> There needs to be sufficient deterrent to actually stop this from happening
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.
That's not extreme. They destroyed a piece of expensive critical infrastructure. Prison and seizure should be the bare minimum. I just mean it's not enough to prevent it in the future.
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]
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.
I don’t believe the leadership sees Russia as an existential threat in Brussels. Baltics and Poland see it differently.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 more likely in the future.
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.
Yep, if Russia wants to expand its conflict against Europe, Narva in Estonia is most likely place for it. Over 90% of its population is ethnic Russian, and it's located right next to the Russian border. It's the perfect place to send some armed "separatists" to see how NATO responds.
My bet is that it'll happen sometime between 2029-2035, after UK, France and Germany have had their general elections, where populist parties with more pro-Russian stances are likely to gain power.
Narva is a bad spot, from there it would be a long trek South. Doing it just North of the Polish town of Suwalki would allow a pincer movement that cuts off 3 EU countries in one go from a land bridge. That's also why it is right now one of the heaviest militarized zones in Europe.
> Yep, if Russia wants to expand its conflict against Europe, Narva in Estonia is most likely place for it. Over 90% of its population is ethnic Russian, and it's located right next to the Russian border. It's the perfect place to send some armed "separatists" to see how NATO responds.
Fortunately while close, the border runs along a fairly wide river with just a single bridge across, so logistically somewhat complicated to supply with heavy equipment from the Russian side. At least covertly.
But definitely a scenario that needs to be considered.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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
[...] 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.
(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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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."
You mean like NATO did off the coast of Spain a year ago?
I didn't remember that case, very interesting. But yes, silently torpedoing a Russian ship transporting military technology to another hostile rogue state is exactly what NATO should be doing.
Did I miss NATO declaring war on Russia and N. Korea? Or are we OK with the Chinese silently torpedoing the next batch of military equipment to Taiwan (a rouge province under intl law)?
Your argument, taken to its limit, is might makes right. Which, fine; but we're just not that strong anymore. Certainly not the EUpeeans.
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.
It's pretty obvious what's happening here.
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].
They won't be able to seize those without opening fire.
https://ioplus.nl/en/posts/how-seven-students-unmasked-russi...
> There needs to be sufficient deterrent to actually stop this from happening
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.
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's not extreme. They destroyed a piece of expensive critical infrastructure. Prison and seizure should be the bare minimum. I just mean it's not enough to prevent it in the future.
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]
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
Europe believes that Russia is doing all sorts of bad things and there's also the belief that Moscow plans to invade the EU .
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 ?
I don’t believe the leadership sees Russia as an existential threat in Brussels. Baltics and Poland see it differently.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Good luck with that, though.
> 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 ?
Depending on the days, the priority changes, between Russia or attacking the US first, maybe with the help from Canada :-))
You have to deal with one threat at a time, and it seems the fight against chlorinated chicken will take priority for now... :-)
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2025/12/17/trump-demands...
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.
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 more likely in the future.
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.
That or the Suwalki gap. They're both flashpoints.
Yep, if Russia wants to expand its conflict against Europe, Narva in Estonia is most likely place for it. Over 90% of its population is ethnic Russian, and it's located right next to the Russian border. It's the perfect place to send some armed "separatists" to see how NATO responds.
My bet is that it'll happen sometime between 2029-2035, after UK, France and Germany have had their general elections, where populist parties with more pro-Russian stances are likely to gain power.
Narva is a bad spot, from there it would be a long trek South. Doing it just North of the Polish town of Suwalki would allow a pincer movement that cuts off 3 EU countries in one go from a land bridge. That's also why it is right now one of the heaviest militarized zones in Europe.
Narva is much less interesting in that sense.
> Yep, if Russia wants to expand its conflict against Europe, Narva in Estonia is most likely place for it. Over 90% of its population is ethnic Russian, and it's located right next to the Russian border. It's the perfect place to send some armed "separatists" to see how NATO responds.
Fortunately while close, the border runs along a fairly wide river with just a single bridge across, so logistically somewhat complicated to supply with heavy equipment from the Russian side. At least covertly.
But definitely a scenario that needs to be considered.
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.
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.
Lock em up, sell thier property. Rinse and repeat.
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.
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.
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?
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?
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
>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
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?
Assuming it is state-sponsored sabotage…why? Whats the outcome they want? Is it just turning up the heat in the region?
Related, posted a day ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46445484
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46443925
Mine the Gulf of Finland, problem solved. This may create other problems but hey Finland is part of NATO now.
Two other cable cuts/"damages" happened around the same dates. Two separate Arelion-owned cables between Sweden/Estonia and Finland/Estonia.
https://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/a/JOow58/kabelbrott-mella... (Swedish)
[...] 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.
(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 seize the ships and auction them off. Damaging one cable isn't gonna be worth losing a whole ship, generally speaking.
Given the state some of these ships are starting to be in they might just be worth scrap..
Often the cost to scrap a ship exceedes the value of the raw materials. Depends the ship as well but things like asbestos can drive costs up
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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."
You mean like NATO did off the coast of Spain a year ago?
I didn't remember that case, very interesting. But yes, silently torpedoing a Russian ship transporting military technology to another hostile rogue state is exactly what NATO should be doing.
Did I miss NATO declaring war on Russia and N. Korea? Or are we OK with the Chinese silently torpedoing the next batch of military equipment to Taiwan (a rouge province under intl law)?
Your argument, taken to its limit, is might makes right. Which, fine; but we're just not that strong anymore. Certainly not the EUpeeans.
What's the point of declaring war in a war?
Russia invaded Ukraine just fine without ever declaring war.
Link?
https://www.laverdad.es/murcia/cartagena/barco-ruso-hundido-...
They can. They don't want to yet. Europe always assumes too much good faith on the part of other countries.
The countries that the ships are registered in are not going to do anything if they are seized and scrapped.
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.
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??
Obviously, you're joking.
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?
I think they could just drag a suitable hook behind a ship to carve out decent trench.
Geez, how are we so much better at this than the actual engineers?