Ukraine’s security service blew up a railway connection linking Russia to China, in a clandestine strike carried out deep into enemy territory, with pro-Kremlin media reporting that investigators have opened a criminal case into a “terrorist attack.”
The SBU set off several explosions inside the Severomuysky tunnel of the Baikal-Amur highway in Buryatia, located some 6,000 kilometers east of Ukraine, a senior Ukrainian official with direct knowledge of the operation told POLITICO.
“This is the only serious railway connection between the Russian Federation and China. And currently, this route, which Russia uses, including for military supplies, is paralyzed,” the official said.
Four explosive devices went off while a cargo train was moving inside the tunnel. “Now the (Russian) Federal Security Service is working on the spot, the railway workers are unsuccessfully trying to minimize the consequences of the SBU special operation,” the Ukrainian official added.
Ukraine’s security service has not publicly confirmed the attack. Russia has also so far not confirmed the sabotage.
OP missed the fun bit after the tunnel bombing:
The first cargo train exploded directly in the Severomuysky tunnel.
To continue transportation, the Russians began to use the detour route through the so-called Devil’s Bridge — a 35-meter high viaduct structure, which is part of the Trans-Siberian Railway. At that point, SBU saboteurs struck again.
“When the train was passing over this 35-meter high bridge, the explosive devices embedded in it went off,” the same official added.
Thanks for the details
Just to add, according to Denys Davidov’s report on ukraine, the first train was carrying jet fuel, which added to the whole explosion.
Jet fuel can’t blow up steel beams! Wake up sheeple!
Wasn’t that the reason though that the Twin Towers in NY fell, because the jet fuel melted the steel beams infrastructure?
I had read/seen that the buildings were actually designed to handle a plane crashing into them, but the architects didn’t expect the metal beams to melt from the high-temperature burning jet fuel.
Don’t wake them!
Russia is shooting its own foot since the start of the war… an inside job sounds plausible at this point (kidding)
So they got two of three and not one of three? How is every article writer flubbing the headlines?!
I’m also uncomfortable with giving the SBU credit for an event that negatively impacts not only Russia but also China, which is not currently at war with Ukraine. SBU haven’t taken credit for this, a Ukrainian Official is making those claims.
It must be very hard for Russia to detect Ukrainians that work under cover in Russia, this must be a major vulnerability for Russia. Unfortunately the same is probably true the other way.
Probably not so much the other way, most Ukrainians are fluent in Russian, I doubt many Russians are fluent in Ukranian
I wonder how many Ukrainians can only speak Russian. Languages can be hard for some people.
I thought I heard that zelensky himself only knew Russian until relatively recently
Mostly all. It’s because USSR only used russian as country’s language so every nation in the country was forced to learn this language and there were many nations in ussr.
Can anyone explain how different the languages are? Super different or “they kind of get eachother, just are noticably different”
They have similar alphabets, grammar and a lot of cognates. If you only spoke one you’d be able to recognize most of a sentence with these things, but sometimes words are totally different. They probably sound similar to someone unfamiliar with both, but they are quite distinct.
Similar enough for mutual intelligibility but different enough that Russian only speakers will probably run into a shiboleth
Somebody once said to me that it’s rather like the difference between English and Dutch.
If you ever hear Dutch it rather sounds like English and you’ve just not quite heard them correctly. If you were in another room and just heard the ebb and flow of the language you’d probably not be able to tell the difference, but in person directly you can.
And as a non-speaker of both languages they sound basically the same to me so I think it is true
There is a lexical tree that gives some insight. Lexicostatistical distance would have worked better, I think, but I cant seem to find the numbers for that kind of metric.
Here I’ve edited an excerpt from the table, that shows how far Russian and Ukrainian are and how that compares to some other European languages
I’d say, Ukrainian have more brutal (deep throat) sounding than russian, but maybe it’s only local thing with Ukrainian guys i was talking with. So, usually it’s like 14 years old kid in Ukraine sounds like grown up Russian dude
No, your imagination betrays you on this subject.
Most Ukrainians are fluent in Russian, but with southern accent, and plenty of them also bad at Ukrainian at the same time.
A lot of Russians speak it with the same southern accent and know some Ukrainian.
There’s no clear border in that sense. Also there are still plenty of people born in Ukraine living in Russia and vice versa, maybe millions.
For half of Ukraine and half the (Slavic) south of Russia the whole idea of choosing between being Ukrainian and Russian was preposterous not so long ago.
Very interesting to hear this.
So are you saying that (aside from this war) people from Donetsk and Rostov used to be more similar to each other culturallly and linguistically than compared to either Moscow or Kyiv?
I think it could be worst for russia even thinking about fluency: as I understand, russia reallocated thousands of Ukrainians in its far siberian territories as part of the ethnic cleansing of crimea and surroundings
Edit: this was done in the 30s
According to Wikipedia, there are 1.928 million ethnic Ukrainians currently living in Russia.
Yes that’s exactly what I meant, the similarity of the languages, but I didn’t know whether that is equal both ways. I sincerely hope you are right, that it’s more difficult for the Russians.
I noticed this in the beginning of the war, that it would be relatively easy for Ukraine to perform sabotage in Russia. I’m kind of surprised it’s not more wide spread?
It is not the only railway connection. And there is still the original route from before this tunnel was built. So not sure how big the impact is.
Source wikipedia
I know virtually nothing about the Russian train system. Are all the routes able to carry the same loads? Older lines may have narrower tunnels, weaker bridges, etc. that are unable to transport the larger/heavier loads that Russia hopes to bring from China…
Edit: Track gauge is another question. I did some quick Googling and it looks like Russia used to use 1,524 mm gauge while China uses 1,435 mm. If those other lines aren’t compatible with China then it means cargo would need to be unloaded from their trains at the border and then reloaded onto Russian trains. That would slow things down tremendously.
Generally yes your lines can carry the same loads and have the same gauge. You want your internal logistics to be straightforward.
Fun fact: Russia chose a different gauge to make it more difficult to invade them.
And their logistics runs off trains so they have a giant problem when invading others, only same gauge can be used reliably and rail stations are a huge target
https://kbin.social/m/world@lemmy.world/t/670476/-/comment/3877961
I’m curious whether China will take this as a personal affront and feel the need to save face by escalating their participation. That would not be ideal.
I’m no expert, please take this with a massive chunk of salt, but as far as I understand it China is trying to balance their relationship with Russia with their relationship with the US. I’d expect the reaction to a rail bombing like this to be muted and cautious.
Good point. It has seemed recently like they’re trying to make nice with the US again all of a sudden. Some of their comments after visiting San Francisco were very out of step with their rhetoric up until recently. At least as far as what I have gathered from news articles. I don’t really have a great grasp on the nuances of it myself. They’re a difficult government to understand sometimes.
I think their trying to get a pro China movement in the west. I also think it’s working.
I think part of the problem is that US media generally accepts the US state department’s interpretation of Chinese foreign policy. That makes it difficult to interpret China’s aims since it’s buried under pro US bias.
Personally, I think the Chinese government appears relatively predictable if you can parse various global sources including the actual statements China publishes. Granted that’s a bit more difficult since it means accounting for all the biases of each source.
China and Russia share similar ideologies but that’s about where the similarities ends.
China isn’t insane and actually understands restraint unlike Russia they’re not going to go charging into something without examining the consequences. China really doesn’t want to get involved in this if they can help it, as I’ve looked at it and it’s only downsized as far as they can see.
If Russia does attack NATO and NATO gets involved, and the Chinese still send them resources after that point, then it’s possible NATO will consider China to be involved and therefore a legitimate target. This will mean that China will have to go toe-to-toe with the US military, and they really don’t want to.
Of course all of those are big if’s, and to be honest are very unlikely but it’s not an impossibility and the risk they’ve decided isn’t worth the very little reward.
China will just get to charge higher delivery fees with the planes, trucks and boats that will have to ship all the goods.
Good news for China, Russia need the stuff either way, it just gonna cost them more now and take longer to arrive.
Their reaction will depend on how this impacts their strategic use for Russia, which is soley as a source for raw materials (oil, minerals, etc.)
Selling goods into Russia, while critical for Russia, is barely a rounding error for China. The natural resources from Russia, however are critical inputs for the Chinese economy.
It’s interesting how the Russian government completely mismanaged even that little dependence. They could have more influence toward China.
Though if they were smart, eh, there are too many things to mention which they’d do differently. Something about invasions of generally friendly neighbors being stupid.
One of 3 that exist between the two countries, I read elsewhere. If true, this is a BIG DEAL!
