Accidents, not Russian sabotage, behind undersea cable damage, officials say

[reACTIONary]

20. Thanks for your reply! In my own opinion....

Last edited Sun Jan 19, 2025, 02:21 PM - Edit history (1)

... if there was a deliberate attempt to white wash Russian involvement, they would have made an official declaration, rather than leave it to leaks. To the contrary, the current administration and probably the other foreign services seem to have an interest in creating suspicion and fear of Russia in order to motivate and continue support for Ukraine. A reasonable strategy under those conditions would be to not make ANY disclosures, leaving the suspicion intact while not having to risk a major escalation. Under those circumstances, a leak would be the only way for those who are more inclined to be informative to get the news out.

White washing is also incompatible with other disclosures of Russian attempts at sabotage, right up to attempts to plant bombs on civilian aircraft. Bombing a civilian aircraft is pretty close to an act of war, I would think.

There was also the case of the bombing of the gas pipeline. Ultimately it was determined that this was not done by Russia (which never made sense to me) but by Ukraine - or Ukraine state-sponsored actors. The results of this investigation were frankly disclosed, even though that conclusion would not be supportive of continued support for Ukraine - presumably support for Ukraine being in the interest of those who made the disclosure.

One other consideration.... International shipping is not well regulated or controlled. In the article you will note that the ship responsible for the incident is part of the "shadow fleet" and was surreptitiously carrying Russian oil. It is also noted that the several countries involved have started a program of advanced surveillance since these incidents occurred, which would indicate that no such surveillance was in place previously.