But they are definitely not acts of war against NATO, pinky promise
Don’t you hate it when you accidentally drag an object along the sea floor where known communication cables are laying?
God I just did it last week. Totally an accident I swear.
Promise not to do it again? Pinky swear? Okay! Carry on.
My guess is that the aim is not specifically Finland or Estonia, but to try to deter other countries backing Ukraine. Like, “if you send arms to Ukraine and let them be used against targets on Russian soil, or whatever it is that Russia is grouchy about at the moment, we will destroy European submarine infrastructure.” The idea being that hopefully the level stays below that of war and there will be no additional counter-escalation. And maybe by choosing to aim at Finland, which recently joined NATO, the idea is to send a message that they can cause some level of harm even with Finland in NATO.
Last time russians pissed off the swedes, it showed to the world that the entire soviet union does not want to lose a war to sweden as well.
Published 2025-01-10,
Llame 3.1 (a.i.) articles' translation :
"It is likely that the damage was caused by the Chinese ship ‘Yi Peng 3’. The ship, while towing an anchor, broke and damaged cables between Sweden and Lithuania, and Germany and Finland on November 17-18. Investigators are conducting an investigation and believe that the ship did this intentionally, as the captain was recruited by Russian intelligence. On December 25, one of the power cables between Estonia and Finland was cut, allegedly by the tanker ‘Eagle S’, which belongs to Russia’s shadow fleet.
According to C.-O. Bohlino, all these incidents may be related to the upcoming disconnection of the Baltic countries from the Belarusian and Russian power grid (BRELL) in February.
“What the Swedish media is reporting shows that we cannot believe in coincidence when it comes to what is happening in the Baltic Sea. We must seriously assess these sabotage cases or attempts to sabotage that infrastructure. And this shows that a quick NATO response is necessary to protect our consumers’ interests and our entire infrastructure, both the electricity market and price stability,” said Lithuanian Energy Vice-Minister Arnoldas Pikžirnis, commenting on the incident.
LRT RADIO correspondent in Sweden, Vaida Strazda, emphasizes that the country’s media is paying a lot of attention to these sabotage acts: “Naive statements that it might be a coincidence, and we shouldn’t pour oil into the fire, are a thing of the past. We need to look at the situation realistically, which is very serious.”
Referring to hybrid attacks, suspected sabotage in the Baltic Sea, and war through third countries, taking place in its territory, Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson stated on Sunday that his country is not at war, but also not living in peacetime.
“The Prime Minister also said that this is the first time Sweden is allocating resources to NATO forces and the first time NATO forces will monitor the Baltic Sea and the entire region due to serious hostile actions. He emphasized that Sweden has the longest coastline in the Baltic Sea compared to other countries, and therefore takes the greatest responsibility,” said V. Strazda.
The Russians should be nervous about pissing off the Swedes, because they’ve got very fucking excellent AIP subs. As in: they’re so good that they snuck through the screening force of a CSG during an exercise a while ago and snapped a bunch of pretty close-range photos through the periscope during an exercise, and the US Navy was so impressed that they responded by leasing the sub from the Swedes as a dedicated OpFor asset. I honestly don’t think there’s a navy better equipped than the Swedes to make the Baltic Sea absolutely untenable for the Ruskies.
