Summary
Russia warned of retaliation if the EU seizes more of its “shadow fleet” oil tankers in the Baltic Sea, calling it an attack on Russian territory.
EU countries like Finland, Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia are exploring legal ways to detain these vessels, which Russia allegedly uses to evade sanctions and fund its war in Ukraine.
Moscow threatened countermeasures, including boarding Western ships.
Ukraine welcomed the initiative, arguing that disrupting Russia’s oil exports would weaken its war finances. The debate follows Finland’s December seizure of a Russian-linked vessel.
I mean, where are they proposing to board said European ships? If it’s within Russian territorial waters, sure, that’s their right. But those ships are also within their rights to not go into Russian territorial waters.
Is Russia just causing trouble in the North Sea to create a manufactured “casus belli” when nato responds? All of this shit like digging up cables just doesn’t seem to have any point to it and Putin definitely seems to want to wage a holy war.
I’m still trying to figure out the endgame of this cable-cutting.
Everything that results from it seems to be benefical for the west/EU/NATO and nothing of interest for russia.
Russians aren’t smart but they are cruel. The entire point is to frustrate and harass while playing innocent. “It’s not an official Russian ship. It’s merchant vessels making lots of independent mistakes.”
They aren’t smart and don’t like being outsmarted by moves like… checks notes stopping all Russian merchant vessels to stop random independent incidents.
It’s all a show and Russian needs to be stopped by any means necessary. They use politeness as a weapon, hiding behind decorum with weak lies. Fuck them and grind their economy back into dust. Let east Asia conquer them again and help Russia become useful once more.
I don’t think it goes much deeper than “it hurts them more than it hurts us”.
FUD
Possible but then they are making a really bad job doing it.
Yeah I’m not really that worried and I’m from a coastal city by the Baltic.
Ohnoo some internet sites were a bit slower for two hours in the middle of the night noooo…
That must have been soo frightening! :-)
Couldn’t some sort of anti-drag trap be set up where if it catches anyone doing anything, it pulls the ship under…or passively it just gets stuck? Then when they complain…well…you’re the one dragging your anchor along the sea floor like an idiot…
In theory, sure. But I believe that would fall under a booby trap, which is a war crime. I’m not an expert though. I think it’d be very dicy
There’s always the option of just releasing the anchor, so all that would happen is that they’d lose it. It would probably be too expensive to litter the sea floor with traps. Seizing the ships ‘while the investigation is ongoing’ is probably a better strategy.
Fuck the blyats.
Lash lash lol you’re going down like a russian tanker in medium wind
