YI PENG 3 (IMO: 9224984) is a Bulk Carrier and is sailing under the flag of China. Her length overall (LOA) is 225 meters and her width is 32.3 meters.

Germany Says Damage to Baltic Underwater Cables Should be Presumed Sabotage

Two fiber-optic cables – one linking Finland and Germany, the other connecting Sweden to Lithuania – stopped working between Sunday and Monday, recalling previous security incidents in the busy waterway affected by war between Russia and Ukraine.

“We have to state, without knowing specifically who it came from, that it is a ‘hybrid’ action. And we also have to assume, without knowing it yet, that it is sabotage,”

“No one believes that these cables were cut accidentally. I also don’t want to believe in versions that these were ship anchors that accidentally caused the damage,” German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said before a meeting with EU colleagues in Brussels.

November 18, 2024

Second Subsea Cable Cut in Baltic Sea, Germany and Finland Fear Sabotage

 Two undersea fiber-optic communications cables in the Baltic Sea, including one linking Finland and Germany, were severed, raising suspicions of sabotage by bad actors, countries and companies involved said on Monday.

The episode recalled other incidents in the same waterway that authorities have probed as potentially malicious including damage to a gas pipeline and undersea cables last year and the 2022 explosions of the Nord Stream gas pipelines. 

The 1,200-kilometer (745-mile) cable connecting Helsinki to the German port of Rostock stopped working around 0200 GMT on Monday, Finnish state-controlled cyber security and telecoms company Cinia said. 

A 218-km (135-mile) internet link between Lithuania and Sweden’s Gotland Island went out of service at about 0800 GMT on Sunday, according to Lithuania’s Telia Lietuva, part of Sweden’s Telia Company group. 

Finland and Germany said in a joint statement that they were “deeply concerned about the severed undersea cable” and were investigating “an incident (that) immediately raises suspicions of intentional damage.”

November 18, 2024

Details of Baltic Sea Cable Incident Remain Murky as Danish Coast Guard Shadows Chinese Vessel

A day after the C-Lion1 and BCS subsea data cables in the Baltic Sea, connecting Finland and Germany as well as Sweden and Lithuania, were damaged, specifics of the incident remain unconfirmed. 

The incident is reminiscent of a similar event in 2023 when the Balticonnector between Finland and Estonia was damaged. Hong Kong-registered container vessel NewNew Polar Bear was later found to have dragged its anchor across the pipeline. 

Danish authorities appear to have narrowed down a possible culprit to Chinese bulker Yi Peng 3, which traveled over the reported incident site at the time of the failure. Its AIS track shows the vessel drifting back and forth for around an hour the morning of November 18.

November 19, 2024

Does the Internet Route Around Damage? - Baltic Sea Cable Cuts

Estonia is Europe’s leading catcher of Vladimir Putin’s spies as well as Europe’s leading unmasker of his manifold agents of influence. It is uncharacteristically unafraid to advertise its own national security threats by naming and shaming its yearly haul of enemy operatives, at least in comparison to other Western NATO democracies, which tend to hush up such bilateral embarrassments, preferring the discreet expulsion of spooks or “PNGing” of diplomats who glad-hand by day and engage in dead-letter drops by night.

via http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/04/15/estonia-the-little-spycatcher-who-could.html

united nation of Yugoslavia was not easy prey for imperialist intentions like we see taking place today. It is a fact, that after World War II, socialist Yugoslavia became something of a European success story. Between 1960 and 1980 the country had one of the most vigorous growth rates in the world: a decent standard of living, free medical care and education, a guaranteed right to a job, one-month vacation with pay, a literacy rate of over 90 percent, and a life expectancy of 72 years. To my knowledge, not one of the Balkans states that were created can claim half this prosperity.

via http://moderndiplomacy.eu/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=1257%3Ahow-yugoslavia-was-syrianized–25-years-ago&Itemid=132#.WPA-g8tSCVU.twitter

Mainstream political scientists look slightly askance at the subset of geopolitics. They regard geopoliticians much as mainstream economists regard the so-called “gold bugs,” who persist in believing in the eternal value of gold as a medium of exchange and who place their faith in the old constants which they are sure will inevitably reappear. Similarly, the geopoliticans, an exotic subculture within the expert community, believe that despite lofty principles and progress, the mean — strategic conflict over land — will always prevail. Sometimes, they are right. The Foundations of Geopolitics sold out in four editions, and continues to be assigned as a textbook at the General Staff Academy and other military universities in Russia. “There has probably not been another book published in Russia during the post-communist period which has exerted a comparable influence on Russian military, police, and statist foreign policy elites,” writes historian John Dunlop, a Hoover Institution specialist on the Russian right.

via https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/07/27/geopolitics-russia-mackinder-eurasia-heartland-dugin-ukraine-eurasianism-manifest-destiny-putin/