So what's the solution ? Assign a surveillance UAV to every Russian ship parked "without a good reason" over a cable ? It would be expensive, but doable, and create a reserve of vehicles for wartime use.
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The other pipelines. Their shadow oil fleet. There are lots of options. But to my knowledge, only the British, French and Americans are capable of the long-range clandestine operations.
https://windward.ai/knowledge-base/illuminating-russias-shad...
Would be a shame if they started having engine troubles in the middle of the ocean.
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/09/06/politics/us-sees-increasi...
The real question is, should security and defense concerns be placed on hold? If our basic freedoms and rights are being attacked, how big of a deal would be a shadow fleet tanker catastrophe?
> Parliament calls for an EU crackdown on Russia’s ’shadow fleet’
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20241111IP...
unfortunately, "we" didnt have to pay a sacrifice to the economy for it, because germany paid it.
The US is too afraid of nukes, and won't escalate. The russians rightly predicted this.
Why did Putin take crimea under Obama's watch, parts of Ukraine under Biden's watch, but then not make any huge moves like those while his "asset" was in the white house?
If the CIA or US Navy don't have the technical means to blow up the Crimea bridge with plausible deniability they haven't been paying attention.
As long as we're all playing silly only-kinda-deniable games, that's an option on the table.
That we still have oligarchs and bratva members walking around on NATO soil in the open this far into things is insane.
Also, he needed a green light. Which was provided in the form of the chaotic Afghanistan pullout in 2021. Not that he was counting on it -- but once it went through, it seems very likely that tipped the scales in his mind in favor of deciding to actually go through with the full-scale invasion in 2022.
This is all Trump had to do.
He was able to leverage the media's reporting on him that he was reckless, dangerous and prone to rash behavior and they were convinced he was going to start WWIII with? Yeap, you guessed it, the Russians. Putin believed what the media were reporting because Trump himself had verbally warned him.
He didn't need forces and cash. He did what OP recommended, he threatened Putin with force and Putin complied and just waited out Trump. It was a gift that Biden was elected in 2020 and if you go through the news reports, literally months after Biden was elected, Russia started massing troops on the border and readying their troops to invade. Its a strange coincidence that they didn't invade in the four years Trump was in office. He leaves and less than a year later, Russia is preparing to invade? C'mon man.
Your timeline is completely wrong.
- Biden's inauguration took place on January 2021.
- The Russians were amassing troops by December of 2021 (less than a year after he took office).
- The Afghan pullout wasn't until the Summer of 2021
- The Russian officially invaded in February of 2022
The green light wasn't needing forces and cash built up, it was Trump leaving office. The Afghan pullout had no effect on when they were going to invade since they were already massing troops and air support to the border regions where they finally launched their invasion from. Its not like the Russians decided to invade during the Afghan disaster as you insinuated, the invasion plans were already established by then.
Again, the tipping point was Trump leaving office.
2. It's not exactly in the interests of NATO to have those ships start spilling tons of oil in the North Atlantic
The problem of that "shadow fleet" is precisely that those are old, uninsured vessels that cause environmental risks.
The gas sold by Russia to France, Germany, etc. is transported using normal vessels, AFAIK.
Since when did engine troubles cause an oil spill?
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-putin-no-way-ukraine-mu...
"No way." "Way."
https://www.dw.com/en/germany-to-hit-nato-budget-goal-for-1s...
> Exports of motor vehicles and motor vehicle parts to Kyrgyzstan grew particularly strongly in the first quarter, soaring more than 4,000% from a very small base to over 84 million euros... That came after a six-fold rise in German exports to Kyrgyzstan last year following Russia's February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
https://www.reuters.com/world/german-exports-russias-neighbo...
I know people in Kyrgyzstan, trust me they did not suddenly become industrialized when Russia invaded
Anecdotally, as a Russian, some of my craziest interactions with foreigners who support the thugs in Russian gov, blame US/NATO for Russian aggression and totally buy the propaganda were with Germans. (Not a proper data point, just venting frustration, Germany get your act together...)
But also the Russian MO has never been to do things where it's not obvious they did it: the spate of critics of the Russian government dying by falling out of windows isn't because they lack creativity in assassinating people.
Plenty of targets in the Gulf of Finland.
Plenty of targets in the Gulf of Finland.
http://www.hisutton.com/Yantar.html
http://www.hisutton.com/Belgorod-Class-Submarine.html
http://www.hisutton.com/Russian-Spy-Submarine-BS-64e.html
and so on
https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/12/11/afghanistan-papers-detai...
Imagine if every bad thing USA did... people want USA to "pay dearly"...
I can't help but suspect that russian influence and covert action behind the scenes, most of which might be decades in the making, is kicking into high gear.
You can't defeat them, the NATO strategy has failed.
I sympathize with the Russian opposition, but I think it is wrong to interfere in Russian domestic politics.
Apart from that, I have always been suspicious of the West's favorite oligarchs.
> has never been to do things where it's not obvious they did
They could still shot them or something like that, the window thing still grants them some plausible deniability. e.g. the ship that (unclear if intentionally) damaged the cables last year was Chinese.
So Denmark can start assuming every vessel (or at least more vessels) are in violation. Russia can take that to some international court if they so desire. Inspect every ship. Question the crews. Take plenty of time doing it. Perishable goods on board will perish before reaching St Petersburg and Kaliningrad. Tankers will be refused entry, limiting or delaying export income for Russia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JpwkeTBwgs
NOTE: I mostly don't like Trump. But the "Russiagate" angle is ridiculous.
Good times creates weak men.
Spot on.
When thug attacks, what do you do?
You literally just described a program of falsifying documents! If you're buying and operating a ship, then to have "no ties to Russia" while using Russian money, someone is showing up with forged paperwork or some off-the-books bribes to make that happen.
Drawing down those sorts of sums from a country's treasury isn't something you can actually just "do" - people have to take actions, funds transferred, meetings held and operations authorized.
You are describing a system of resources which likely does exist, but is by no means easy to use or acquire and would not be expended unnecessarily.
Yeah. Trump talks a lot. Like his best friend, Melon.
First off, whataboutism is a logical fallacy.
Second, Afghanistan is nothing if not a bunch of people who wanted to make the US "pay dearly", even if to their personal and national detriment.
Third, there's a way for the Russians to avoid consequences: stop attacking Western digital infrastructure.
> funds transferred, meetings held and operations authorized.
It's Russia... I doubt there would be a lot oversight. But they might just as well get the money from one of the "private" companies run by Putin's cronies with zero direct involvement by the Russian government.
Anyway, I still think that acquiring the ship itself is still a relatively trivial problem to solve.
Imagine how quickly ukriane would have collapsed if the US was not providing support, and the US was preventing European nations from providing support. And then imagine how well off Russia would be if there were no sanctions placed on it by America. All in all your point doesn't make sense. You don't get an asset sitting in the oval office and then not use them.
If it happens repeatedly, declare the passage of all Russian ships (or possibly starting with ships of the type involved in the incident, allowing other shipping and giving Russia a chance to stop abusing it) "prejudicial to the peace, good order or security of the coastal State" and deny passage through territorial waters. Extend the territorial waters between Finland and Estonia to the full 12 miles without the current corridor in between.
Russia understands and responds to strength better than to diplomacy and appeasement.
The ships involved aren't warships. They're ostensibly civilian vessels. Also other people mention that accidental fiber cuts happen all the time. Are we going to drone strike Russian civilian ships on the off chance is malicious?
>Russia understands and responds to strength better than to diplomacy and appeasement.
The best way to stop someone committing war crimes is... to commit war crimes ourselves?
The US can barely enforce its sanctions against Iran. Despite the sanctions, they can still move tens of billions of oil proceeds. What makes you think any country is going to be any more successful at preventing Russia from renting a rogue ship?
https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2024/10/17/i...
They didn't invade successfully in 2022, either. Meaning they were never able to invade successfully at any year before that. The whole war is a gigantic delusion for them, remember.
But as for evidence that they needed about 7-8 years to build their resources to a point where its regime thought they could invade successfully:
One of the pieces of evidence in favor of this view is the graph of the CBRF's (that's the Central Bank of Russia) holdings of foreign cash reserves, over the past 20 years. It shows oscillation or decline up until 2014, and then from 2014-2022, steady increases each year, resulting in a net increase from about $100b to $300b by 2022.
Military analyst say that Russia engaged in similar purchasing patterns internally (building up its reserves of shells and missile stocks, for example).
If they invaded in 2018, they wouldn't have had to deal with any of those things. That is, if Trump actually is a Russian agent. So why did they wait until the situation was much worse for them in order to invade?
That has hardly stopped people before.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Rainbow_Warrior
>The sinking was a cause of embarrassment to France and President François Mitterrand. They initially denied responsibility, but two French agents were captured by New Zealand Police and charged with arson, conspiracy to commit arson, willful damage, and murder.
There seems to be consensus that this was not an accident (politicians have stated as such), and treating it accordingly would show Russia "no, you can't just pretend it was an accident and expect us to do nothing".
On the off chance it actually is an accident at some point - that's the downside (for Russia) of having pretend-accidents too many times.
The alternative is ignoring it "because we can't be sure" until we get to ignore the "little green men" that totally aren't Russian when they come across the border...
There's unlikely to be anywhere near as much outcry if Russian trawlers lurking around undersea cables start getting holes in them.
I'll leave out whether this was intentional or because he saw peace in putin's eyes (as he himself claimed).
But yes, russia couldn't successfully invade in 2018.
Add to that a natural conservative tendency in the US to jump at isolationism whenever there's an easy excuse (the guy you like is doing the "bad thing" so you don't actually want to stop him, the war is literally somewhere else and doesn't exactly involve us)
So it's hard for people like me, who used to be pretty pacifist, to decide that yeah maybe violence is the right option sometimes?
Also, the entire time we are trying to shake off bullshit "Democrats are warhawks" nonsense from the party that did the desert bombing just because Bush wanted to defend his daddy's memory. The same people who call the Dems warhawks spent the 2000s screaming that "you're either with us or against us" and calling anti-war people pussies so I guess they don't have very good memories.
So for various reasons, some good, the US is extremely gunshy right now. Even those of us wholeheartedly in support of Ukraine, wishing we gave them a thousand Bradleys and tanks, feel uncomfortable with the idea of boots on the ground. Meanwhile Europe has forgotten what intervention is, and seems utterly unwilling to do anything, lest they have to get off their holier than thou pedestal.
Appeasement definitely doesn't work, but the middle east is full of examples of "just bomb them all" also not working very well. Everyone is very nervous. It sure seems like Russia won't stop their horseshit until someone makes them stop, but that's going to require a million dead.
This means that a good part of especially the general former East German population as well as the academic and cultural upper class are left-leaning (in USian terms: deep red communists), soviet/russia-supporting and antiamerican by default. This got even stronger the farther we got past the 1990s, because the view back on the communist times naturally lost the memories of the bad parts.
On top of what the GP listed, there was also the post-pandemic uncertainty, soaring inflation and increase in the support of far-right/isolationist politicians in Europe. The Russians probably expected a slow start from them and a quick takeover of Kyiv[0], which would likely mean game over for a big chunk (if not all) of Ukraine. To be fair, they almost succeeded: it came down to the single battle that saved Kyiv from a quick occupation[1].
Last (but not least), there was the Putin's isolation during the pandemic when he might have read too much of Russian fascism philosophers'[2]. To me, the open all-out invasion at that time seemed very much out of his style as he had always preferred covert probing and sabotage before that.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Antonov_Airport [1]https://kyivindependent.com/opinion-russias-failure-to-take-... [2]https://thebulletin.org/2022/03/inside-putins-head-paranoid-...
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/17852964/donald-trump-threaten...
“They're all saying oh he's a nuclear power, it's like they're afraid of him,” Trump said in a recording of the phone conversation with Daly. “You know, he was a friend of mine, I got along great with him. I say, Vladimir, if you do it, we're hitting Moscow. We're going to hit Moscow. And he sort of believed me like 5 per cent, 10 per cent - that's all you need.”
He's also said the same thing in several interview. That he told Putin he would make it very difficult to take Ukraine and it cost them economically and militarily. You can infer that meant could mean several things depending on your point of view.
Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20240913225017/https://www.donal...