‘Everything indicates’ Chinese ship damaged Baltic pipeline on purpose, Finland says
‘Everything indicates’ Chinese ship damaged Baltic pipeline on purpose, Finland says
‘I would think that you would notice that you’re dragging an anchor behind you for hundreds of kilometers,’ says minister.
BRUSSELS — As the investigation into damage to Baltic Sea critical infrastructure continues, Finland's Minister of European Affairs Anders Adlercreutz said it’s hard to believe sabotage to the undersea gas pipeline was accidental — or that it happened without Beijing’s knowledge.
“I'm not the sea captain. But I would think that you would notice that you're dragging an anchor behind you for hundreds of kilometers,” Adlercreutz said in an interview Thursday in Brussels. “I think everything indicates that it was intentional. But of course, so far, nobody has admitted to it.”
What would be China's endgame with this move? Trying to very obliquely help Russia?
What would be China’s endgame with this move? Trying to very obliquely help Russia?
My guess if it was intentional on China's part:
Reducing Europe's ability to import energy under normal circumstances would certainly cause economic hardship in Europe, which could be to China's gain. However, Europe was fairly resolute in their abandoning of Russian gas, as well as very successful in bringing online their LNG terminals much faster than expected.
So on balance now it looks very ineffective, but that certainly wasn't a foreseeable outcome at the time of the pipeline incident.
Important detail missing here is that the crew and captain were mainly Russian, the ship was just sailing under Chinese flag.
It was registered to Cyprus 2017-2023, and just this year changed to China.
Sometimes, this sort of thing is just to show you can do it.
The "u mad bro?" school of foreign policy.
So… despite all the seriousness, I have to ask. The name of the ship is NewNew Polar Bear?
What happened to the New Polar Bear? And the Polar Bear?
So, I can't easily find the name of the ship in Chinese, but it could possibly be a translation error during naming? New New is xīng xīng in pingying (romanized phonetic Chinese), which is also the same spelling as star... If whoever did the translation was bad at it and did it solely off of the phonetics or romanized spelling.
If they also had a penchant for dragging anchors for hundreds of kilometers, I think we can make a few educated guesses as to their fate.
Sabotage is by definition not accidental.
China want a war that they can't win? I really don't see the master plan of China behind that or why someone with Chinese roots would do it on their own agenda...
Really interesting how the NATO will respond to that if this turns out to be a direct sabotage by the China and what the reason of that could look like.
Delusional, like Putin. Also, they blew up this whole ballon posturing as a superpower, their national pride is dependent on it. Of course, it will pop one day, but now they are too committed to turn back
I really don't see... ...why someone with Chinese roots would do it
Tankies hate the West. Psychotic nationalists are capable of all sorts of dumb.
NATO? absolutely nothing, too worried about nuclear war, they will say "wtf don't do that next time" and move on with their day
An Axis is forming.
To what end?
This is the best summary I could come up with:
BRUSSELS — As the investigation into damage to Baltic Sea critical infrastructure continues, Finland's Minister of European Affairs Anders Adlercreutz said it’s hard to believe sabotage to the undersea gas pipeline was accidental — or that it happened without Beijing’s knowledge.
Finland and Estonia have been investigating the rupture of the Balticconnector, a 77-kilometer-long gas pipeline that connects the two NATO members beneath the Baltic Sea.
An investigation by Finnish authorities identified as the main suspect Chinese container ship Newnew Polar Bear, which is believed to have dragged its anchor across the Baltic Sea seabed, cutting through the cables and gas lines.
The Baltic Times reported earlier this week that the two European countries have asked to send representatives to Beijing to investigate the vessel, which is currently en route to a Chinese port.
Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur expressed similar sentiment in an interview with Swedish public broadcaster SVT last month, saying the captain of the ship surely "understood that there was something wrong" after dragging an anchor for over 180 kilometers.
Coming more than a year after the Nord Stream gas pipelines connecting Russia to Germany were damaged by several explosions, the Balticconnector incident raises more concerns over the safety of undersea critical infrastructure and possible measures to protect them from external sabotage.
The original article contains 419 words, the summary contains 211 words. Saved 50%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
This leaves out very significant details from the story, like this part for instance:
"The anchor — which weighs 6,000 kilograms — was retrieved a few meters from the site of the damage."
Don't upvote stupid bots!!! And don't think this is as good as actually reading the article. If you waste time reading this bots TLDR, you might as well take the time to read the actual article, and get the proper context.
Dude's clearly never worked on a boat. I know people with some wild stories of stupid shit going on at sea.