Was Baltic maritime sabotage just accidents?

I discuss the Washington Post story that, allegedly, Western intelligence communities now believe the destruction of maritime infrastructure in the Baltic Sea by merchant ships was accidental rather than deliberate sabotage. It's fair to say that I am skeptical.

Watch the video on the website or read the transcript below.

Best,
Anders

Trancript:

Over the weekend, the Washington Post published an article where they said that some anonymous sources from the intelligence community had told them that most likely the examples of how merchant ships have destroyed maritime infrastructure in the Baltic Sea are examples of accidents and not deliberate sabotage. This is of course noteworthy because I think the general assumption that most people have been working with is that these are examples of sabotage and hybrid warfare. In Finland there is even an ongoing criminal investigation about this. So it's quite, you know, it receives a lot of attention that suddenly the Washington Post would say that, well, the intelligence communities, they don't think so, they think that this is actually just accidents and that it's just a coincidence that it has happened three times in a little over a year.

Well, I have a naval background. I have spent about eight years on different types of ships, big ships, small ships. But I have my fair bit of experience with anchors and big ships and I can say just, no, these were not accidents. You do not just drop your anchor and not notice and then continue for a couple of hours pushing ahead with the engine. That just doesn't happen. If you drop your anchor by accident like that, you will damage your ship and you will definitely notice and it will be almost impossible to stay on course. This is not something that just happens. Accidents do happen where ships can, you drop your anchor, there is a heavy wind, you can't stay in place so the ship starts drifting and that can, then you can pass a cable and the cable can be destroyed. This is not something that just happens like that by accident that you do that with the engine running and not at all three times in just over a year.

I was thinking of a parallel. It's kind of like saying that, well, I drove 10 miles in my car and the door was jammed open but I didn't notice that it was open and I hit three bicycles on the road and I didn't notice that either, but I'm very sorry about this accident. It's not really something that happens.

The big question then is of course what's going on here. Why is the Washington Post publishing this story if it's not true, if it's that implausible as I'm saying. I think what's going on here is that somebody actually did say these things to the Washington Post and the journalists, they just don't have the knowledge about these things to assess whether or not this is plausible. They probably trusted the sources who told them this, that this actually does come from people in a position who ought to know and therefore the journalists just assumed that it's got to be true. They must have verified their information since they tell us these things.

And then the big question is then, okay, then somebody must have lied to the Washington Post. Who would have done that? I think many people on social media now are speculating that the Washington Post somehow was fooled by the Russians and are now spreading Kremlin propaganda. I think this is a misinterpretation of what's going on because the Kremlin, if they are behind these hybrid attacks, which I think they are, then they would want us to know that this is what's going on. They would not want us to think that these are accidents. They would want us to think that this is actually hybrid warfare against Europe because that's what I explained in some of my YouTube videos. This whole hybrid campaign is basically about bringing the war home to the Europeans, making us feel that the war is real and that we get hurt as well.

So I do not buy the idea that this is somehow people trying to get Kremlin propaganda out. Rather, I think what we are seeing is that there is a conflict in the Western countries between what we can say is the old approach to how to deal with Russian hybrid warfare, which has been so far to just ignore it. I've made several YouTube videos about it, that everything is just explained as an accident. No matter what happens, the standard explanation in the Western countries has been this is an accident, it's unfortunate, but who knows what happens. And that way to basically ignore it and deny the Russians the information advantage they were hoping to get out of this attack. And then another group of countries that want a more aggressive approach to this, and say that enough is enough and this approach that we had, I mean that was maybe okay at one point in time, but it's different now. These hybrid attacks have reached an intensity level where it's not sustainable anymore to just go ahead and pretend that things are not happening and we can't do this, we need to set an example and take this case to the end.

It's really interesting to see how this is going to play out. I think it's obvious that if we look at who are the different countries here, we can say on the hawkish side we definitely have the Finns, who are right now having this case where they have detained Eagle S, the ship that did the most recent sabotage over Christmas. And then, you know, on the what we can call the dovish side, we almost certainly have the United States, because these are allegedly American intelligence sources telling these things to the Washington Post. And then they are also referring to sources in Europe, and we can guess about what countries in Europe that would want to maybe stay on the path of just pretending that these things are not happening. I think a country such as Germany, which seems to have been very aligned with the United States so far in the whole approach to the war and hybrid war, etc., is a good example.

It's just that there seems to be a conflict right now in the Western alliance about how to deal with this, and what is the right approach. Is the right approach to continue as we have started with just ignoring it, or should we have a more hawkish approach going forward? We will see how it ends, but as I speculated in my video that I made over Christmas, New Year's, about this recent sabotage, I think we're coming to a point where the Russians are going to insist on not being ignored. So, ultimately, I think it's the hawkish side that is probably going to win out in this debate, because it's just not going to be sustainable to keep ignoring things if the Russians keep increasing the intensity of whatever they do until they get a response. Alright, thanks for watching.