinese could have to damage such cables? IMVHO ZERO. Also I doubt Russians have interests to do so.

Who could be interested?

- some private company for makes and insurance/the public pay to fix something who need money from the owner for other reasons (like I break on purpose my car to get it repaired for free or at least less money than what it would costing me avoiding the self-sabotage);

- some countries wanting war at all costs trying to create a casus belli to justify the push toward WWIII

- some countries experimenting the resilience of their infra

I fails to see any other potentially interested party.

So Two Minutes Of Hate towards Russia is over in this aspect? Very Orwellish.

They'll obviously point the finger at another country

Completely aside from the cable discussion, I'm glad this was on bsky. I could finally follow the comments in the link again. I hope this trend continues.

I read somewhere that the captain is Russian. What a surprise.

I think it's time for a special navy operation which captures a Russian or Chinese cargo ship every time a cable gets damaged. The ships and their cargo could be then sold to the highest bidder.

YI PENG 3 (IMO: 9224984) is a Bulk Carrier and is sailing under the flag of China. Her length overall (LOA) is 225 meters and her width is 32.3 meters. Source: https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/shipid:21...