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Posted
49 minutes ago, ink said:

The problem isn't that countries are undemocratic*, the problem is that NATO pushes. Therefore, it can't be said to be a process where countries willingly want to join and NATO just lets them in**.

 

* Of course, that's a problem in its own right, just not one worth discussing here.

** Though, obviously, that's what happened in most cases. Slovakia, Montenegro, Georgia, and Ukraine are the outliers (and, so too is Serbia, to a lesser extent). But just because they're outliers, that doesn't mean they aren't worth discussing.

NATO should have ended 1992. But in the end it requires corrupt politicians in the country willing to force that country into NATO. Obviously with enough money, you will always find those.

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Posted (edited)
2 hours ago, ink said:

Your argument appears to be that if some countries can choose to not join, then all countries can.

My argument is that some countries could not choose to not join, in order to show that the same rules don't apply across the board.

 

Once again, the only blunt club compelling these nations to join was Russia. If people are wanting to demonstrate  there was compulsion, they really want to offer up some evidence of it than just hearsay.

What do Switzerland and Austria have in common? Thats right, if they ever get invaded, Europe really does have some serious problems. And that is why they didnt join.

Edited by Stuart Galbraith
Posted
14 hours ago, ink said:

No sorry, perhaps I could have phrased my question more carefully. I meant: how do you imagine the mechanism of a country choosing something, essentially for good, works. Who actually makes the decision? Is it like Brexit? Non-binding referendum?

Depends on the country.    It could be referendum, legislation, or just a governmental decision.  I don't think any country has withdrawn completely yet, but France withdrew from military cooperation in the sixties even closing Nato military bases in France like RCAF Station Marville and RCAF Station Grostenquin. 

  • 1 month later...
Posted (edited)
On 2/6/2025 at 7:28 PM, JWB said:

https://x.com/wartranslated/status/1887510510788067515

AFP reports that Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia will disconnect from the Russian power grid over the weekend.

According to Lithuania's energy minister, this step will prevent Russia from using the power grid as a tool for geopolitical influence.

"Tomorrow, if you don't know, is a significant day: on February 8, the Baltic countries are scheduled to exit the BRELL energy system with Belarus and Russia. 

Lithuania is planning a nasty thing for this case: immediately after the synchronization of the Baltic States' electricity grids with the European Union, the Lithuanian authorities promise to dismantle power transmission lines with the Kaliningrad region and Belarus. 

Initially, it was planned that the Kaliningrad region would fall into the same energy blockade as Transnistria, but since the exit from the BRELL was very slow, our people managed to prepare well (https://t.me/nosovichchannel/3080 ) and ensured the region's energy independence. 

But the Baltic countries will be in a fever from the shutdown of the BRELL now - there is still an energy shortage there, and after the "x" hour, power outages are simply inevitable - at least for a while. However, this crisis will enrich someone - the purchase of expensive electricity in Scandinavia is clearly not without profit" ( https://t.me/historiographe/17830 )

"Now the numbers: how much Lithuania will spend to exit the BRELL (that is, in fact, to attempt an energy blockade of the Kaliningrad region): 

Lithuania plans to spend 2 billion euros on energy due to withdrawal from BRELL - Litgrid CEO Rokas Masiulis.

Earlier, the same Masiulis promised that synchronization in the EU would not require additional investments from the state.

There are currently 2.8 million people in Lithuania. It means 700 euros expence from every living soul" (https://t.me/historiographe/17831 )

 

* BRELL - БРЭЛЛ - Belorussia and Russia electric power ring БРЭЛЛ — Википедия

Edited by Roman Alymov
Posted
34 minutes ago, Roman Alymov said:

... It means 700 euros expence from every living soul" ...

All Lithuanians will soon freeze to death in complete darkness. 

Posted

Apologies if this kind of graphic has already been posted.

If you look thru a lens of Russian or Ukrainian aggression, some of those cuts could make sense. But there are cuts on the diagram that don't make sense to me. For example, the data link between Sweeden and Latvia. Cui bono?

33892.jpeg

Posted

Well Sweden is now part of of NATO, as is Latvia. You dont really need any other explanation, other than it pisses us off. It shows how pathetic Russia has become when that is their sole barometer for success in the war.

There was an interesting thing happened yesterday at Ugra (port between Estonia and St Petersburg, in Russia). There was reportedly an explosion, one source says three, in the engine room of a foreign flagged tanker (but Russian owned) that was about to take to sea. As its only 2 years old, mechanical failure seems an unlikely explanation.

https://kyivindependent.com/explosion-on-oil-tanker-at-russian-port-prompts-investigation/

Posted
31 minutes ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

There was an interesting thing happened yesterday at Ugra (port between Estonia and St Petersburg, in Russia). There was reportedly an explosion, one source says three, in the engine room of a foreign flagged tanker (but Russian owned) that was about to take to sea. As its only 2 years old, mechanical failure seems an unlikely explanation.

https://kyivindependent.com/explosion-on-oil-tanker-at-russian-port-prompts-investigation/

The tanker is owned by Dahlia International Co from Liberia, operated by Lagosmarin Limited from Cyprus under Antigua and Barbuda flag. Crew is 24 men - 12 Indonesians, 8 Georgians, 4 Russians. No idea why you believe this tanker is 2 years old as it was constructed in 2003. 

    Arrived from Malta (oher sources say Singapure) on Feb, 6, was bound to go to Egypt. Efplosions happened when main engine was started, resulting in engine room flooded. Pro-Russian TG channels believe it is diversion.

Posted
46 minutes ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

Well Sweden is now part of of NATO, as is Latvia. You dont really need any other explanation, other than it pisses us off. It shows how pathetic Russia has become when that is their sole barometer for success in the war.

Could you please direct me to the source of this insight, please? 

Posted
8 minutes ago, Roman Alymov said:

The tanker is owned by Dahlia International Co from Liberia, operated by Lagosmarin Limited from Cyprus under Antigua and Barbuda flag. Crew is 24 men - 12 Indonesians, 8 Georgians, 4 Russians. No idea why you believe this tanker is 2 years old as it was constructed in 2003. 

    Arrived from Malta (oher sources say Singapure) on Feb, 6, was bound to go to Egypt. Efplosions happened when main engine was started, resulting in engine room flooded. Pro-Russian TG channels believe it is diversion.

Source above says 2023 is why. Ive since found photographs showing she dates back to at least 2010, which does make mechanical problems more likely.

 

Also, the EU nations are seemingly planning an operation to detain Russia's shadow fleet.

https://eadaily.com/en/news/2025/02/10/the-eu-is-preparing-a-large-scale-operation-to-capture-russias-shadow-fleet-politico

Posted
14 minutes ago, Roman Alymov said:

Could you please direct me to the source of this insight, please? 

Your army is now using Donkeys as transport, you need me to further elucidate?

Posted

Incidentally, the German Bundeswehr also uses donkeys as a means of transport. The Gebirgsjäger love them.
Donkeys are probably quite useful in the mud.

Posted
3 minutes ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

Your army is now using Donkeys as transport, you need me to further elucidate?

Yes i would like to see the link suppoting your claim of cutting Baltic Sea underwater cables  being  Russia's "sole barometer for success in the war". 

   Re donkeys - let me remind you your shiny Army (and US one) was kicked out of A-stan by people practicing donkeys in many ways, so i do not think it is in your interests to elaborate further on donkeys.

   Meanwhile, here are the real reasons 

February 10, 2025 4:26 am CET
By Victor Jack and Gabriel Gavin
PORVOO, Finland — Secluded in a Finnish bay and barely visible between snow-flecked trees, a creaky tanker the length of two football fields quietly bobs up and down — a surprisingly tranquil scene considering the waves it has sent across Europe.

Finnish authorities seized the Eagle S ship in December in an all-guns-blazing operation, suspecting it had sabotaged a subsea power link connecting Estonia to Finland. The detention of the ship — which was carrying 100,000 barrels of oil from St. Petersburg — was a galvanizing moment, and appeared to be a new front in a clandestine war between Russia and the West.

Now, European countries are holding behind-the-scenes talks on large-scale seizures of Moscow’s oil-exporting tankers in the Baltic Sea, according to two European Union diplomats and two government officials. They are also currently drafting new legislation to add legal heft to those efforts.


The proposals being considered include using international law to grab vessels on environmental or piracy grounds, said the officials, who were granted anonymity to discuss the private talks. Failing that, the countries could go it on their own, jointly imposing fresh national laws to seize more ships further out at sea.

“Close to 50 percent of sanctioned trade [in Russian seaborne oil] is going through the Gulf of Finland,” said Estonia’s Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna. “There are the environmental threats, there are the attacks we’ve had against our undersea infrastructure.”

“Now the question is … what can we do with these ships?” he told POLITICO. “We cannot block all the sea, but we can control more … There are lots of opportunities.”

The talks illustrate Europe’s growing frustration that Russia continues to transport its oil and dodge Western sanctions by relying on an ever-growing “shadow fleet” — aging vessels with obscure ownership and unknown insurance. By doing so, Moscow has been able to preserve a key lifeline for its war effort in Ukraine, given that oil and gas generate around half of the Kremlin’s revenues.

And it’s all happening right under Europe’s nose, in its own waterways.

Still, the new plans won’t easily be translated into action. According to experts and maritime lawyers, difficulties include legal retaliation from Russia, steep financial costs and onerous logistics. It will also mean navigating labyrinthine global shipping laws.


“We have to coordinate, we have to agree how we implement these conventions,” Tsahkna said.

Out of the shadows
In 2022 the EU ordered a ban on all Russian oil imports and imposed a price cap with the G7 on Moscow’s international crude sales, hoping to squeeze Kremlin revenues following its invasion of Ukraine.

But Russia soon found ways to dodge those measures. Moscow’s shadow fleet — which often relies on dubious insurers to evade the oil price cap — today accounts for up to 17 percent of all oil tankers worldwide.


The Eagle S, seen from a distance, is suspected of slicing the subsea Estlink2 power cable linking Estonia and Finland. | Photo by Victor Jack
As a result, “the shadow fleet is now transporting over 80 percent of all Russian crude oil,” said Isaac Levi, the Russia-Europe lead at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air think tank.

The Baltic Sea is the critical artery for that illegal trade, he argued. The vessels are typically loaded with Russian oil at ports like Ust Luga near St. Petersburg before winding their way through the Gulf of Finland and across the Baltic Sea to the world’s oceans via the North Sea.

Last year, 348 shadow fleet vessels making up 40 percent of Russia’s total oil sales departed from Baltic ports, Levi said — a figure equivalent to a third of Moscow’s annual defense budget. 


“Without attacking the shadow fleet, [Western allies] enable Russia’s main source of income,” he said, which “generates an incredibly high and rising military spending for the war in Ukraine.”

They may also be enabling sabotage, according to Christian Bueger, a maritime security professor at the University of Copenhagen — as the Eagle S shows. Numerous commercial vessels beyond the shadow fleet have been responsible for at least four similar incidents in the Baltic Sea since 2022.

“What is happening right now is … escalation,” he said. “We’re just going to see more attacks on critical infrastructure, both at sea as well as on land.”

War on the waves 
The mounting incidents are generating momentum to go after the tankers sailing with impunity through European waters — and not just with sanctions, which have proven too porous.

“We are witnessing the fact that  … there are some escape routes” in Western sanctions against Russia, Lithuania’s Energy Minister Žygimantas Vaičiūnas told POLITICO. “That’s why countermeasures to the shadow fleet would be really helping to achieve the results, which we are not capable of achieving through the sanctions regime.”

On top of incoming EU proposals to blacklist 74 shadow fleet tankers, Nordic and Baltic countries are separately discussing how they can legally start seizing more Russia-linked vessels, according to the officials and diplomats.


The proposals largely fall into three buckets, they said. 

First, authorities could grab vessels that risk damaging the local environment, such as through oil spills. Given that most of these tankers are at least 15 years old and are prone to defects, such accidents are a troublesome possibility and have likely already happened.

Second, the officials said, authorities could use piracy laws to seize ships threatening critical undersea infrastructure, as they’ve been doing since late 2023, with numerous vessels damaging vital power and internet cables. 

Finally, if international law fails, countries are also discussing jointly imposing new national laws to make it easier to nab ships. Those could include requiring tankers in the Baltic Sea to use a prescribed list of credible insurers, the officials said, allowing countries like Estonia and Finland to detain ships relying on other, less-trusted operators.

In all cases, the officials added, the countries would ask the EU to coordinate efforts.


While “it wouldn’t be possible” to stop every shadow fleet tanker with the measures, one of the government officials said, that’s “not necessary.”


“Even if we can just slow down [the] ships, it hurts Russia,” the official argued. “Every day is expensive — if you combine this with the state of the Russian economy … everything matters.”

Fleeting proposals
Back in Finland, however, the Eagle S is a floating case study in the difficulties of aquatic seizures. 

Finnish authorities initially seized the Eagle S on Christmas Day, with a helicopter dropping a special unit on the tanker as the navy, coast guard and police executed a joint offensive.

But after opening a preliminary investigation into the tanker’s EU-sanctioned cargo, Finnish authorities dropped the probe, finding the crew had not steered the vessel into Finland’s waters on purpose.

The ship is still under investigation for severing the Estonia-to-Finland Estlink 2 subsea power cable, having dragged its anchor 100 kilometers across the seafloor. But Helsinki is now facing legal backlash from the ship’s Emirati owner — with lawyers arguing it didn’t have the right to seize the vessel as the incident took place outside Finland’s territorial waters.

That’s a problem that won’t go away, according to Sean Pribyl, a partner specializing in international maritime law at Holland & Knight.


Within a country’s territorial waters — defined under United Nations law as 12 nautical miles from land — “it’s more likely that there’s authority that the state could apprehend that vessel,” he said, including for environmental and safety reasons.

Beyond that, it’s “much more limited,” Pribyl added. For example, in limited circumstances, countries can act past the boundary if they see a threat to natural resources in their “exclusive economic zones.”

In those zones and in international waters further out, the ship’s flag — which indicates where it is registered — determines which country has legal authority over the vessel; often, those countries are far away. In such locations, too, the right of free passage enshrined in U.N. law. becomes legally overriding.

In the Gulf of Finland — the narrow sea where Russian cargo ships set sail in the region — commercial vessels retain the right of free passage under Cold War-era treaties. Piracy laws, meanwhile, usually police vessels attacking other ships, not undersea power cables, Pribyl added.

That makes imposing national laws to seize vessels an “incredibly risky” endeavor, said Isaak Hurst, principal attorney at the International Maritime Group law firm. “It’s absolutely going to be challenged under international law,” he added, potentially costing countries “tens of millions.”

 

https://www.politico.eu/article/russia-shadow-fleet-finnish-bay-snow-eagle-s-december-oil-baltic-sea-europe-waves-europe-kremlin/

 

 

 

Posted

Russia sells oil at a cheaper rate compared to the world average. There will always be someone ready to buy cheap oil.

Posted
On 2/7/2025 at 8:04 PM, Stefan Kotsch said:

All Lithuanians will soon freeze to death in complete darkness. 

Not at all, but it will be another step on the way of transforming former industrial region into ethnic national park (after all it is exactly what their elite wanted)

"In Lithuania, the average market price of electricity for the week from February 3 to February 9 increased by 24% – from 101 to 125 euros per megawatt hour, according to Litgrid." https://t.me/historiographe/17943

Posted (edited)

"

"SVR Press Office of Russia, February 11
The press Bureau of the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation reports that, according to information received by the SVR, the Ukrainian special services, with the assistance of their Western curators, are preparing to carry out a series of high-profile anti-Russian provocations in the near future.


In particular, it is planned to use Russian-made naval mines at Ukraine's disposal to organize the detonation of a foreign vessel in the Baltic Sea. Moscow will be responsible for this. According to calculations by Ukrainian and Western intelligence agencies, such an action will prompt the NATO leadership to close Russia's access to the Baltic Sea under the pretext of ensuring the safety of maritime navigation. Kiev's goal is to draw the alliance into a direct armed conflict with the Russian Federation.

At the same time, the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, in cooperation with the special services of a number of European countries, is preparing attacks on representatives of the Russian non-systemic opposition and entrepreneurs fleeing the law, who are now living abroad. It is planned to involve people from Asian and Middle Eastern countries as performers. Rewards in the amount of up to 20 thousand dollars are offered for participation in such actions. A prerequisite for the perpetrator in case of arrest is to blame the Russian special services, allegedly on whose orders these attacks were being prepared.


According to incoming information, the "overdue" Zelensky and his entourage are capable of any provocation to save themselves. To do this, the Kiev regime will not only do everything possible to prevent the launch of a peaceful settlement process, but is also ready to carry out hostilities far beyond the borders of Ukraine. The Europeans can only hope that not all their leaders are determined to allow Kiev to drag Europe and all its inhabitants into the funnel of history." Служба внешней разведки Российской Федерации

Edited by Roman Alymov
Posted
On 2/10/2025 at 9:19 AM, Stefan Kotsch said:

Incidentally, the German Bundeswehr also uses donkeys as a means of transport. The Gebirgsjäger love them.
Donkeys are probably quite useful in the mud.

Of course. And the British Army still has cavalry horses (and actually used them operationally in the Balkans, to carry supply).

Nonetheless if you are issuing them to units that are ostensibly mechanised, you have a problem. Although 1st Guards Donkey Army does have a pleasing lyrical ring on the tongue...

Posted
On 2/10/2025 at 9:25 AM, Roman Alymov said:

Yes i would like to see the link suppoting your claim of cutting Baltic Sea underwater cables  being  Russia's "sole barometer for success in the war". 

   Re donkeys - let me remind you your shiny Army (and US one) was kicked out of A-stan by people practicing donkeys in many ways, so i do not think it is in your interests to elaborate further on donkeys.

   Meanwhile, here are the real reasons 

February 10, 2025 4:26 am CET
By Victor Jack and Gabriel Gavin
PORVOO, Finland — Secluded in a Finnish bay and barely visible between snow-flecked trees, a creaky tanker the length of two football fields quietly bobs up and down — a surprisingly tranquil scene considering the waves it has sent across Europe.

Finnish authorities seized the Eagle S ship in December in an all-guns-blazing operation, suspecting it had sabotaged a subsea power link connecting Estonia to Finland. The detention of the ship — which was carrying 100,000 barrels of oil from St. Petersburg — was a galvanizing moment, and appeared to be a new front in a clandestine war between Russia and the West.

Now, European countries are holding behind-the-scenes talks on large-scale seizures of Moscow’s oil-exporting tankers in the Baltic Sea, according to two European Union diplomats and two government officials. They are also currently drafting new legislation to add legal heft to those efforts.


The proposals being considered include using international law to grab vessels on environmental or piracy grounds, said the officials, who were granted anonymity to discuss the private talks. Failing that, the countries could go it on their own, jointly imposing fresh national laws to seize more ships further out at sea.

“Close to 50 percent of sanctioned trade [in Russian seaborne oil] is going through the Gulf of Finland,” said Estonia’s Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna. “There are the environmental threats, there are the attacks we’ve had against our undersea infrastructure.”

“Now the question is … what can we do with these ships?” he told POLITICO. “We cannot block all the sea, but we can control more … There are lots of opportunities.”

The talks illustrate Europe’s growing frustration that Russia continues to transport its oil and dodge Western sanctions by relying on an ever-growing “shadow fleet” — aging vessels with obscure ownership and unknown insurance. By doing so, Moscow has been able to preserve a key lifeline for its war effort in Ukraine, given that oil and gas generate around half of the Kremlin’s revenues.

And it’s all happening right under Europe’s nose, in its own waterways.

Still, the new plans won’t easily be translated into action. According to experts and maritime lawyers, difficulties include legal retaliation from Russia, steep financial costs and onerous logistics. It will also mean navigating labyrinthine global shipping laws.


“We have to coordinate, we have to agree how we implement these conventions,” Tsahkna said.

Out of the shadows
In 2022 the EU ordered a ban on all Russian oil imports and imposed a price cap with the G7 on Moscow’s international crude sales, hoping to squeeze Kremlin revenues following its invasion of Ukraine.

But Russia soon found ways to dodge those measures. Moscow’s shadow fleet — which often relies on dubious insurers to evade the oil price cap — today accounts for up to 17 percent of all oil tankers worldwide.


The Eagle S, seen from a distance, is suspected of slicing the subsea Estlink2 power cable linking Estonia and Finland. | Photo by Victor Jack
As a result, “the shadow fleet is now transporting over 80 percent of all Russian crude oil,” said Isaac Levi, the Russia-Europe lead at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air think tank.

The Baltic Sea is the critical artery for that illegal trade, he argued. The vessels are typically loaded with Russian oil at ports like Ust Luga near St. Petersburg before winding their way through the Gulf of Finland and across the Baltic Sea to the world’s oceans via the North Sea.

Last year, 348 shadow fleet vessels making up 40 percent of Russia’s total oil sales departed from Baltic ports, Levi said — a figure equivalent to a third of Moscow’s annual defense budget. 


“Without attacking the shadow fleet, [Western allies] enable Russia’s main source of income,” he said, which “generates an incredibly high and rising military spending for the war in Ukraine.”

They may also be enabling sabotage, according to Christian Bueger, a maritime security professor at the University of Copenhagen — as the Eagle S shows. Numerous commercial vessels beyond the shadow fleet have been responsible for at least four similar incidents in the Baltic Sea since 2022.

“What is happening right now is … escalation,” he said. “We’re just going to see more attacks on critical infrastructure, both at sea as well as on land.”

War on the waves 
The mounting incidents are generating momentum to go after the tankers sailing with impunity through European waters — and not just with sanctions, which have proven too porous.

“We are witnessing the fact that  … there are some escape routes” in Western sanctions against Russia, Lithuania’s Energy Minister Žygimantas Vaičiūnas told POLITICO. “That’s why countermeasures to the shadow fleet would be really helping to achieve the results, which we are not capable of achieving through the sanctions regime.”

On top of incoming EU proposals to blacklist 74 shadow fleet tankers, Nordic and Baltic countries are separately discussing how they can legally start seizing more Russia-linked vessels, according to the officials and diplomats.


The proposals largely fall into three buckets, they said. 

First, authorities could grab vessels that risk damaging the local environment, such as through oil spills. Given that most of these tankers are at least 15 years old and are prone to defects, such accidents are a troublesome possibility and have likely already happened.

Second, the officials said, authorities could use piracy laws to seize ships threatening critical undersea infrastructure, as they’ve been doing since late 2023, with numerous vessels damaging vital power and internet cables. 

Finally, if international law fails, countries are also discussing jointly imposing new national laws to make it easier to nab ships. Those could include requiring tankers in the Baltic Sea to use a prescribed list of credible insurers, the officials said, allowing countries like Estonia and Finland to detain ships relying on other, less-trusted operators.

In all cases, the officials added, the countries would ask the EU to coordinate efforts.


While “it wouldn’t be possible” to stop every shadow fleet tanker with the measures, one of the government officials said, that’s “not necessary.”


“Even if we can just slow down [the] ships, it hurts Russia,” the official argued. “Every day is expensive — if you combine this with the state of the Russian economy … everything matters.”

Fleeting proposals
Back in Finland, however, the Eagle S is a floating case study in the difficulties of aquatic seizures. 

Finnish authorities initially seized the Eagle S on Christmas Day, with a helicopter dropping a special unit on the tanker as the navy, coast guard and police executed a joint offensive.

But after opening a preliminary investigation into the tanker’s EU-sanctioned cargo, Finnish authorities dropped the probe, finding the crew had not steered the vessel into Finland’s waters on purpose.

The ship is still under investigation for severing the Estonia-to-Finland Estlink 2 subsea power cable, having dragged its anchor 100 kilometers across the seafloor. But Helsinki is now facing legal backlash from the ship’s Emirati owner — with lawyers arguing it didn’t have the right to seize the vessel as the incident took place outside Finland’s territorial waters.

That’s a problem that won’t go away, according to Sean Pribyl, a partner specializing in international maritime law at Holland & Knight.


Within a country’s territorial waters — defined under United Nations law as 12 nautical miles from land — “it’s more likely that there’s authority that the state could apprehend that vessel,” he said, including for environmental and safety reasons.

Beyond that, it’s “much more limited,” Pribyl added. For example, in limited circumstances, countries can act past the boundary if they see a threat to natural resources in their “exclusive economic zones.”

In those zones and in international waters further out, the ship’s flag — which indicates where it is registered — determines which country has legal authority over the vessel; often, those countries are far away. In such locations, too, the right of free passage enshrined in U.N. law. becomes legally overriding.

In the Gulf of Finland — the narrow sea where Russian cargo ships set sail in the region — commercial vessels retain the right of free passage under Cold War-era treaties. Piracy laws, meanwhile, usually police vessels attacking other ships, not undersea power cables, Pribyl added.

That makes imposing national laws to seize vessels an “incredibly risky” endeavor, said Isaak Hurst, principal attorney at the International Maritime Group law firm. “It’s absolutely going to be challenged under international law,” he added, potentially costing countries “tens of millions.”

 

https://www.politico.eu/article/russia-shadow-fleet-finnish-bay-snow-eagle-s-december-oil-baltic-sea-europe-waves-europe-kremlin/

 

 

 

Ok I see, you adopted Donkeys for them to be the herald of victory, just like they were for the taliban. Oh, my bad. Here was me thinking you were supposed to be the second army in the world, not a gang of ill educated, ill disciplined terrorists with nothing but fanaticism to keep you going. My apologies.

Posted
On 2/10/2025 at 10:19 AM, Stefan Kotsch said:

Incidentally, the German Bundeswehr also uses donkeys as a means of transport. The Gebirgsjäger love them.
Donkeys are probably quite useful in the mud.

Actually horses and mules.

Posted
16 minutes ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

Ok I see, you adopted Donkeys for them to be the herald of victory, just like they were for the taliban. Oh, my bad. Here was me thinking you were supposed to be the second army in the world, not a gang of ill educated, ill disciplined terrorists with nothing but fanaticism to keep you going. My apologies.

I'm sorry but at what point your thoughts became my problem? While you was living on some "Putin stronk" planet created for you by your MSM (the same planet where Trump is Russian agent, NHS is magically saving from all-deadly Novichok etc), i was repeatedly telling here Russian Federation was created as de-facto colony of West, controlled by compradoe pro-Western administration, and it is only because of arrogance and incompetence of collective Western leadership "collective Putin" have to stay in war and even sometimes do something for Russian Army, instead of surrender "Russian elite" is dreaming about. 

     Reality is, your army, in allience with "first army of the world", have lost to "a gang of ill educated, ill disciplined terrorists with nothing but fanaticism to keep them going". It is reality, and this "gang" having donkeys is just sidenote (no doubt it was not because of donkeys, with all my respect to them, Taliban won). You may say you were not really trying etc. - ok, it is up to you, after all it is your problems with this people, not mine. But as for me this simple fact might make you think twice before jumping on donkey topic.

    By the way, since you insist, here is fresh update from Arestovich. According to him, RusArmy brigade do have 2.5 times the number of transport units vs. UkrArmy number. But he specifically mention this units is trucks (not donkeys as you think)

 

Posted
1 hour ago, Roman Alymov said:

According to incoming information, the "overdue" Zelensky and his entourage are capable of any provocation to save themselves. 

In one of those reports that feels like it's too convenient to be true, Tucker Carlson says that groups in Ukraine have been selling Western supplies and weapons for years, including large shipments to the Mexican drug cartels.

Posted (edited)
4 minutes ago, glenn239 said:

In one of those reports that feels like it's too convenient to be true, Tucker Carlson says that groups in Ukraine have been selling Western supplies and weapons for years, including large shipments to the Mexican drug cartels.

Yes i have seen it, but as for me there is hardly any reasons to believe weapons go to Ukraine first and then back to North America continent. Much more likely, they were only sent to Ukraine on paper, while physically never left the continent..... 

Edited by Roman Alymov

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