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.
Damn impressive.
Sounds straight out of a WWII action/spy/war movie.
I think I played that mission in Commandos: Behind enemy Lines
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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
They are incredibly similar languages that are more mutually intelligible, similar to Swedish/Norwegian/Danish or Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian.
I heard it’s more like Spanish/Portuguese which share some similarities but not mutually intelligible
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?
In Donetsk and Rostov specifically - yes, but it’s still been a one-sided gradual change from people speaking Ukrainian or dialects closer to it to Russian with southern accent, as I said. Mostly during Soviet years, as Don, Kuban, even Terek Cossacks and their dialects would sometimes be described as Ukrainian. So yes, but not quite.
While, say, in Polesye, Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian dialects literally form a continuum, which fits your question more as an example.
Can anyone explain how different the languages are? Super different or “they kind of get eachother, just are noticably different”
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 don’t have data, but feels wrong. Maybe if this is about historical, genetic distance, then yes, Belarusian is quite a lot closer to Russian.
But in reality Ukrainian and Belarusian have mostly the same West Russian lexicon, while Russian is different (say, more South Slavic, as in Church Slavic, loanwords), for historical reasons (in GDL West Russian written language was used for administration in its East Slavic parts ; in Muscovy Church Slavic was prestigious, so the official language was heavily influenced by that).
You can as well download the PDF and read the description, the thing is not based on historical reasons, it analyses a selected part of each language core using algorithm that is used to analyse DNA distance, as far as I understand.
To address what you’ve said, it sais:
Four factors influence lexical similarity registered in the tree: (1) genetic or genealogical relationship of languages, (2) diffusion (language borrowing), (3) universal tendencies for lexical similarity such as onomatopoeia, and (4) random variation (chance).
So the Ukrainian and Belarussian are likely different enough in everything else than the lexicon you’ve mentioned
So the Ukrainian and Belarussian are likely different enough in everything else than the lexicon you’ve mentioned
They are similar in lexicon and grammar, but phonetically very different, almost as if they were in the opposite directions from Russian.
Similar enough for mutual intelligibility but different enough that Russian only speakers will probably run into a shiboleth
No need for people to even speak different languages to run into shibboleth, the pronunciation of Russian is very different in different regions, the Ukrainian is not homogeneous either.
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’s quite easy to understand each other for both parties, but Ukrainians actually learn the Russian language in school, so they can speak good Russian. Russians can’t speak good Ukrainian as they don’t learn it. And speaking is very important for sabotage operations.
awesome! SBU ftw!
Technically SBU haven’t taken credit, a “ukrainian official” has made that claim.
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…
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
Yeah but they’re more afraid of being invaded. See history.
Explosions hit both the tunnel and the bridge.
The tunnel will certainly be hit at some point and flooded.
Umm it was the tunnel that was hit.
what’s SBU?
Sluzhba Bezpeki Ukraini = Security Service of Ukraine, SSU Basically, Ukrainian intelligence
Ukrainian intelligence.
Dictatorships are only paper tigers inside.
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.
China really has no reason to take this as an affront. China will continue milking Russia for money/oil and let them continue weaken themselves, but they have no reason to get involved or sell them weapons.
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.
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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!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
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.
And currently, this route, which Russia uses, including for military supplies, is paralyzed,” the official said.
“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.
“On the Itikit — Okusykan stretch in Buryatia, while driving through the tunnel, the locomotive crew of the cargo train noticed smoke from one of the diesel fuel tanks.
The movement of trains was not interrupted, it was organized along a bypass section with a slight increase in travel time,” Russia’s state railroad company RZHD said in a statement on Thursday.
The original article contains 247 words, the summary contains 179 words. Saved 28%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Russia/China is one of the longest border. So wonder how big of an impact this would be!? There can’t be just one or two runner in 4000km long border.
Big swaths of empty, I’d argue rail is a more efficient way or carrying military gear so even if you could do it with trucks… Need a lot of them. But just my speculation
I would assume there would be multiple rail lines along the border. Any strategists would not have gone with one rail line accessible easily to part of the border.
Idk the rubric says main rail line
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SBU should keep an eye on US as US is selling weapons to Ukraine in the name of "defense " and raking billions of dollars putting Ukraine in severe debt.
I think they have more pressing concerns
Yes but always keep an eye on the US.
Why is it a “terrorist attack” lol this meets all the definitions for a terrorist attack.
You can’t just start adding quote marks when our guys do it.
They are at war therefore it is an attack not a “terrorist attack”. I am sure you can debate whether or not an attack during war time could be terrorist.
A terrorist attack is usually designed to cause psychological trauma and involves injuring civilian population. This was clearly an attack on the economy and I don’t agree with the Russian media that this is a terrorist attack. So I think the quotations make sense as it is a sign of sarcasm poking fun at Russia’s reporting.
sabotage noun
The deliberate destruction of property or obstruction of normal operations, as by civilians or enemy agents in a time of war. The deliberate attempt to damage, destroy, or hinder a cause or activity. Scamped work.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition • More at Wordnik
It’s a war.
A terrorist attack is political violence by a non-recognized state/non-government agency
Ukraine is recognized so it can’t be terrorism
It absolutely does not meet the definition of a terror attack and we did not use the term that way in options within the GWOT either. Even in the context of September 11th the Pentagon was not considered a terror target while the hijacking of civilian planes and world trade center was.
Words matter.
