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PaperclipPerfector  19d ago (text post)   871 thread views

Transnational Thursday for December 26, 2024

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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Outage between undersea cable that connects Finish and Estonian power grids

This is not the first, or the second, cable that's gone out in the Baltic. It seems quite obvious that Russian and Chinese ships are cutting these from time to time deliberately.

This has been huge news in Finland, the Finnish Border Guards did specops to detain the suspected ship and the news have indicated the ship's been used for spying purposes. There's a wider discussion about Russian "shadow fleet", ie ships flying under third-country flags used for circumventing sanctions, operating in the Baltic, and increasing NATO presence in the Baltic to counteract this.

Looks like Ukrainians also starting to do something about the Russian fleet: https://maritime-executive.com/article/sanctioned-russian-ship-was-sunk-by-terrorist-attack-owner-claims

If so, we can expect more Russian-connected ships developing sudden mechanical problems and going under on high seas.

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