Finland Detains Ship and Its Crew After Critical Undersea Cable Damaged
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As Finland detains a ship and its crew over damage to a critical undersea cable, commenters are weighing in on the jurisdictional limbo that often shields perpetrators from accountability. Some are cynical that the court will again dismiss the case, while others provocatively suggest that drastic measures, like sinking the ships, might be the only way to send a strong message. The discussion veers into geopolitics, with some pointing to Russia's playbook as a cautionary tale and others advocating for quietly bolstering support for Ukraine as a more effective response. Amidst the debate, a consensus emerges that the current framework is inadequate for addressing such incidents, with multiple undersea cable damages in the Baltic region highlighting the need for a more robust national security response.
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That would pass the right message if courts keep refusing to make things right.
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.
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.
You mean like NATO did off the coast of Spain a year ago?
Your argument, taken to its limit, is might makes right. Which, fine; but we're just not that strong anymore. Certainly not the EUpeeans.
Russia invaded Ukraine just fine without ever declaring war.
However, I also couldn't care less if the Russians Oreshniks Liverpool or Marseille.
Meanwhile, we'll be protecting your loved ones.
And please don't flatter yourself. Europe couldn't field an army of a 100 000 riflemen if you put all of the EU countries together.
Russia declares ware with the west every other Monday.
North Korea is at war with South Korea which is an allied country and partner.
> Or are we OK with the Chinese silently torpedoing the next batch of military equipment to Taiwan (a rouge province under intl law)?
You mean like they already destroy boats of nearby countries?
China doesn't respect International Law anyway and Taiwanese people have the right to choose their independence.
A famous example which gave rise to similar hypotheses:
https://news.err.ee/1142424/foreign-ministry-adviser-ms-esto...
Look, (all) governments play the lie and deceit game; but I dont have to go along it because of some misplaced sense jingo-patriotism.
It's pretty clear that Russia torpedoes their own boat to hide their transfer of nuclear to an embargoed country, North Korea.
The same North Korea that sent people to die for Russia in Ukraine.
A nice little quid-pro-quo relationship.
As far as I understand, it is totally different case if they find any proof of intent.
It's NOT like driving with the handbrake on, it's more like shoving your car forcibly in reverse at full speed. You WILL notice it.
But how hard could it be to get a Cat 395 excavator in there? Dig a little trench and bury it.
Sounds like a weekend project to me. Has someone told the telecoms this?
Geez, how are we so much better at this than the actual engineers?
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQVzU_YQ3IQ&t=50s [2]
[2] There are far better videos that show this, but I'm on mobile and not going to find it right now.
I'm sorry I have no snark-free way to respond to this.
Also, how do you identify the ships? Do you blockade all maritime traffic in the Baltic Sea? All too and from Russia? The first would destroy our own economy, the second is a certain act of war.
What I mean is that they will only understand counter measures that you'd take in a war, like blockade or sink them for instance.
I.e. they are already engaging in the acts of war, so it's late to worry about that, the question is what is anyone doing about it.
Likely that is what they want. Do you think Russian planners are ignorant, and can't foresee that? This sort of game is long played in international relations.
It's chess: You try to cause your opponent to put themselves in a bad position. Provocations are manipulation - it's obvious what Russia is trying to provoke.
More likely they think countries around Baltic Sea are too scared to offer strong resistance, so they can engage in such activity with impunity. And they won't limit it to Baltic Sea either, they'll do it anywhere they feel they can.
It's a mobster mentality. As I said, the only language they understand is response with force, nothing else.
The most obvious reason is simply mobster style intimidation. I.e. "you are helping Ukraine? We'll get back at you by damaging cables and what not".
I'd say the proper response to such incidents is to increase military help for Ukraine and blockade / confiscate / sink Russian navy wherever they this do stuff. Ships which engage in that should be treated as hostile military vessels.
That is not an option. They might as well bomb St. Petersburg - it's a seige, an act of war.
> the only language they understand is response with force, nothing else
I see no evidence of that.
Putin is in fact a political operator at a high level, and understands politics exceptionally well. Warfare is merely politics by other means, one tool in the toolchest (for people like him).
> I see no evidence of that.
Their Black Sea fleet hides in their ports, because they know the moment they'll try to roam, Ukraine will sink them. What other evidence do you need?
Warfare is not the only option; there are many tools in the toolchest.
What is the source of all this warmongering language today, from so many commenters, using the same transparently erroneous ideas? Obviously it's false to suggest that the only way to influence events in international relations is warfare. What do you think countries are doing during the 99% of the time they are at peace? It can't be coincidence that everyone is coming up with same thing - what is the source of it?
Is someone runnig a warmongering campaign on social media? I suppose, given history, it's very predictable. It's been done to publics via older forms of media. We know some powerful people who actively advocate for it.
If one side is already engaged in warfare, then yes, it's the only option. But of course Putin wants everyone to immediately capitulate and of course he would say that fighting back shouldn't be an option. Who besides his Axis Sallies would repeat such idea though? But history always puts things in their place and Putin will end up like his role model from WW II too.
It doesn't matter if Putin uses warfare Ukraine, etc. We make our own choices in our own interests.
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"?
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?
It clearly worked very poorly in the case of the recent "Russian drone interference" panic, many of which turned out to not even be drones, never mind Russian ones. https://www.dronewatch.eu/61-european-drone-sightings-analys...
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. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_South_Korean_martial_law_...
If you don't declare war, you don't get those emergency powers. You only get peacetime powers.
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 instigator of WW3, you'll stick to peacetime powers and peacetime courts with peacetime standards of evidence
Do you want to make your country such a nightmare country, so you can also cheat like they do?
But when dealing with an outside state-level aggressor, I want my country to be be a cunning, hypocritical, powerful strongman.
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.
Sadly, it seems a fiction.
You'd better start advocating for freedom and democracy rather than using cynicism. If you don't, who will? Democracy is you; nobody is going to fix what you destroy.
Cynicism is a tool for peacetime, a way of keeping things honest (maybe not the most effective way, but it has an effect). But when there is serious threat - when your platoon is facing the enemy - cynicism is a failure of duty to your team.
Also, am I on the hook because my wife's great-grandfather was russian?
The other thing that sprang to mind was the US interning their own citizens in camps. Would you be in favour of internment camps across Europe for all citizens with any Russian heritage, preemptively locking them up in case they might provide succor to The Enemy?
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.
You're standing in a forest, lighting a forest fire to kill the other guy. There is lots of history about this most fundamental error.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balticconnector#2023_damage_in...
Turns out it was the Ukrainians! I'm past even guessing at this point...
I also very much doubt it was the Ukrainians in by themselves - as blowing up heavily reinforced pipes 80m under the water is a rather extreme task, but at least they would have had a reasonable motive. Russia was fueling the German economy, and Ukraine would have had a viable concern about Germany prioritizing their own economy over Ukraine. OTOH it seems somewhat obvious at this point that Russia would not have threatened to turn off the gas, so it was a terrible miscalculation by whoever did it.
I agree with the first part of your comment, but it baffles me that people keep claiming "Sending some divers from a small yacht plant a bomb underwater" would beyond the capabilities of the Ukrainian special forces.
Remember the Ghost of Kiev?
What relations? Nordstream went boom after 2022 war started.
And let's not forget that Russia purposely inflated gas prices to put pressure on EU during 2021.
The response needs to be forceful: seize and auction off the ships. There needs to be sufficient deterrent to actually stop this from happening.
But yes, imprisoning the crew (especially the captain) is also a good idea.
Many international ships are crewed by what is essentially slave labor. Too many google links to share them all, but try this to start: https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/thats-slavery-seafarers-s...
Please elaborate. What's the reason for Russia? What does it gain from damaging undersea cables? Instead, think about what NATO/U.S./UK does actually gain from it (naval blockade of Russian and Chinese shipping lines).
EDIT looking at your post history its very clear you have no intention of discussing this in good faith.
What should NATO and the EU do to Russia, since Russia would like to break up NATO and the EU?
To answer your question quickly: Ukraine entering NATO constitutes an existential threat to Russia for the same reason as China building military infrastructure in Mexico, Cuba or Canada poses an existential threat to the U.S. (e.g. Cuban Missile Crisis).
Further reading: https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR3063.html
Funny you should mention that, Russian military infrastructure in Cuba wasn't an existential threat to USA. Russia did build military infrastructure in Cuba and the US let that happen. What they did not let happen was the forward positioning of nuclear missiles during the era that Fist Strikes were still being considered. Similarly the USA has removed nuclear weapons from Russia's periphery.
I think Chinese bases in Mexico would earn Mexico a good deal of stress, but not an invasion of conquest. Of course, Trump and Putin are busy changing international norms, and I can't speak to the potentially brutal world of the future. But the history (Cuban missile crisis) suggests that USA wouldn't engage in a self destructive invasion and conquest.
Is there any particular part of the report you think I should read? The glance I gave it looks like they suggested giving arms to Ukraine to stretch Russia in the civil war they were fomenting and supplying in Eastern Ukraine at the time.
Do you consider the Putin regime as equal to Russia? Because a lot of the threats in the document are to the authoritarian system, not to Russia itself.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Honestly, give any Russian or shadow vessel a bounty if they surrender. Turn Moscow’s fleet into a cheap source of intelligence and scrap.
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.
But we probably have promised not to blockade ships in some conventions. And little Denmark (or Sweden) do not benefit from setting a precedence that conventions can be broken.
Getting payback is easy though: support Ukraine.
Russia isn’t even pretending to follow international maritime law. China hasn’t for a decade. And now America is being creative with its interpretations.
The US follows the rules carefully when Russia encourages it to.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/31/us/politics/russia-oil-ta...
You haven't really thought this plan through.
Based on recent events, even people struggle to tell what is Russian and what isn’t.
These smart mines might solve that?
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/31/us/politics/russia-oil-ta...
There was a Planet Money episode touching on Maritime law:
https://www.npr.org/2025/10/17/nx-s1-5577076/shadow-fleet-ru...
It was about Russian tankers breaking the sanctions, but with a well put explanation of why we can't just stop these ships even with extreme confidence in their fraudulency.
To be clear, why we don’t want to. Freedom of navigation makes all of us tremendously richer, even if it permits such fuckery.
That said, if you’re an anti-trade politician, there is no incoherence to ignoring these rules.
The US can't afford to field the navy necessary to back this ams hasn't been able to for many decades
This is nonsense. The U.S. Navy de facto guarantees freedom of navigation today. Globally.
If we switched to a national system, the Navy wouldn’t need to literally escort U.S.-flagged ships. Its military would just need to enforce the threat that you get bombed if you fuck with America.
We’d save money switching to a big-stick model.
Panting a Russian flag on the side of a crappy tanker is enough to get the US to back off.
Russia can do what it likes with current US leadership.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/31/us/politics/russia-oil-ta...
Has the White House rolled over?
How is this working for the gulf of aden? Go to sleep grandpa, we can take it from here
Is the assertion the U.S. military cannot stop the Houthi attacks?
The administration’s position is this is Europe’s problem [1]. (That said, the simplest response would be to give the Saudis a weapons deal to secure the coasts.)
[1] https://www.axios.com/2025/03/26/vance-anti-europe-obsession
Meanwhile I'm all but certain that the proposal you are advocating for would require the US to engage in many more military actions to even attempt to ensure freedom of navigation for their own vessels. I.e. I'm pretty damn sure the costs would skyrocket - not decrease. The rest of the world has pride, and would force the US to go to war over the unequal rights to the oceans that you are suggesting the US could create.
Nations, like China, are catching up but largely because of two outsized factors:
- The US for some time has not been able to produce ships at home, at scale, and at cost. This is more of a slow burn because the fleet has been kept up to date for the most part. Eventually, new ships need to be built at home.
- Donald Trump has done damn near everything he can to install lackey's within the military, which reduces the military's top decision making acumen down to yes-men to a 79 year old geriatric patient.
Russia's fleet, on the other hand, is an aging joke. It is where we will be if we continue electing fascists.
The Associated Press has documented 59 Russian hybrid operations across Europe. A systematic campaign of intimidation, sabotage, and violence: https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-europe-hybrid-...
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.
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.
That behavior legitimizes aggression, emboldens Moscow, and directly undermines European security, and is making thinks really, really, sketchy right now.
Germany accuses Russia of air traffic control cyber-attack: [1] - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgrrnylzzyo
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 ?
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