Prosecutors in Stockholm launch preliminary investigation into suspected sabotage, hours after Germany dubs cable failure part of a ‘hybrid operation’

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Swedish authorities say they have detected a Chinese ship moving near two telecoms cables that failed within hours of each other on the Baltic Sea bed in recent days.

Prosecutors in Stockholm have launched a preliminary investigation into suspected sabotage, hours after Germany dubbed the cable failure part of a “hybrid operation”.

On Sunday morning at about 10am, Swedish authorities registered problems with a data cable under the Baltic Sea from the Öland island to Lithuania. At 4am on Monday, telecoms operators in Finland and Germany reported problems with another cable called C-Lion-1.

Both cables were damaged in the Swedish economic zone, prompting prosecutors in Stockholm to take the investigation lead.

    • Valmond@lemmy.worldEnglish
      171·
      3 days ago

      EU dresses up so slutty I just had to act.

      They should hold that boat indefinitely and close the gap in Kattegat for all Russian vessels.

    • ashley0_0@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      9·
      3 days ago

      ever since i started using lemmy all I’ve heard is bad things about that instance so I don’t understand why we don’t just defederate from them? This is a genuine question to anyone with the answer, thanks!

      • Duamerthrax@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        3 days ago

        I started there. It’s tiring when every international political discussion boils done to China/Russia good because NATO bad. .ml is subtle about it and does a lot of word game shit you see in right wing media. They maintain enough plausible deniability to remain federated. The defederate instances were the one using slurs.

        • 0x815@feddit.orgOPEnglish
          51·
          3 days ago

          Yes, they are more subtle in parroting propaganda, but they block everyone who is only slightly critical of China/Russia. They are the same people.

      • 0x815@feddit.orgOPEnglish
        42·
        3 days ago

        @ashley0_0@lemmy.blahaj.zone This puzzles me, too. That instance is a cheap propaganda instance that has been banned by Reddit some time ago for a good reason. I don’t know why we don’t defederate.

        • federal reverse@feddit.orgMEnglish
          13·
          3 days ago

          It’s the instance admined by the authors of Lemmy itself. The official forum is !lemmy@lemmy.ml. It’s a bit disingenuous to ask to defederate from them, unless we want the already tense relationship with the authors of the software to break entirely.

            • federal reverse@feddit.orgMEnglish
              1·
              3 days ago

              Of course they could but that’s not free. Forked projects are a lot of work. Maybe it would be easier to go for a different software, such as kbin. Or maybe the defederation goes over just fine and arrangements are found easily. I don’t know. My point is there’s a social component to defederating that’s likely a bit bigger than just shutting out Russia/China enjoyers.

              • 0x815@feddit.orgOPEnglish
                11·
                2 days ago

                My point is there’s a social component to defederating that’s likely a bit bigger than just shutting out Russia/China enjoyers.

                I have to disagree. It’s not just this community’s “West bad, Russia/China bad okay” hypocrisy and the fact that they convey their narrative and their narrative only (everything else gets immediately blocked, while they accuse others literally of ‘double standards’). One of my main points is that they support Russia’s war in Ukraine, which is a genocide. It’s the only community that openly supports an attempted genocide.

                [Edit typo.]

                • federal reverse@feddit.orgMEnglish
                  1·
                  2 days ago

                  That’s a response to an argument I was not making. I share your non-enthusiasm about .ml.

                  I was talking about the social cost of locking out the creators of Lemmy. It’s reasonable to argue that that social cost is worth bearing. But it’s imo unreasonable to pretend it doesn’t exist.

                  However, I would caution that .ml is the standard instance that many people start out at, because that’s the site promoted from Lemmy’s GitHub and from join-lemmy:org. There are reasonable people caught among the unreasonable ones.

                  I’d object to [.ml] being the “only community that supports an attempted genocide” [emphasis mine], for two reasons:

                  • The Grad and Bear instances also exist and are more consistently pro-Russian. They are already defederated from e.g. feddit.org, precisely because there is no social cost associated with defederating them.
                  • I find it hard to accept this stance of absolute moral superiority. What the Russian government inflicts on Ukraine is atrocious but not entirely unparalleled.

                  [Edith: formatting]

      • milicent_bystandr@lemm.eeEnglish
        11·
        3 days ago

        I feel used to the internet being full of stupid nonsense, so I just ignore .ml’s share, and in a way it’s a refreshing balance to the usual genre from e.g. .world and Reddit. Usually it’s either run-of-the-mill echo chamber or respectful discussion.

        But there’s lots of good stuff on .ml too. I’m glad to still be federated.

    • Drusas@fedia.io
      331·
      4 days ago

      China did this same shit well before Russia brought them into the war.

        • anon6789@lemmy.worldEnglish
          231·
          4 days ago

          There was a pipeline damaged last year under circumstances that seemed to be challenging to rule as accidental. China claimed responsibility, but claimed it wasn’t intentional, but it seems they ignored all communication attempts made to the ship and that the amount of time they dragged anchor along the seabed would have been impossible to not notice.

          • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            4·
            3 days ago

            Being that was after the war started, I wouldn’t list that as anything other than a possible attempt to cause gas shortages and economic damages to Ukrianes support.

            • anon6789@lemmy.worldEnglish
              3·
              3 days ago

              I’m inclined to agree. Both events seem to involve too many coincidences for it to be unintentional. I have no idea how they would prove this, and moreso what the official response would be.

              I’d be very curious to see a video or write-up of how the investigation is done and if there is any deep sea forensics work.

              • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
                2·
                3 days ago

                Yeah it would be hard to prove it wasn’t just an idiot dragging many thousands of pounds behind them. But at 60-70 meters deep is deeper (but not unheard of) of a depth for a ship to lay anchor.

                For them to then start going again while dragging the anchor and not realize the ship is moving incorrectly for a long distance seems impossible.

                • anon6789@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  1·
                  3 days ago

                  This particular instance is sounding more malicious as it seems they have the same ship at the right location to have caused the damage on 2 occasions now. I haven’t gotten to read any updates since they were pinning down the ship’s location data yesterday to see if they’ve found even more showing this was intentional.

                  We have had recentish events though where we have had extreme disruption caused by ships with the Ever Given in the Suez and the Dali collapsing the bridge to the Baltimore ports due to human error. The Baltimore incident has a nice write up on the investigation, going through the ship maintenance, questioning different people, and going through the ships’s black box data.

          • atro_city@fedia.io
            6·
            4 days ago

            Thank you. This is news to me. I just hope there were repercussions because such an “oopsie” should still lead to having to pay for the damages done.

            • anon6789@lemmy.worldEnglish
              5·
              4 days ago

              I haven’t found anything past the August updates I linked. Someone more local might be able to chime in if there’re some non-English updates out there that I can’t find.

              I can’t imagine it’s quick or easy to do repairs in the middle of the sea. 😧

    • Buddahriffic@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      3 days ago

      I’ve been thinking one of the motivations for the invasion of Ukraine was to secure a larger food supply to keep China fed through an all out trade war. Them shutting down exports to the west might be enough to destabilize things sufficiently to change the world order once the dust settles. Especially if combined with the invasion/destruction of Taiwan.

    • Melchior@feddit.orgEnglish
      220·
      4 days ago

      More like the EU is more likely to be hard on China in the starting trade war.

          • atro_city@fedia.io
            15·
            3 days ago

            Is the rest of my statement incorrect? It will take decades for Europe to ween itself off of China. Until then, China has a lot of power in Europe - and so does the USA.

            Europe is the smaller player caught between the US and China. It doesn’t want to develop its own industries for fear of being called “protectionist”, it relies on the US for military protection, it relies on China for a dizzying amount and range of products, materials, and resources, and lets its citizens be heavily influenced by US media.

            Until Europe grows a pair and becomes more self-sufficient in terms of energy, good, and services, it will stay acquiescent to the aforementioned powers.

              • atro_city@fedia.io
                12·
                3 days ago

                Yes, of course. It’s why we have a relatively stable peace. But we can’t ignore that the EU is the weaker of the dependents, which is what I’m saying.

                • Valmond@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  2·
                  3 days ago

                  The EU has an economy the size of the US (if you include the UK), and bigger than China.

                  How do you think when you say europe is weaker? Weaker in some specific thing?

            • Viri4thus@feddit.orgEnglish
              51·
              3 days ago

              Or, our elites profit greatly from the US induced, China manufactured, product consumerism for landfills. They also benefit greatly from the US borne “print money capitalism” which basically eschews competition in favour of just printing money and buying the competitor. Once our beloved ruling class stops huffing dollarium we’ll be fine.

              • atro_city@fedia.io
                1·
                3 days ago

                Once our beloved ruling class stops huffing dollarium we’ll be fine.

                We can be passive observers and just “let it happen to us” or do something. Vote with our feet, wallets, and of course actually vote. They aren’t going to suddenly change “actually, you know what? I don’t like money anymore. maybe I’ll be a good human now”.

                • Viri4thus@feddit.orgEnglish
                  32·
                  3 days ago

                  Democracy much like religion is a way of pacifying the masses while you let them choose between illusory candidates. Meanwhile the large interest groups engage in the “real democracy” enacted by their capital. (legal in the EU since 2007 btw, that was the beginning of the end) We the cattle are calm and everything resumes as usual till line doesn’t go up anymore. When that happens, you find a couple of scapegoats like Madoff or Muslims, redirect the cattle’s anger and things resume as usual a couple of years later. While the dollar remains the world reserve currency our civilisation will be stagnant because people are closer to cattle than actual rational agents. And the fences are getting better. People now happily opt in for 24/7 tracking. Our only hope is decoupling from the US, that’s it! Bretton Woods’ legacy needs to die for there to be real democracy. Just from the top of my head, MS “allegedly” bribed several government officials throughout Europe to guarantee the presence of Windows and office in schools at the detriment of open software. Thanks to that we bread an entire generation of people who can barely use a printer or zoom competently. Do you think these are the people that will vote for the wise egalitarian leadership that will bring balance to the force? The only option left is to just opt out of society, be kind to everyone and wait it out till we devolve in idiocracy (like the US) at which point we can start with a clean slate.