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?
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.
This wasn’t the Nordstream pipeline. This was a Finland-Estonia pipeline and telecoms in Oct 2023.
Also I can’t imagine China fucking over Russia when it was to their advantage.
Sometimes, this sort of thing is just to show you can do it.
The “u mad bro?” school of foreign policy.
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.