Comment by ajross

It's a Chinese-flagged ship, not a ship operating at the direction of the PRC. While one doesn't want to assign guilt too quickly, it's extremely reasonable that they just took a contract to sail a bunch of Russian around and not ask questions. Or even to rent out the whole ship to a Russian crew

I mean, this is spy stuff here. It strains reason to expect that Russia would use only clearly identified Russian government vessels for its clandestine sabotage operations.