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.”

  • cygnus@lemmy.ca
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    11 months ago

    What would be China’s endgame with this move? Trying to very obliquely help Russia?

    • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      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.

      • tburkhol@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        This wasn’t the Nordstream pipeline. This was a Finland-Estonia pipeline and telecoms in Oct 2023.

        • Quokka@quokk.au
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          11 months ago

          Also I can’t imagine China fucking over Russia when it was to their advantage.

    • Hotzilla@sopuli.xyz
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      11 months ago

      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.

  • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    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?

    • Solemn@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      11 months ago

      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.

    • TheOgreChef@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      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.

  • avater@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    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.

    • slaacaa@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      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

    • charliespider@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      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.

    • Pika@sh.itjust.works
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      11 months ago

      NATO? absolutely nothing, too worried about nuclear war, they will say “wtf don’t do that next time” and move on with their day

  • BarqsHasBite@lemmy.ca
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    11 months ago

    Ha so Russia can only sell to China, so China can negotiate a lower price. [Outstanding move jpeg]

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    11 months ago

    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!

    • Buffalox@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      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.

  • naturalgasbad@lemmy.ca
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    11 months ago

    Dude’s clearly never worked on a boat. I know people with some wild stories of stupid shit going on at sea.