Yes, the right of passage through the strait would still clearly remain. This is already the case with Denmark and Sweden as these ships need to cross Öresund or Great Belt strait to reach the Atlantic.

However, this act would, in my understanding, give much more power to Finland and Estonia to detain these ships, and charge the crew for the crimes they have committed. Right now there seems to be a loophole in the legislation that Russia is actively exploiting for hybrid warfare purposes. If the strait rules would give Russia more ways to cause harm, some other way of dissuading Russia from making these acts should be done.

In general though, it feels stupid that we have to play by these rules, when the enemy makes a mockery of them and actively tries to exploit them to cause as much harm as possible. But that's the reality when bordering Russia.

> ships have the almost-universally recognized right to cross territorial waters (innocent passage).

I’m far from a maritime law expert, but destroying cables doesn’t sound like innocent passage.

Innocent passage ≠ acts of negligence or sabotage. This sets an important precedent, that ships engaging in acts of sabotage could be be boarded, put under custody and their crews detained.

For one it would stop sanctioned ships dead cold. As it is russian lawyers are playing EU like a fiddle with nonsense arguments https://www.dailyfinland.fi/europe/46719/Sanctioned-Russian-...

"The Federal Fiscal Court (BFH) said there was "reasonable doubt as to the legality of the confiscation measures," as it was unclear whether the ship had had authorization to enter and leave the EU despite the sanctions, due to an exemption applicable in emergencies."

No, he's saying that the area is international waters because Finland and Estonia agreed it was not either's territorial waters. It doesn't have to be international waters.

Pretty sure they are saying "more vulnerable to" not "guilty".

Hyper power that can't overwhelm a country that was supposed to fold in 48h? Give me a break.

While your sentiment may be correct in 2010s it certainly was not when these things were being decided in early 90s. USSR and Russia which de facto ruled it was seen as a failed state that needs "western help" and on a path to democracy. While we (here in Poland) we're quite skeptical, having the Russian WW2 occupying force leave in 1991 (yes, we didn't get freedom after WW2 until 1991). There was still a lot of hope Russia will follow in the footsteps of other central/eastern European countries like Poland/Czech/The Baltics if only we help them. So yes, there was huge resentment, but also a huge benefit of hope and benevolence too.

Was some of this calculated? Sure. No doubt someone sat in Talin and Helsinki and thought: if we treat them like post WW1 Germany it will be easier for the extremists to take power. So let's not pour sand in their fuel tank as they are desperately trying to restart the engine of their economy.

I don't even think it was a mistake at the time. It was a decent way to behave. But the moment the tide has started turning in Russia towards autocracy the screw should've been tightened. No oil and gas should fund Russian army after at least their attack on Georgia. If not before when the atrocities of the Chechen war became known.

Unfortunately corrupt politicians (that are still in power in Europe and even in my country) have continued signing deals and making money by financing what was clearly a huge enemy in the making.

Russia wasn't an eny in 1993, but it certainly was one in 2008 when it invaded Goergia. If only we acted properly in early 2000s all of this could've been prevented.

You can't even write her name correctly

Hyper-power, seriously? Russia is not even a super power, it only has some nuclear weapons, that’s all. Just like India, Pakistan, France, Israel, etc. In all likelihood most Russia’s nuclear weapons aren’t even operable anymore.

A thousand years almost. As a Pole I have no faith in Russia ever becoming anything other than a savage hostile wart on this planet. It's not just their leadership. It's the nation. More accurately their culture. Their malice is a result of a rare combination of ineptitude and megalomania all in one package.

Because the ruling gang has plenty of prosperity in their lives and "us vs the rest of the world" is the only way they know to keep the other 140+ million content with the few scraps they get. The more violent attitude they keep up against the rest of the world the less violent oppression they need at home to stay in power.

Nations make their own Logic. The US has to control or befriend the oil producing countries to maintain the petrodollar (which really maintains the dollar, which is the lynchpin of the global economy). This leads to “wars for oil” where the US doesn’t take any oil (it just needs the country to return to the dollar market - so price their oil in dollars).

Russia is a continental state so it requires its Neighbors to be weak so they cant threaten Russia. As much as it tries to escape this logic, it can’t. Russia’s core interest is to dominate and subjugate its near abroad. It has to. It’s the only way for it to become a global power.

Because then they’d have to recognise their failures. It’s like an alcoholic that keeps drinking in order to keep pushing back the reckoning of reality.

The error most people make on this front is thinking that Russia is just another country with regular country goals like any other. Grow the economy, make lives better for its people over the long term, that kind of thing. But this is not the case. Russia has been run by thugs for centuries in, centuries out, and they want thug things. Make the head thugs richer and fatter while everyone else suffers, both at home and abroad.

For individuals, a person might ask "Why can't Rodney just behave himself" without accepting that Rodney is violently anti-social and likes to throw liquidy turds at everyone. And for species, a person might ask "Why can't spider monkeys just behave themselves" without accepting that spider monkeys are dumb animals and that's what they do.

But if I point out that this same thing applies to the Russians as a whole, then suddenly I'm racist.

Do you really believe the EU would have accepted a country with easily 1/3 of the population of everyone else combined (so, a third of the seats at the "European Parliament") and a huge territory requiring investment? Or that they would have risked a Russian immigration crisis? Put themselves on China's doorstep, voluntarily? With all due respect, it's extremely naïve.

A “normal country” like the UK or Hungary or Switzerland?

Really though it’s because Russia mostly has nothing going for its millions of people except petrochemical exports.

It's way longer than hundred years.

It started to expand to the east in 16th century, which was and is still cruel to indigenous people of Siberia (e..g highest level of current war participation per capita).

South/Caucasus expansion was brutal and was displayed in Russian literature.

European states suffered from Russia for centuries as well.

Is one reason that Russia is an empire, created as the same time as the British and French empires, ruling over countries with their own long histories and separate cultures that would break apart without an autocratic government?

Look at the map. It's huge. In order to maintain its territorial integrity it has to act like a super power, or it has no reason to exist in its current form.

Because that wouldn't benefit Putin personally as much as the status quo? And he's the decision maker. Dictators routinely make decisions where they hurt their country to keep a much bigger slice of the pie for themselves...

A nation state's values should align with EU for them to be part of the group. I don't think Russia would ever choose to join the union considering that even UK(which is culturally closer to Europe) left it.

They did want to join the EU in the 90’s. They’ve always been rebuffed.

Russia would first have to be a "normal country". It would need an educated populace and a non-extractive (manufacturing or services) economy. It suffers from both a resource curse and Dutch disease. It is difficult to form a middle class that's independent of state institutions and employment. It has poor demographics and brain drain. It has no independent elites (academics, journalists, judges, business people), so the only restorative force in the society is brutal punishment for non-alignment with a cult of personal power.

Even if Putin wanted to join the E.U., the economy, social structures and institutions, and uneducated voting populace wouldn't allow it to be stable enough to join.

Russia at this point can't even be a successful authoritarian state like China. It's hard to say that it will never be a democracy, but those with a memory of the 1990's find that idea traumatic. Looking far forward in time, eventually global oil independence and demographic decline may force economic reform.

When I think about this, I often come back to thinking that the societies that underwent some conflict or difficult times, absolutely cannot have a member of an older generation in charge, because the only thing they do is to continue that conflict, completely manufacturing it again if needed, just to get their "revenge". Current Russian attempt at genociding Ukrainians is all the more tragic in that the generations, that remember the previous hostilities, were almost all gone by now. Alas, that corner of the world is again poisoned for several generations ahead.

The majority of Russian population genuinely believes that if the country "becomes weaker", some evil Western soldiers would come and either (belief A) physically exterminate every last of them or (belief B) enslave for eternity.

From that lens, loosing a few millions in a "pre-emptive strike" to save the bulk of population looks reasonable. Don't ask me how they ended up with this picture of reality.

Russia did inquire about joining NATO multiple times, as far back as the 50s as the USSR, in the 90s after USSR collapsed, and then again by Putin in the 2000s. It was rebuffed each time.

Joining the EU would be somewhat nonsensical as they would gain very little from it and cede substantial sovereignty in exchange. It's the same reason places like Norway have no interest in joining the EU.

>has the goal to join the EU

Not joining, of course, but Russia did, both the people and Putin. The West had different plans, as we learned.

'From Lisbon to Vladivostok': Putin Envisions a Russia-EU Free Trade Zone - SPIEGEL ONLINE, 2010 [0]

"We propose the creation of a harmonious economic community stretching from Lisbon to Vladivostok," Putin writes. "In the future, we could even consider a free trade zone or even more advanced forms of economic integration. The result would be a unified continental market with a capacity worth trillions of euros." [0]

[0] http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/from-lisbon-to-vl...

the fun part is that they don't even have to join the EU - perfectly positioned and enriched by natural resources to become a northern version of a Dubai

Because they had their own union called the USSR, which collapsed due to military spending, oil price drops and centralized inneficiency. This was before Putin's mafia took over.

Maybe this could offer more insight:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/27/vladim...

The short, uncouth but Occam’s Razor answer is because Putin has a micropenis and/or his parents were incredibly abusive towards him.

I think the reason Russia today is relentless anti-West is rooted the post-Soviet era in many ways characterized by (the alcoholic) Boris Yeltsin. Wikipedia gives the summary: "Yeltsin oversaw the transition of Russia's command economy into a capitalist market economy by implementing economic shock therapy, market exchange rate of the ruble, nationwide privatization, and lifting of price controls. Economic downturn, volatility, and inflation ensued. Amid the economic shift, a small number of oligarchs obtained most of the national property and wealth, while international monopolies dominated the market." and I'd add millions of people died (not an exageration).

The Putin regime began with Putin using military force to arrest any disloyal oligarchs while formulating his anti-Western ideology. But sequence of event explains why most Russians today have zero faith/interest in joining the Western World.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Yeltsin

There’s a Russian joke that Russia’s mission in the world is to show other countries how not to be.

Or if we get more serious: it's mix of imperial ambitions, feeling of been humiliated by west and desire of revenge, (cultural level) aggression, arrogance, ignorance and been sure that Russia is a special country with special pathway and superior culture and one of world superpowers (that been ignored and this is not "fair")

A couple of days after russia started war, on it's official news agency site was auto published article that was supposed to be victory lap (after all it was supposed to be 3 day special operation). It was promptly removed but not before it was archived. You can read decent translation here and it will show you some glimpses of what I wrote above https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/t2vz4v/ria_news_ac...

For reference: I was born back in USSR and lived there till my early teen years. Been closely following russian media, discussion platforms, etc ever since.

btw the unification of Europe was only made possible by the unification of Germany, which took place thanks to Russia's benevolent will.

Why would we want to join the EU?

It's a government comprised of people that weren't elected that destroys countries it supposed to govern by forcing non-rational choices that people hate but too afraid to openly criticize.

The level of life in EU is declining, while rising in Russia.

What EU can offer us? Nothing.

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.

That many "accidents" with anchors kinda makes me doubt the training of the crews.

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.

It was ultimately caused by Russia either way.

I never understand how people bought the propaganda on this. Why would anybody think Russia would blow up a pipeline that they spent years and billions of dollars building? It requires completely rejecting all logic. And then Western countries completely stonewalling calls for an independent international investigation at the UN - why would we do that?

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.

Yeah, but it's a bit far away for China. They prefer harassing their closer neighbors.

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.

Is there a real drone issue at all? https://www.dronewatch.eu/61-european-drone-sightings-analys...

> You turn up the heat

Agreed it's what they're doing but this looks more like "turning everyone against you". And you want your enemies to underestimate you (like Song or Kievan Rus' underestimated the Mongols) but the world doesn't underestimate Russia. Maybe it could have but WW2 and appeasement are still too fresh in memory.

[dead]

You realize that gas imports to Europe from Russia is down 80+% since pre invasion?

Russia is obviously having quite a hard time from sanctions caused by their actions.

Russia needs to work with the private sector to buy and crew the ships, and there is only so many ships they can buy and lose before it's not worth the money or hassle for either Russia or their private partners.

Why wouldn't it work? The oligarchs would certainly be a bit upset if they lost their yachts, mansions, sports teams, and everywhere else they keep their wealth away from Putin.

This is one of the best, succinct lists of motivations for hybrid warfare i've seen.

But i could suggest another potential benefit for russia: If russia already operates under the assumption that they are in a (cold) war with EU/NATO, and they don't care about the effects on the relationship with Finland. Then this may simply be a really low cost, high damage operation. That not only imposes the replacement cost of the cable, but also forces countries to invest in counter measures.

Given the state some of these ships are starting to be in they might just be worth scrap..

nah just sink them instead imo. they arent worth much.

Likely Russia. Their idea is to engage in war under pretense that it's not a 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.

Ukraine sinks their fleet in the Black Sea, and they understood it very well - they don't leave their ports.

Scale changes quality.

Your move is sinking a civil cargo ship in response to an attack on naval bases? Ok

Unfortunately, you lose.

The EU currently has about 450 Typhoons, 230 Rafales, and 140 Gripens. It also has about 160 F-35s; let's assume that the orange clown will not shut them down remotely. They also have some older Tornadoes, Mirages, and F-16 and F/A-18. All those aircraft are fighters, not strategic bombers. Their impact is limited; their range is about 700km.

The EU doesn't have a plan for how to fight without the US. Today's airstrikes should be carefully planned: planes, pilots, munitions, targets, engagement trajectories, and return trajectories. They will need time to figure out those plans. In their shoes, I would have started drafting those plans four years ago, but they still didn't.

The EU will not attack nuclear siloes, for fear of nuclear retaliation. Even if they try, most of those siloes are much farther than 700 km from Russia's borders. Those siloes were built by the USSR, and the USSR knew better.

The EU will use Storm Shadows/SCALPs/Tauruses. There aren't many of those in arsenals. Trying to use smart planning bombs with sub-100 km range will only make casualties 10-20 fold.

The EU strikes may reach Baltic and Black Sea naval bases, some energy infrastructure (port Primorsk being the first), and some airfields. They will not get the North Sea and Pacific bases, airfields near Murmansk, Saratov, and Irkutsk, which are used now to attack Ukraine.

Russia has integrated air defence, anв the shit is real, it is fight-proven, it works day and night for the last 3 years. Ask Ukrainians.

EU strikes will not be very effective and will not last. I estimate it in 1500-2000 sorties, and about half of those will reach the targets. The EU will lose about 100 planes and 50 pilots. Russia will receive a blow, but will not be devastated.

Russia will retaliate with new conventional MRBM strikes on the military and double-use airfields, and also factories of Gripen, Rafale, Airbus, etc. With those strikes, the EU will lose another 200 planes and most of its capacity to produce and repair them. Russia will also strike one large natural gas storage, one LPG from the Gulf comes into. Russian diversants will deliver several hits to the EU energy system, probably to large distribution hubs.

The EU stocks will drop to 70%-50% of their current value. The euro will fall by 20%-30% against global currencies. Electricity, gas, and heat prices will rise 2-3 times; gasoline and diesel prices will increase 1.5-2 times.

Your move.

Only works if you find someone to pay. I listened to a lengthy (German) podcast about international maritime law. To sum it up: you can’t do that much, because you won’t find the responsible person/company/state.

If these ships are independent operators being influenced by Russia, seizing the ship will be a significant consequence because the next time Russia will have a harder time convincing a crew to sabotage a cable.

That's fine. Let Russia escort ships that then break cables. It'll make it more obvious it's deliberate, and provide a reason for blockade and confrontation.

That is...disturbing.

> 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

That's why I think Putin won't use nukes but would just load chemical weapons on drones to attack European cities and blame it on some terrorist organization. Trump might even support him in claiming that Russia is innocent and NATO shouldn't be involved. They already tested it on Poland with empty drones and said Russia didn't send any drones.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Russian_drone_incursion_i...

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 ?

There's generally enough cables that cutting one doesn't completely shut down some area of web traffic, it just gets slower, so it's hard to say.

But yeah, if Russia keeps it up, just blockade the Baltic Sea for ships heading to Russian ports.

Economic sanctions won't prevent the FSB from paying off ship captains to do these things. Seizing ships and imprisoning captains might provide some amount of deterrent. Clearly only way economic sanctions will have a behavioral impact on Russia is if the effects are so bad it triggers revolution which has its own dangers. Direct consequences for the people in the sphere of these actions is more prudent.

There is ample precendent for impounding the assets of hostile nations. The Soviets did it to Germany in WW2, so they cannot really claim that they are opposed to that practice.

The only reason why this seizure of russian money in Belgium might be a bad idea is reciprocity. Russia would of course then try to seize European assets in Russia.

And regarding ships, prize law is still internationally accepted and in effect. Ukraine can offer prize letters to privateers or foreign navies, allowing the seizure of Russian ships. Or they can seize ships themselves. When those ships are then in a Ukrainian or allied harbor, a Ukrainian admirality court then assigns ownership of the vessel and all goods to the ones who brought it up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prize_(law)

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)

Russia has an immense capacity to endure suffering and sacrifice lives. It’s basically their secret weapon.

Many of the shadow fleet crew members aren't even Russians. Typically only the master and some officers are privy to the real mission. The other crew members are just random seamen hired from the usual poor countries so jailing them would be pointless.

That's exactly the appeasement mentality that lets Russia get away with everything.

"We don't want to start a war doncha know, so whenever Russia attacks us we'll just take it on the chin and not fight back too hard".

It appears the world has forgotten the lessons of the Sudetenland.

If Russia wasn't currently locked in a land war with Ukraine, that would largely be true (assuming that you were NATO and wanted to play by both the rules of being real democracies, and also respecting international law).

But since Russia IS locked in a land war with Ukraine, in a hypothetical world, you could retaliate by upping aid through Ukraine, OR (if you were being sneaky), laundering your actions through Ukraine.

The war has already started.

could you cut russias undersea cables in a tit for tat?

Fascist thugs aren't known for being ideologically consistent.

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.

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.

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...

What do you mean by eliminate?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This sounds very nice but it's unclear to me what it is that you're suggesting. Who said the place isn't the Baltic sea, the time is now, and the way is to escalate? In other words, what's a better place/time/way according to you?

Russians are blocked, Russia isn't.

Well, I am thinking more on the lines of only our allies.aka, in territories that we could investigate if we suspect a foreign influence campaign.

"not being able to fathom why"

I see what you did there!

Hire some Russians to do it. Cruel, but…

Oh, not at all. I don't have the balls or the skills for that.

Though perhaps we could test some autonomous trawling vessels, you know, big tech company stuff. But as we know, software can sometimes be difficult and have...bugs... ;3

It's still not confirmed who did that. Self sabotage by some European nation or even Russian is still up in the air.

Destroying that pipeline pushed Germany to act more against Russia (being officially unable to continue buying gas).

Historically anti russian states like Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Estonia or even NATO would have liked that.

Russia could have blown it up themselves to pin it on Ukraine to decrease support, but that doesn't seem to be the outcome.

Even germany could have blown it up to pivot their own politics.

It's a massive game of clue. It may become declassified in 20 years by whoever did it.

Would you say there are material differences between Nordstream and this?

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?

That's the classic warmonger argument: Call people who disagree 'chicken' and 'coward', like high school taunts.

There are many other solutions, and if you read the experts, that's what rational governments pursue. It's not as emotionally satisfying as starting a war, but it's far more satisfying than what comes after that start.

Warfare, as anyone who has experienced it, is a catastrophe win or lose or stalemate. The victors of WWII put extraordinary effort into preventing future wars, including outlawing it, creating the UN and EU, rebuilding their former enemy's economies, etc.

What do you know about warfare that they don't? Were they cowards? Naive or innocent about evil?

That seems to contradict itself? Cooler heads plan carefully; hotheads act out - seek immediate emotional satisfaction without thinking of the consequences.

> It doesn’t take two partners to start a war, it only takes one and Russia already decided.

Wars are not acts, but the conseuqences of long chains - large graphs - of decisions often lasting decades or more. Wars come from situations where there is no other choice.

The main goal of international relations policy is to create optimal scenarios, to not get caught in a situation where you have bad options or no options. Russia's 'grey zone' actions, including of course online propaganda campaigns (seriously, why wouldn't they?), are trying to create the scenarios that suit Russia best. They are preparing the political ground, and warfare is fundamentally politics (the most widely accepted maxim of warfare - see Clausewitz).

For an example, people emotionally and aggressively advocating for warfare, like on this page, if widespread can set the political ground.

It takes two (or more) to get into that position. It's a game of chess - checkmate isn't the result of one move.

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.

They can. They don't want to yet. Europe always assumes too much good faith on the part of other countries.

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?