Sixty-mile drag mark found near damaged Baltic Sea cable, says Finland

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/30/finnish-investigators-into-suspected-sabotage-find-100km-trail-on-baltic-sea-bed

by misana123

13 comments

  4. You don’t accidentally drag a 5 ton anchor, 60 miles, by accident

  5. I found this part particularly interesting and noteworthy:

    *The apparent sabotage comes as Estonia plans to decouple its power grid from the old Soviet network this coming spring and unite with a central European network instead*. 

    Perhaps, this sabotage is more than just costly sabotage against Europe. Now – why oh why would russia want to delay/prevent Estonia from changing its power grid? That’s a rhetorical question.

  7. To put in perspective how deliberate this is, I have a 45lb (20kg) anchor on a 10 ton sailboat with 300′ of chain. This has held me in place during days long 40-60knot winds (yes, I was paranoid the whole time).

    Daily I stare at huge commercial vessels anchored off Seattle and Tacoma waiting for a berthing slot. They don’t move.

    There is no doubt about the captains malicious intent. Furthermore, on North Amercan charts at least, all undersea cables are marked and the areas are declared ‘No Anchor’ zones.

  8. I wonder what it felt like on that boat when it finally hit the line and ripped the anchor off…

  10. 60 miles is quite the distance, and would take a few hours. Dragging something like an anchor would cause some serious noises under water I imagine. Perhaps that a network of underwater microphones would be useful way to create underwater surveillance. It may not prevent this from happening, but at least you could get eyes on from satellite or plane which ship it is, and/or send Navy patrol boats to intercept.

  12. Ok, time to sever Russia from the Internet. Block their AS numbers, shut down the fiber connections and sever their subsea communication cables. Send them back to the Dark Ages, aka “Teletext”.

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