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Follow @auonsson.bsky.social for cutting edge Russian Baltic cable vandalism. Their analysis of AIS trajectories and speeds correlated with cable positions offer great insight: https://bsky.app/profile/auonsson.bsky.social/post/3le754kjl...
Impressive work! I also checked the work about the Russian GPS jamming coming out of Kaliningrad and St. Petersburg: https://bsky.app/profile/auonsson.bsky.social/post/3lalrqyyt...
This truly shows how much of a threat Russia became.
The Russians could certainly say the same about the West.
If this is Russia, what are we going to do? It sounds like we (European governments, NATO etc). Need a much larger naval presence in the Baltic. But do we even posess the navy to do that between us?
Edit: I'm afraid it is time for much greater military expansion in Europe
The main issue is that Europeans are starting to become worried and confused about that stance, which we know will translate into anger - understandably so because Russia is threatening those countries' ways of living, completely unprovoked.
The whole detachment from Russians who resigned themselves from any responsibility for their government action doesn't help either, because the narrative that "Russians are just victims of the regime and can't do anything about it" is already fading away.
It might snap if Europeans don't start to see decisive actions to protect their sovereignty and ways of living.
Perhaps there needs to be a blockade in the Baltic.
> the narrative that "Russians are just victims of the regime and can't do anything about it" is already fading away.
It's not a narrative, something you want to present to others in order to convince them or something, it's a sad reality for many Russians.[0] It's difficult to understand for someone who hasn't lived in a totalitarian state which can do whatever they want with your life and the lives of your family without absolutely any onsequences, whether you're rich and powerful like Navalny or just a simple pianist like Pavel Kushnir. It's easy to say "do something" if it's not you that risk quite literally everything.
[0] Yes, not all, I know. The percentage debate, or the lack of verifiable numbers, is another issue.
”Perhaps there needs to be a blockade in the Baltic.”
Yes. Controlling Kattegat traffic should be feasible which should give policy makers a fair range of options.
Europe will be worried like always is. And nothing will happen. My last job was at large German military contractor. My personal opinion is that this whole industry is made to consume government’s money in most inefficient way instead of building something for government.
” And nothing will happen”
I myself would not call special forces boarding the ship ’nothing’. Let’s see what happens next.
This doesn't read like the English I would expect from someone with German as their mother tongue.
Maybe they can propose a subcommittee to discuss the possibility of negotiating a treaty between member states that will enable a proposition to vote on a measure to discuss possible actions. But I’m not hopeful.
Finnish special forces boarded the ship. The ”hold my beer” moment in dealing with Russia using a language they understand and listen to.
One possibility is that the West is already doing something (Russia pipeline, Russians boats recently "sinking", etc...) and the warfare is already in motion.
The two recently sunken tankers sunk because of bad weather and russian negligence and lack of any common sense on safety - they were super old (built in 60s) river tankers, which are narrow but long. So to make them "sea worthy" they need to be shortened so a section in the middle is cut away and two halves are rewelded back [1]. These tankers were never designed for the high seas at all especially during stormy conditions. They had brocken on exactly that weld spilling thousands of tonnes of oil and mazout.
Handling of this ecological trajedy by russian government is nonexistent - while having resources to handle it, there is no will at all in doing that, no care neither about sea life nor about their own people.
1. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/15/two-russian-ta...
This is simply sabotage using disposable ships and sacrificeable seamen. The defense against that is not naval presence. In large we already have all the military equipment needed in forms of radar, underwater surveillance, satellites, and detection system in cables. Combined they will say exactly when the sabotage occurred, where and by which ship.
The problem is that of diplomacy. A major cause of the sabotage is to generate political support within Russia. When a ship is being arrested they will generate support around how evil west countries are boarding and stealing Russian ship and arresting innocent Russian citizens.
In term of countering this, the west has a problem of presenting evidence to the public since most of the surveillance is of military nature and thus secret. The historical/current method is to do it discreetly and simply send military ship to the offender and give a stern look that says that we know what you did. Then you send in the diplomats. We might see an escalation now since two ships has gotten boarded in very recent time.
The important evidence is fully public. It’s the funky see-saw the ship did over the cable. Plus missing an anchor afaik.
Russian public is not party to this discussion. They have no influence. All messaging - things said and unsaid - is towards Kremlin.
Boarding ships part of the Russian shadow fleet is a very direct message.
The crew is ”disposable”. But this particular ship carries 60M worth of fuel.
The answer is: nothing. Russian drones and cruise missiles fall on Nato soil already and enter its airspace on a regular basis, though so far unintentionally.
E.g.:
1. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/romania-detects-another...
2. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/polish-army-says-object...
3. https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/russian-drone-debris-found-in-r...
Ignoring plausibly accidental transgressions is preferable to war. Article 5 only gets triggered if NATO members want it to be, and even then the nature of their response is left to the member nations to decide for themselves. NATO isn't some sort of automatic deadhand system meant to start WW3 over an accident like in Doctor Strangelove.
Incidentally, Russia is behaving in roughly the same way; they talk a lot of shit about, for instance, western weapons being used against targets in Russian territory, but then when that happens anyway they issue more threats instead of starting WW3 in earnest like they threatened before. They don't really want that war either; if they did they're able to start it anytime they want, but they've got kids too.
You've got to look at it in the context of the war in Ukraine where the West has supplied something like $200bn in aid, about half of it military leading to approx 600k dead/wounded Russians. I guess that will go on.
”what are we going to do?”
The response to this event would probably be a good template for a standard policy each time infrastructure is damaged.
Special forces boarded the suspect ship and now it’s held.
What happens next is interesting.
> If this is Russia, what are we going to do?
We have pretty much 10 years of experience to go by here: nothing. At least Europe won't. If anything the most likely outcome is for everybody to hope that Trump somehow ends this conflict and within 10 years everything goes back to where it was, and we're buddy-buddy with our dictatorship neighbors again.
It wouldn't go back to where it was. Russia is like a very large iceberg detaching itself from the civilization. The only issue is where the break-line is going to be.
>At least Europe won't
There are different parts of Europe. While for example Germany is relatively safe and relaxed, Poland is buying, on its own money, 1000 tanks form South Korea (among the best ones), jets, including F-35, etc. as it wants to stay on the civilization side of the break-line.
Continuing to starve them as a nation using sanctions is not nothing.
> If this is Russia, what are we going to do?
The best option would probably be to travel back in time and not help blow up a Russian natural gas pipeline. [1]
It was a great way to set the precedent that wrecking other countries' undersea infrastructure is a free-for-all.
It's a bit weird how economic terrorism is fine, but only when we are the ones doing it.
----
[1] We could also skip out on peddling the rather embarrassing[2] conspiracy that somehow Russia decided to blow up its own pipeline.
[2] Embarrassing in the sense that so many otherwise intelligent people legitimately believed (and many of them still believe) that farce.
> The best option would probably be to travel back in time
And finish them off in 1945
As if threats from Russia and its partners (China, Iran and North Korea) weren't bad enough, Team Trump threaten Greenland and Canada these days. Divisions within NATO is the last thing its members need at the moment.
There is more truth than I previously thought in the phrase “Europeans are vegetarians in a world of carnivores.”
Russia has become nothing more than an terrorist state. Amazing how putin reduced russia in just a few years to a cartoonish villian like state.
I'm just curious, how is this different from sanctions? Cutting the cable hurts the economy, but nobody's killed or wounded, exactly the same way as sanctions are supposed to work. The EU is at an economic war with Russia, this is how it plays out
A few years? It has been escalating to this state for decades
From the other thread [0], there's some additional context: that the Baltic statics are planning to decouple their power grid from Russia's six weeks from now (Feb. 7).
From the press briefing: the ship Eagle S was stopped and found to be dragging its anchor.
Or rather the chain; when the chain was raised there anchor was missing.
Coast Guard and Police are on board.
Related:
NATO's Emergency Plan for an Orbital Backup Internet
For such a concentration of cables, you would think that governments would force a choke point for boats to pass through which they can monitor and oversee, then board anyone who ignores the requirement.
Then again, if it’s in international waters, that might not be enforceable.
The distance from Helsinki to Tallinn is just above 80 km and there is only a narrow sliver of international waters in between the territorial waters. It is quite well monitored by surface and underwater surveillance.
In this particular case there is no need for a choke point, it already is one.
The ship suspected for this sabotage was promptly escorted to Finnish territorial waters and is guarded by coast guard vessels and helicopters.
This time the ship in question is under Cook Island / New Zealand flag, and they are more likely to cooperate than the previous instances where vessels under Hong Kong and Chinese flags. Apprehending a vessel on international waters requires the nation whose flag it's under to approve.
Too many "accidents" lately. Trying hard not to be a conspiracy theorist since cables were being cut prior Ukrainian war but we've been seeing cables being cut off and ships being sunk more frequently than usual (or maybe now they are just being reported more). Will we ever know?
Unlike previously cut cables, which were mostly communication fiber cables, this particular one is a power cable and during the cut it was delivering 650MW at 450kV [1] so almost 1450A of current. If it was cut by accident by an anchor I could imagine achor being damaged due to underwater plasma in the arc. In general this cable should also be of quite some diameter. It should be made of thick copper wires (delivering 1450A over 145km) and plenty of dielectric isolation (to separate high voltage of 450kV), the ship would be slowed down or turned if it was accidentally draging this cable behind.
Edit: P.S. Googling for some more details I found some pictures [2] from the installation of Estlink 2 and it doesn’t look that thick, but still it is solid metal with rigid plastic insulations.
1. https://www.4coffshore.com/news/vital-eastlink-2-energy-link...
2. https://group.merko.ee/en/project/installation-of-estlink-2-...
According to an interview with people from the company that owned this particular cable (from Swedish media SVT) these things happen by accident sometimes, they said a couple of times per decade. They themselves did not think this was an accident.
> (or maybe now they are just being reported more). Will we ever know?
If you don't have statistics on this then there is no reason reason to assume that there is anything unusual going on (although, obviously, in wartime we probably should check vs. the base rate). Cables fail all the time and the reporting is fairly muted. It is quite hard to break into international news even with a major multi-faceted debacle like the Basslink cable failure back in '16 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Tasmanian_energy_crisis.
My completely unfounded pet conspiracy theory is that China or Russia gained control of the company that owns the fibre repair ship.
Cut fibres one at a time, and the victim will pay you to insert a listening device into their fibre.
If you simply cut the fibre with a submarine, they might get suspicious.
If you’re repairing an “accidental” cut everyone expects the outage. They’ll investigate the cut, not the repair.
Not an accident. A Chinese vessel did this.
At this point it seems pretty likely that several of these cable cuts are intentional. Sometimes it's ok to entertain conspiracy theories, a significant number of theorized incidents do turn out to be actual conspiracies.
It's been confirmed for months already. We even know which ship damaged the previous ones (and how they lowered the anchor just before the cables and rised it after damaging the cables).
It's not a conspiracy theory when you have evidence and mainstream consensus.
I wonder who would do something like that.
Likely CIA, as it always has been.