Two undersea cables in Baltic Sea disrupted

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.

The solution is to project strength and hit them where they don't expect. You are dealing with a thug, not a cost/benefit accountant, as Obama seemed to mistakenly believe. As long as they do things and we respond, nothing good will happen. They have already calculated the response and found it acceptable. Instead of this, go to the mattresses. Oh, your bridge has suddenly exploded? Shame.

"We" already screwed their pipeline, what's left? Provide Ukraine with the means to blow up the Kerch bridge maybe? They're the ones that could legitimately do that sort of escalation.

> what's left?

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.

Their shadow oil fleet is operated by third parties and shell companies. We are dealing with a mafia state here.

https://windward.ai/knowledge-base/illuminating-russias-shad...

> Their shadow oil fleet is operated by third parties and shell companies

Would be a shame if they started having engine troubles in the middle of the ocean.

The "problem" of Western countries is that the political sphere operates under different moral compasses: like taking down a shadow fleet tanker would be a natural disaster... taking down many would mean many disasters.

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?

Those ships are going to be transiting somewhere unloaded. That is when you engage them.

That would be in the busiest shipping ports, channels, and anchorages in the entire world. Aka the most bananas place to interdict.

If something bad happened to a mostly empty Russian shadow tanker in the Gulf of Finland, that impact is going to be mostly confined to Russia. i.e. past the major Finnish and Estonian ports.

As long as we're all playing silly only-kinda-deniable games, that's an option on the table.

Except it isn't in the Gulf of Finland but the East Sea or Soth China Sea. Most of these ships are transporting oil to China, India, Singapore, The Middle East. The only allies able to interdict most of these ships are Japan and South Korea. Japan doesn't engage in such activities after WW2 and South Korea is reluctant to because of retaliatory actions from Russia and China. Maybe they'll change course after the DPRK has sent triops into Ukraine, but don't hold your breath.