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Two undersea cables in Baltic Sea disrupted

cnn.com

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Re: Two undersea cables in Baltic Sea disrupted

#441

Post by echoangle »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #389
echoangle wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what country is intentional property destruction not a crime? You’re not arguing that it’s really accidental, right?

12.1 nm offshore is not any country, which is the point…The laws of zero countries matter, and only certain multilateral agreements matter, at least on paper.

It’s still a de jure crime on the ship itself, because the laws of the flag country apply there. If the captain of the ship intentionally damaged something in international waters, he still committed a (de jure, which was the question) crime.

Re: Two undersea cables in Baltic Sea disrupted

#442

Post by chgs »

rightbyte wrote: post #284
aguaviva wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has already been acknowledged that the rates are "lopsided", i.e. that Russian loss rates are higher than Ukrainian loss rates. But none of what you're saying means that Ukraine isn't also suffering from a very high loss rate.

[flagged]

Tens of thousands of Ukrainians have died, maybe hunderds of thousands.

Re: Two undersea cables in Baltic Sea disrupted

#443

Post by looperhacks »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #295

This would be an excellent time for Germany to announce that it is tripling munitions production, and that they’re going to do whatever they have to do to protect the territorial integrity of Europe. But they won’t.

Our governing coalition just split and there will be early elections (most likely) in February. Nobody has a majority right now, any anmouncement is currently unlikely. In fact our lovely head of the Government just reaffirmed that we won't send taurus to the ukraine.

Re: Two undersea cables in Baltic Sea disrupted

#445

Post by looperhacks »

philip1209 wrote: post #23

It seems that the obvious solution could be Starlink-style meshes. Can anybody comment on how fragile the Starlink protocol would be during a war? If its line-of-sight, presumably it would be hard to jam?

Russia already demonstrated that they are able to take down satellites [1] and that they can interfere with Starlink [2]>

1: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/16/world/europe/russia-antis... 2: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/24/technology/ukraine-russia...

Re: Two undersea cables in Baltic Sea disrupted

#446

Post by nradov »

chgs wrote: post #431
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> US cannot claim a single victory in the past 4 decades, it's been debacle after debacle Militarily? You've got to be joking. Russia is still struggling with the military part of the campaign. Russia's "top of the line" weapons are routinely being potted by decades-old NATO kit. They are a spent force, conventionally. The military turned from a fighting force into a propaganda tool, aimed at projecting masculinity t…

Looks to me that Russia is winning the war of attrition. Is that view inaccurate?

Yes, that's basically accurate. Russia has a huge advantage in manpower and equipment, and has been using that to gradually take more territory. Ukraine will have to achieve about an 8:1 casualty ratio in order to achieve an outright battlefield victory, which they haven't been able to do even with foreign military aid. A more realistic goal is basically to inflict enough Russian casualties that domestic political and economic pressures force a withdrawal from most of the occupied territory. That's not impossible but it's kind of a long shot.

Another approach which is more likely to work is for NATO countries to step up and really hurt Russia through every means short of war. That mainly means finding a way to reduce their fossil fuels export income.

Re: Two undersea cables in Baltic Sea disrupted

#447

Post by YZF »

rdtsc wrote: post #82

> "it’s obvious this wasn’t an accidental anchor drop.” If it's "he who shall not be named", gotta admit, that's a clever strategy: ramp up sabotage and see how NATO/EU will feel about their "red lines", and how well does that article 5 really work in practice. Is it worth more than the paper it's printed on? Let's find out! People have been laughing at the West crossing multiple Russian "red lines" and the Russians…

Putin would not be where he is without the support of China. And China has plenty of levers that the west can press without needing to do sabotage or war. 15% of China's exports go the US. EU another 15% or so.

The west won the cold war without firing a shot or blowing any bridges or sinking any ships.

I do agree Putin will change course if he feels he can lose power but it's not clear how pressure on Russia leads to that. He holds the country in his iron fist. He's not going to care about losing some ships or bridges as long as he thinks that he can come up ahead in the long run. He'll just use that as motivation to send even more soldiers to Ukraine and ramp up arms productions.

Re: Two undersea cables in Baltic Sea disrupted

#448

Post by fractallyte »

trhway wrote: post #424
carabiner wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A disruption in communications can mean only one thing: invasion.

yes. What Russia does currently is probing and testing - what it takes to disrupt all the necessary cables simultaneously to create communication breakdown and a lot of chaos, what resources and time it takes to repair (and thus planning the options on blocking those repair resources, etc.) It takes tanks half-a-day to cross the Baltic states to reach the sea. That is the time Russia wants to buy. Once Russian forces…

Conversely, I have no doubt that Lithuania's armed forces have learned from Ukraine's experience: those Russian tanks would all be destroyed within the first few kilometers.

...and that assumes Russia still has enough tanks to even mount an offensive, in sufficient numbers to capture several capital cities, belonging to nations with a fearsome grudge against them.

(Three years ago, I would have fully agreed with your assessment!)

Re: Two undersea cables in Baltic Sea disrupted

#449

Post by malaya_zemlya »

Demiurge wrote: post #403
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's exactly how the Russians perceive the EU. They are perceived as weak Europe has been weak. The difference is Russia is weak while trying its hardest. Europe is weak because it can't bother to try. > That might look like a "power move" by Germany but it looks absolutely weak in the eyes of Putin Nobody considers condemnations power moves. Also, Putin's track record in reading who's too weak to do what doesn't…

How is it trying its hardest when it hasn’t declared a full scale mobilization, hasn’t closed its borders, or switched to war time economy?

40% of Russian budget is allocated to defense, that's roughly the same level as US during Vietnam war.

Re: Two undersea cables in Baltic Sea disrupted

#450

Post by andy_ppp »

lenerdenator wrote: post #354
euroderf wrote: post #73

So what's the solution ? Assign a surveillance UAV to every Russian ship parked "without a good reason" over a cable ? It would be expensive, but doable, and create a reserve of vehicles for wartime use.

Make them pay dearly every time there's even reasonable suspicion that Russia has messed with Western/NATO technological infrastructure. That we still have oligarchs and bratva members walking around on NATO soil in the open this far into things is insane.

There’s loads more we can do but the Russian government might just collapse if they go too far attacking western assets. They know there will be a response “at a time and place of our choosing” and cutting the Internet properly will be extremely expensive for Russia, they will have no banking system at all and we will give Ukraine weapons to attack their oil infrastructure.
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