[biomene]

The reason for these accidents to happen more frequently is explained in the WaPo article linked by the parent: Russia is smuggling oil out via the Baltic to fund the war, and it's hard to find experienced crews for these smuggling operations:

> A Nordic official briefed on the investigation said conditions on the tanker were abysmal. “We’ve always gone out with the assumption that shadow fleet vessels are in bad shape,” the official said. “But this was even worse than we thought.”

The last thing Russia wants is to draw attention to the boats it's using to keep its economy afloat. These seamen really didn't know what they were doing.

[nradov]

That is not a plausible explanation. Even inexperienced crews don't accidentally drop anchor. This requires a specific set of actions by a crewman on the bow. It's not like just pushing a button.

[ahahahahah]

> This requires a specific set of actions by a crewman on the bow.

That's not true. While well maintained equipment would require a specific action, it is not uncommon for accidental anchor drops to happen, typically due to poorly or improperly maintained equipment. It's also common that ship is unaware that it has dropped the anchor (depending on the depth of the water, the anchor may not even have much effect, but even if it does it's not always identified).

For example, here's a report from a US based ship accidentally dragging anchor for a couple days: https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/...

[mcv]

I thought so too, but apparently anchors are a significant cause of cable damage, and were so well before the war in Ukraine. I don't know why anchors are such a problem, but apparently they are.

[willvarfar]

Near anchorages there are lots of signs showing where cables land so boats can avoid dropping their anchors on them. Yet still it happens.

Anchors are something you drop when stationary or nearly stationary in order to stay stationary. They aren't something you drop accidentally as you are going along.

So legitimate accidental anchor damage is generally close shore.

[mantas]

Some context. Lithuania/Latvia/Estonia electric grids, as of now, still connected to (part of) Russian grids due to soviet era infrastructure. This is coming to the end as Lithuania/Latvia/Estonia grids should detach from Russian grids on February 8th and synchronise with Western Europe grids. The main link is land cable to Poland. But underwater power cables to Sweden and Finland are quite important too.

Does it still look like just a coincidence that suddenly there're many more accidents in this region? :)