It's pretty obvious what's happening here.<p>The response needs to be forceful: seize and auction off the ships. There needs to be sufficient deterrent to actually stop this from happening.
Russia started convoying some of those vessels, especially with more advanced operation bases than cable cuts [1].<p>They won't be able to seize those without opening fire.<p><a href="https://ioplus.nl/en/posts/how-seven-students-unmasked-russias-drone-motherships" rel="nofollow">https://ioplus.nl/en/posts/how-seven-students-unmasked-russi...</a>
> There needs to be sufficient deterrent to actually stop this from happening<p>One ship might be considered a reasonable pawn to sacrifice. I'd go further: require that any ships passing through the strait to be bonded at some eye-watering amount like 10x the price of the ship plus the repair costs of the cable. Make it so if the cable is cut, you make a profit.
> <i>pretty obvious what's happening here</i><p>Good start. Then turn off Russia’s cable that runs via Finland [1] and make vague threats about (a) seizing shadow-fleet vessels in the Baltics and (b) how vulnerable Russia’s cable to Kaliningrad [2] would be to careless anchors.<p>All the while: start setting up non-cable based back-up bandwidth for if Russia severs these cables in advance of invasion.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.submarinecablemap.com/submarine-cable/bcs-north---phase-2" rel="nofollow">https://www.submarinecablemap.com/submarine-cable/bcs-north-...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.submarinecablemap.com/submarine-cable/kingisepp-kaliningrad-system-baltika" rel="nofollow">https://www.submarinecablemap.com/submarine-cable/kingisepp-...</a>
Russia has already carried out chemical attacks on UK soil, used radioactive poisoning in London, sabotaged rail infrastructure in Poland, and launched cyberattacks against German air traffic control.[1]<p>The Associated Press has documented 59 Russian hybrid operations across Europe. A systematic campaign of intimidation, sabotage, and violence:
<a href="https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-europe-hybrid-campaign-d61887dd3ec6151adf354c5bd3e6273e" rel="nofollow">https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-europe-hybrid-...</a><p>Russia supplied the Buk missile system that shot down MH17, killing 298 civilians, most of them Europeans. Putin eliminates political opponents, like Alexei Navalny, who died in custody days before a possible release.<p>European leaders may be passive and slow, but what is making the situation truly dangerous, is the dictator-jealousy fueled encouragement and indulgence of the current U.S. administration, and all its sycophants, which got to the point of publicly applauding a dictator on U.S. soil.<p>That behavior legitimizes aggression, emboldens Moscow, and directly undermines European security, and is making thinks really, really, sketchy right now.<p>Germany accuses Russia of air traffic control cyber-attack:
[1] - <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgrrnylzzyo" rel="nofollow">https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgrrnylzzyo</a>
> what is making the situation truly dangerous, is the dictator-jealousy fueled encouragement and indulgence of the current U.S. administration, and all its sycophants, which got to the point of publicly applauding a dictator on U.S. soil.<p>I personally think there's a more direct link between the US administration and Russia, in line with the rest of your points. I think it's more than "dictator-jealousy fueled encouragement", although what that "more" is I'm not entirely sure, and I'm not sure the differences between the possibilities matters in the end.<p>I really think it's hard not to read [about] Foundations of Geopolitics and the history of Viktor Yanukovych, the ties between the latter and Trump, and not conclude Russia's tendrils in the US, England, and elsewhere are far deeper than is generally acknowledged in the press.<p>I lost a lot of trust in most media to cover this issue appropriately when people in the UK started mysteriously dying and zipping themselves in body bags, and the coverage was a collective shrug. Why they would report something like that and then with a straight face conclude an article with "police say there's no evidence of foul play" is beyond me. But then again how the Mueller investigation got spun as an exoneration is also beyond me as well.<p>I know it's often seen as dismissive or shallow to blame the media for things, but I really do place a huge proportion of the blame for our current mess, at least in the US, on news outlets and media soft-pedaling what's been happening for the last 10 years. A lot of what people trust became propaganda, and a lot of the rest of it chased that audience around for clicks.
Regarding the spy in a bag -- the person involved was a GCHQ mathematician seconded to the SIS and studying Russia, whose "naked, decomposing remains were found in the bath of the main bedroom's en-suite bathroom, inside a red sports bag that was padlocked from the outside, with the keys inside the bag. [...] Inconclusive fragments of DNA components from at least two other individuals were found on the bag. A forensic examination of Williams's flat has concluded that there was no sign of forced entry or of DNA that pointed to a third party present at the time of his death.<p>Scotland Yard's inquiry also found no evidence of Williams's fingerprints on the padlock of the bag or the rim of the bath, which the coroner said supported her assertion of "third-party involvement" in the death. Metropolitan Police deputy assistant commissioner Martin Hewitt said it was theoretically possible for Williams to lower himself into the bag without touching the rim of the bath. A key to the padlock was inside the bag, underneath his body"
(See <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Gareth_Williams" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Gareth_Williams</a>)<p>It's absolutely mad, but remember this happened in 2010 -- before Russia did many of those bad things you mention. It wouldn't surprise me if a combination of political pressure and police incompetence made this go away.
Those connections go back as far as 2016...<p>But does it matter? 77 million Americans knowingly voted a convicted felon and court adjudicated sexual assaulter back into the presidency instead of a jail cell. From those, about 40 million were women, fully aware that a jury found him liable for sexual assault, and that multiple judges affirmed the verdict.<p>The majority of Americans saw criminality, sexual violence, and contempt for the law and decided that was acceptable leadership. :-))<p>"Kushner Companies and Russian individuals exchanged suspicious money transfers at the height of the 2016 race, ex-Deutsche Bank employee says" - <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/jared-kushner-russia-2016-money-transfer-deutsche-bank-2019-5" rel="nofollow">https://www.businessinsider.com/jared-kushner-russia-2016-mo...</a>
Europe believes that Russia is doing all sorts of bad things and there's also the belief that Moscow plans to invade the EU .<p>Isn't the logical action for EU to launch massive pre-emptive strikes on this big bad country that hates the western way of life ?
> Isn't the logical action for EU to launch massive pre-emptive strikes<p>To be clear, strikes wouldn't be "pre-emptive", Russia is already in a war, and it's entirely allowed for any nation to join the side of Ukraine. None of the rules of war prevent helping a friendly country by joining the fight.
I don’t believe the leadership sees Russia as an existential threat in Brussels. Baltics and Poland see it differently.<p>A pre-emptive strike would be expensive and immediately retcon into making Putin be the good guy - he’s long said NATO is the aggressor. Best to make invading EU to be too expensive to be worth it.<p>I think the bigger risk currently that Europe faces is the low and mid level corruption where Russian agents extend their tendrils into government structures in EU.
This has already happened. Just as in the US, all of the far-right "movements" in the EU are Russian fronts.<p>The two biggest targets are the UK and France, because both have an independent nuclear deterrent. If those are captured by puppets, expect nuclear explosions over European capitals.<p>This is not hyperbole. Russian government insiders have made it absolutely, unambiguously clear that Europe must be "crushed."<p>As a direct quote.<p>The real tragedy is oligarch complicity. Oligarchs and aristocrats in the US, UK, and EU have decided they have more in common with their Russian counterparts than with the native populations of their respective countries.
> making Putin be the good guy<p>Come on. Who cares what he pretend?<p>> Best to make invading EU to be too expensive to be worth it.<p>How do you propose to estimate how much it is worth doing it?<p>IMO, it is best is to make the kremlin government collapse by all mean necessary. Including sabotage, assassination, propaganda, confiscation, corruption/trahison. And preemptive strike if needs to be.
It's not about "hating the western way of life" or any such silliness. They can hate whatever they want within their internationally recognized borders.<p>War is best prevented by robust deterrents. When it comes to belligerent fascist regimes who want to see how far you can be pushed, not responding to provocations and aggression forcefully makes larger-scale war <i>more</i> likely in the future.
The logical thing to do is respond proportionally: if the ships are deliberately damaging property, seize the ships, and imprison the offenders.
We have functional democracies here. You'd have to convince the population this is the right course of action and then the politicians will do it.<p>Good luck with that, though.
No, pre-emptively starting another war is not a good idea. But yes, the West should work hard to make sure their enemy loses the war it has already started.
> Isn't the logical action for EU to launch massive pre-emptive strikes on this big bad country that hates the western way of life ?<p>Depending on the days, the priority changes, between Russia or attacking the US first, maybe with the help from Canada :-))<p>You have to deal with one threat at a time, and it seems the fight against chlorinated chicken will take priority for now... :-)<p><a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2025/12/17/trump-demands-british-supermarkets-chlorinated-chicken/" rel="nofollow">https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2025/12/17/trump-demands...</a>
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Are these ships actually owned by the Russian state? I thought it was more Russia paying private operators to do some sabotage alongside legitimate business. In which case, ships being seized would absolutely be a huge deterrent to whoever owns or insures the ships.<p>But yes, imprisoning the crew (especially the captain) is also a good idea.
Mmm. You are assuming people have a choice about crewing on what you call a pos ship which you say is owned/controlled by russia.<p>Many international ships are crewed by what is essentially slave labor. Too many google links to share them all, but try this to start: <a href="https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/thats-slavery-seafarers-stranded-and-forgotten-sea" rel="nofollow">https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/thats-slavery-seafarers-s...</a>
What do you mean by eliminate?
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Russia commits acts of aggression against NATO states that straddle the line of ambiguity where a bad faith actor could call it accidental or at least unauthorized.<p>This makes invoking article 5 likewise somewhat difficult because it allowed other NATO members pressure the border states into "not overreacting". The point is to slowly escalate into outright hostility without ever having "the event" that makes it obvious article 5 must be invoked.
and the goal for this toeing the line is to spark discussion and disagreement between member states. Article 5 credibility is already at it's lowest point after Vance's speech and the new US security strategy, now isn't just the matter of sowing further disagreement.
Also a provocation that forces a reaction that is difficult to modulate. Activating Article 5 demonstrates NATO solidarity and that it means business, but it would be disastrous. Doing nothing demonstrates fecklessness and impotence of NATO. The reaction needs to be measured and proportionate.<p>But outright hostility is not necessarily the goal. Hybrid warfare is more “subtle”. Its targets are more diverse and the aim is less overt defeat and more war of attrition in a broad sense. You want to wear your enemy down.
I'm not sure what Russia had to gain from violating our (Finland) airspace with military aircraft countless of times before we joined NATO. Yet they kept doing it.<p>Russia is an imperialistic state that really doesn't like having neighbours that are not under its political and military control. Violating airspace, GPS jamming, cutting undersea cables is just their way of showing force, and damaging us, who they perceive as their enemies for not submitting to their rule.
I'm sure some bright spark will soon show up to say that it was actually NATO who was violating our airspace for decades
, just like they're claiming that NATO is the one cutting cables here
It's also a form of reconnaissance. In doing these acts they observe how different actors respond and look for potential weak points.
It’s literally well documented why this is being done. It’s intentional to cause disruptions and damage.
FSB is paying extra on New Year's?
Wow nobody even blamed Russia yet and you're jumping to their defense already. That is some top notch customer service.
> Some officials from Scandinavia, the Baltic states and the European Union have pointed the finger at Russia. They say the incidents appear to be part of what experts say is the Kremlin’s hybrid war on the West.<p>The only blame placed in the article is targeted at Russia. And I'd quite like to see some speculation on Russia's possible motive for this, it sounds pointless and risky for their shipping on the face of it.
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They only know how to follow the manual
It's geopolitical. They don't care if you seize the ships because they don't care about a return on investment.
Good, another reason to seize them
Even better life in prison for all on board. (This is extreme but I bet you that they'd think twice)
That narrow passage is becoming a war zone. Look at a map. It's one of Russia's few outlets to the sea.
Look at the history of Russia vs. Finland and Russia vs. Estonia. This is one of the world's most hostile choke points.
The fact that this area where the incident happened, Gulf of Finland, is not fully part Finnish/Estonian territorial waters, is only because of a bilateral Finnish-Estonian agreement. This was done in the 1990's purely for benevolence towards Russia.<p>Russia clearly hasn't acted in such way that they should enjoy these kinds of acts of benevolence. Finland and Estonia should seriously consider retreating from this agreement.
With 10 undersea cables damaged in the Baltic 2023-2025, it’s obvious a different part of the government needs to become involved. Acting for your national security doesn’t need to (shouldn’t) mean there is no trial.
Don't even need to click to know it's the Russians.
I assumed it was China. They both enjoy this activity.
Every single ship in/out of St Petersburg goes via the Gulf of Finland. All those ships will be "Russian" (have stopped in Russia). It doesn't mean they're "Russian". Owner, charterer, flag, crew can all have very different nationalities.<p>Which part or combination makes them "Russian", in the sense of "the Russian state asked asked the ship to harm Finnish infrastructure, and they actually did it"?<p>You can lazily speculate about the aggressive, warmaking nation (that illegally annexed Crimea, is currently at war with Ukraine, is regularly sending submarines, ships, drones, jets into the territories of its neighbours) all you like... but if you want to be able to prosecute them, you need to be able to show evidence of the Russian state ordering this action, and that the cable damage was actually caused by that ship. Where is your evidence?
The crew on these ships are usually all Russians, the ship is often registered in Cayman, Panama or somewhere else. These ships often sail under a third nationality, but when the ships are seized, only complaints are filed from Russian lawyers. Take from that what you will.
This is the court of public opinion, not a court or law. For better or worse, evidentiary standards are much lower.
Sorry but in times of war, the regular "proof beyond reasonable doubt" cannot apply anymore, or you lose said war.
If you're at war then declare war. You get sweeping powers to deal with existential threats. Go ahead and declare your country is at war. Is it?<p>If you declare war without there being a bona fide casus belli, you'll be whisked out of power so fast your head will spin. See e.g. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_South_Korean_martial_law_crisis" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_South_Korean_martial_law_...</a><p>If you don't declare war, you don't get those emergency powers. You only get peacetime powers.<p>Russia loves to go right up to the line, and then cross it a little bit, just to antagonise you. But unless you're willing to be the <i>instigator</i> of WW3, you'll stick to peacetime powers and peacetime courts with peacetime standards of evidence
>But unless you're willing to be the instigator of WW3, you'll stick to peacetime powers and peacetime courts with peacetime standards of evidence<p>Clearly this will need to change somewhat, if the other side wants to engage in hybrid war tactics. Nothing new, Cold War was a thing.
But what if the other side - Russia - does wartime tactics without having formally declared war with NATO? Why do they get to keep this privilege?
Because they're an authoritarian shithole with a strongman leader who openly murders dissenters, personally controls all branches of government, controls the military and has people arrested just for holding up blank sheets of paper. He can pretend the country is not at war when it clearly is, and suffer no consequence, because nobody can replace him or even censure him without the country completely collapsing. When he eventually dies, the ensuing power vacuum will make the entire country a basket case. It's a dead country walking.<p>Do you want to make your country such a nightmare country, so you can <i>also</i> cheat like they do?
No, I want my country to have democratic rule of law on the inside (including when dealing with normal criminals of any kind, including murderers).<p>But when dealing with an outside state-level aggressor, I want my country to be be a cunning, hypocritical, powerful strongman.<p>The distinction under what mode a certain event should be treated should be pretty straightforward and can be determined using democratic means, e.g. a normal judge ruling "I rule this cable cutting incident to be an act of state-sponsored aggression against our democracy" (which would allow the alphabet agencies, special ops etc to "do their thing" with no repercussions whatsoever.)<p>for example:<p>1) a murder happens between a husband and wife, two normies, after lengthy, normal court proceedings the proof who did it is not 100% conclusive, accused person goes free<p>2) a murder of an anti-russian political dissident happens, a russian ex speznas officer is caught in relation to the event -> he "disappears" one day and the case is closed<p>I believe this is the only way to "win" this cold war.
Lock em up, sell thier property. Rinse and repeat.
Related, posted a day ago<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46445484">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46445484</a><p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46443925">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46443925</a>
Mine the Gulf of Finland, problem solved. This may create other problems but hey Finland is part of NATO now.
Assuming it is state-sponsored sabotage…why? Whats the outcome they want? Is it just turning up the heat in the region?
Scaring people, distraction, etc.<p>In the grand scheme, repairing the cables and supporting Ukraine will cost less and hurt Russia more than escalating tentions in the Baltic sea.
They want to test how quickly the cables get repaired and what vessels do the repairs etc.
Two other cable cuts/"damages" happened around the same dates. Two separate Arelion-owned cables between Sweden/Estonia and Finland/Estonia.<p><a href="https://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/a/JOow58/kabelbrott-mellan-sverige-och-estland" rel="nofollow">https://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/a/JOow58/kabelbrott-mella...</a> (Swedish)<p><i>[...] two of their submarine cables – one between Sweden and Estonia and one between Estonia and Finland – have been damaged. The first cable was damaged on December 30th and the second on December 31st.</i><p>(Arelion is AS1299/formerly known as Telia Carrier. The name change happened because it's now owned by a Swedish government-managed infrastructure-focused pension fund.)
There needs to be a blockade for these rogue ships. That's the only thing they'll understand, short of being sunk.
Just like Trump's tariff bs, I'm starting to think that for Putin's M.O. that we should be fighting fire with fire.<p>Why not send a couple ships to drag anchors across Russia's cables? "Oh we are but innocent fishermen" is still valid going the other way.<p>Then when Russia inevitably seizes and imprisons the crew, the international community can do the same for every Russian controlled ship with the bare minimum of suspicion.<p>Would be a pretty sucky mission though, so many risks of capture. But the Russian government does it because they don't care about their people and also the rest of the world is too toothless to do anything about it (until this occurrence at least, go Finland - but then they know Russia's tactics very well).<p>Russia has been doing a "stop hitting yourself, stop hitting yourself" to the world for too long, abusing the "nice" way we desperately try to see things, pretending even when it's obvious. Like they'll do something egregious and then when the West calls them out, suddenly their political mouthpieces are all "we can't believe that the West is making this shocking and provocative accusation which is of course completely false, EU are bullies!" and then the world responds by taking a step back, pretty much every single time.
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Yeah sure, we keep cutting our own telecoms cables multiple times per year, using Russian-operated ships as a front.<p>The Eagle S (I think it was?) case was brought to court here in Finland and they even admitted to dragging heir anchor but steadfastly maintained that it was due to their own incompetence (which the judge unfortunately believed.)<p>I suppose that was also a NATO ploy?
The US is blowing up Venezuelan boats, and according to Seymour Hersh, blew up Nord Stream. Why would a few cables be beyond US/NATO capabilities if it drums up popular support for US extra-judicial interdiction of other countries' maritime activity?
Do you understand that this has been going on for much longer than the US's Venezuelan murder spree, and longer than Trump has been president (this time around)?<p>Also, as I said, we have a crew of a Russian-operated ship on the record admitting to cutting a cable by dragging their anchor, and all the previous cases have also been traced to other Russian-operated ships (well, I think one was Chinese though) using AIS and radar data, and this has been done by OSINT folks in addition to the local authorities here around the Baltic. Are all of these people being controlled by NATO and the US?<p>Pro-Russian people like you assume that other countries will always just let the US or "NATO" do whatever they want and have absolutely zero autonomy at all, and you're absolute experts at ignoring everything that doesn't fit your insanely simplistic narrative that's predicated on the idea that Russia is just a perpetual victim and a spooky spooky NATO CIA USA cabal is actually doing everything bad that the Russians get up to.
Nowhere in this article does it say anything about Russians admitting to cutting the cable, let alone doing it on purpose with malicious intent, so you are just making things up now.<p>The list of US acts of terrorism goes beyond the Trump presidency; it's convenient for liberals to blame everything on Trump but the bombing of Nord Stream occurred under Biden; Obama was droning weddings while Hilary Clinton was setting fire to Libya (using NATO, the "defensive" alliance that strikes first!)<p>All the previous cases of cable cutting, alleged by Western news papers without any shred of evidence, is a good way of beating the war drums. The war propaganda and hysteria this time is more intense than the Iraq war, which I think you are too young to remember. It is unclear what material advantage Russia would get from cutting cables, but with hysteria, reason is not required.<p>"Pro-Russian people" like me .. well I'm pro-peace actually rather than pro-Russian and have seen that the Russians offered negotiations with the US and Europe multiple times that were rejected. Negotiations that might have averted bloodshed. It's interesting that a "non-binary" person like you (according to your Github) wants to view people in a binary category as pro/anti-Russian rather than perhaps having a different perspective.<p>As to the substance of your last point: I remember Europe actually arguing against the US during the 2003 invasion of Iraq and now seeing Europe being a bunch of kept poodles that would prefer to commit economic, moral and geopolitical suicide rather than stand up for themselves.
It sounds like the court will just throw it out again as not having jurisdiction over the case.
The court threw out the previous case since there was no proof of sabotage. I understood the court ruled that they have no jurisdiction over accident cases under international law.<p>As far as I understand, it is totally different case if they find any proof of intent.
I don't understand how we arrived at letting "random nation crew drags their anchor making the boat extremely slow and loud and breaks $100M+ critical infrastructure" get off scot free including their boat but it clearly can't continue to go on. If not a court then government must step in, nothing less is acceptable to any voting person.
Then countries should be able to bomb these ships and go unpunished as well.<p>That would pass the right message if courts keep refusing to make things right.
Sinking the ships and then denying knowing anything about it would probably be the best course of action. That's what Russians would do, if the roles were reversed.<p>Unfortunately too many Western leaders still think that it's possible to negotiate in good faith with Russians. In reality they respect only force, and see European rules based order and "fair play" as weakness. If Baltic states didn't belong to NATO and Finland didn't have such a big army, Russians would be already doing a lot worse things than cutting cables.<p>Over here in Finland, even during the "good" years between collapse of the Soviet Union and invasion of Crimea, Russian businessmen kept buying property that made absolutely no economic sense, but was located next to critical infrastructure. Better relations between West and Russia were largely an illusion, especially since Putin took over.
We should just silently turn up support for Ukraine, that's where it hurts. Everything else is a distraction.
"Sinking the ships and then denying knowing anything about it would probably be the best course of action. That's what Russians would do, if the roles were reversed."<p>You mean like NATO did off the coast of Spain a year ago?
They can. They don't want to yet. Europe always assumes too much good faith on the part of other countries.
It honestly starts to sound like they just botched the design and placement of these cables - placing them in shallow and exposed passages, with no proper defense against dragged anchors.
Real shades of "that cable shouldn't have been dressed like that, in a dark and narrow channel, clearly marked on navigation charts(to mitigate exactly this scenario, from good captains at least)" energy.
If only they had had you in the design team back then when the cables were put in place.<p>I'm sorry I have no snark-free way to respond to this.
Unfortunately the Baltic is pretty shallow and fairly featureless - the gulf of Finland - between Finland, Estonia, and Russia averages 38 metres deep
Yeah, why don't they lower the floor of the entire Baltic Sea??