Sabotage or accidental anchor dragging in the Baltic Sea?
I have collected some answers to the basic questions raised by the recent discussion about whether the cable cutting in the Baltic Sea has been accidental or sabotage. This discussion was sparked by an article in the Washington Post over the weekend, and several other newspapers from different countries have since published similar stories.
The common thread has been that anonymous government sources have told journalists that, more likely than not, the cases of merchant ships destroying critical infrastructure in the Baltic Sea with their anchors have been accidents due to bad maintenance or poor seamanship rather than deliberate acts of sabotage. I published my initial thoughts about it earlier in the week in a walk & talk video, but since there is so much debate and more information has become available, I thought it was meaningful to put it together in written form in a more structured overview.
Was it sabotage?
Much of the debate has centered around the question of whether the cases of anchor dragging by merchant ships have been intentional or accidental. This debate is a bit silly because the answer is self-evident. It is simply technically impossible for such a thing to happen accidentally.
It is possible that a ship can drop its anchor accidentally due to either bad maintenance or poor seamanship, but it is quite simply impossible that the crew would not notice and inadvertently drag the anchor for many miles before suspecting that something might be wrong. If the anchor is dropped accidentally, the entire chain will also run into the water, meaning that hundreds of tons of metal would be dragged across the seabed. The ship would slow down and require a lot of engine power just to keep moving through the water. In addition, the forces on the ship itself would be tremendous. To avoid causing damage to the ship, the technical construction includes a release mechanism that automatically lets the anchor go if it is dragged over the seabed with the entire chain in the water. In other words, to drag the anchor across the seabed, you will need to secure the anchor chain with a special mechanism on the ship.
The likelihood of a merchant ship dragging its anchor across the seabed by accident is therefore close to zero. The likelihood of this happening three times in 14 months in the same area is even smaller. The answer to the question is, therefore, straightforward: Yes, this was definitely sabotage.
Was Russia behind it?
Technically speaking, none of the ships that did this were Russian; two were Chinese, and one was from the Cook Islands. The interesting question, therefore, is not whether it was sabotage – because, as I mentioned above, the answer is yes – but whether there is a clear connection to Russia. It might be difficult to attribute this to Russia, and arguably the Western countries don't have an interest in trying.
It would be in line with the previous Western approach to countering hybrid warfare to avoid escalating conflicts with Russia. It is therefore quite possible that Western countries would prefer to deal with these cases by going after the crews on the involved ships rather than trying to prove a bigger conspiracy. That is also what I speculated would happen in my video about it from a few weeks ago. And if you want to take the cases on a ship-by-ship basis, you more or less have to argue that it was an accident and not sabotage. Because if it is sabotage, then you also need to explain the motive and who was behind it.
Why are these stories coming out now?
It is noticeable that, all of a sudden, a range of government officials from different countries have a strong urge to talk with journalists and be quoted as anonymous sources in various newspapers. This is clearly a coordinated information campaign and not the act of individual bureaucrats.
I've seen people speculate that it is Kremlin propaganda and that the Russians are behind it, but I don't think that is the case. Dismissing the possibility of sabotage serves Western interests more than Russian interests. I've also seen people speculating that the new Trump administration has made the leaks, but that also doesn't seem likely. The reality is that this type of anonymous leaks and dismissive attitude toward hybrid attacks is in line with the previous Western strategy for dealing with hybrid warfare, which has existed under the Biden administration.
What about the anonymous sources that told us about Nord Stream?
Good question.
Can we trust the government?
I think the people who came up with this plan to leak false information to journalists are playing with something dangerous. On the one hand, it's easy to see what they were trying to achieve, and it is possible to appreciate that there have been good intentions behind it. I've explained the logic behind the Western strategy of ignoring hybrid attacks in detail here. But on the other hand, it takes a long time to build trust, and you can lose credibility in the split of a second. In a democracy, it is important that the people can trust not only the government but also the press. Luring journalists into writing false information is probably not the best plan a government can come up with if the goal is to protect democracy.
That is not to excuse the journalists' lack of fact-checking or to absolve them of responsibility. I think it's good practice for journalists, before printing a story about accidental anchor dragging, to consult a maritime specialist who can explain how an anchor works.
What now?
The goal seems to be to make the cases go away in the sense that they disappear into the court system as civil cases about liability, not as criminal cases. It will take a long time for the courts to process these cases, and by then the international crisis will hopefully be over.
In terms of hybrid warfare, the message to Russia is that the West is determined to ignore almost anything. If Russia actually wants to create trouble with attacks in the West, they will need to escalate even further. Only attacks that are so blatantly attributable to Russia that they are impossible to ignore will receive political attention in the West.