It can also mean that Russia is posturing and retaliating for the US's announcement that Ukraine can strike inside Russia with US missiles. This feels more like the same kind of exercise that North Korea does with their missile tests than it does an actual invasion.
I never really liked the whole sabotage is just "posturing" opinion.
Like there's real physical stuff destroyed (or in most circumstances digital stuff). How hard is it to impound ships that break stuff and etc so that the ones responsible are actually punished?
Probably no harder than impounding illegal unsafe unregistered oil shipping transports making their way through the Baltic->Black sea right now, evading sanctions.
Possibly, but only by hours—the news about the missile announcement was on Sunday afternoon, and the cable was cut Sunday morning. But it's unclear when the policy was actually communicated to Ukraine and Russia almost certainly found out about it immediately after Ukraine did (or even before).
yes. What Russia does currently is probing and testing - what it takes to disrupt all the necessary cables simultaneously to create communication breakdown and a lot of chaos, what resources and time it takes to repair (and thus planning the options on blocking those repair resources, etc.) It takes tanks half-a-day to cross the Baltic states to reach the sea. That is the time Russia wants to buy. Once Russian forces are already in Riga, Tallinn, Vilnus, the NATO will have a decision to make on whether to bomb the Russian forces already placed by that time among the Baltic states population.
> Once Russian forces are already in Riga, Tallinn, Vilnus, the NATO will have a decision to make on whether to bomb the Russian forces already placed by that time among the Baltic states population.
NATO has forward deployed forces to assure that to take Riga, Tallin, and Vilnius, Russia will have to attack and defeat armed forces of the UK, Canada, and Germany respectively. More than that, really, those are just the lead nations in the NATO forward-deployed battlegroups in those countries. There are also five other forward-deployed battlegroups, four of which — as well as reinforcement of the original four in the Baltics + Poland – were deployed in response to the 2022 Russian escalation in Ukraine.
Cutting undersea cables is not going to prevent (or even meaningfully slow) a response given that.
Baltic states have 30K military total combined - Russia loses 20-30K/month in Ukraine. So, with all the respect to the Baltic states military - with them being responsible for the defense of about 700km long strip of land, it isn't about full invasion force, it is about having NATO not responding long enough.
If fighting starts in the Baltics (or Poland) Russia will face the greatest air force in the world fairly quickly. The conventional conflict will be over in a few months. Hopefully it will not escalate into nuclear conflict.
Maybe, but that's assuming their war economy lasts for that long, that they still have people to run those things, etc. Besides, Europe was caught with its proverbial pants down; in 5-10 years, they will (should) have their military up to speed again, with fresher, better equipped and better trained people than Russia has. The border countries have all upgraded their defenses already, and if they invade a NATO country they suddenly have all of Europe and - if still applicable at the time - the US on their back.
There are no scenarios in which Russia can have any significant victories. The only thing they maybe have is nukes, but nobody wins if those are deployed.
There's no secret real russian army just waiting to invade some another country, or just chilling in Urals. If russia did not have nuclear weapons, road to moscow would be open.
What non-NATO European country are they going to invade (and hold!) as a bargaining chip?
Any how many of those tanks go straight to Ukraine? Do you think Russia can afford to stockpile tanks (and everything else necessary) for several years for an invasion of Europe while simultaneously engaged in the their current war in Ukraine?
They might occupy some area, sure, but if they invade a EU or NATO country they'll get that full force on top of them. And they have a lot of aircraft to deploy too; tanks have zero chance against an airstrike.
Conversely, I have no doubt that Lithuania's armed forces have learned from Ukraine's experience: those Russian tanks would all be destroyed within the first few kilometers.
...and that assumes Russia still has enough tanks to even mount an offensive, in sufficient numbers to capture several capital cities, belonging to nations with a fearsome grudge against them.
(Three years ago, I would have fully agreed with your assessment!)
yes. That is why Russia hasn't yet moved, and still looking for a way to do it. Russia is deliberately stuck in the past where for example the "War scare of 1927" laid ground and provided the excuse for the militarization of and repressions in USSR and ultimately to the USSR starting WWII together with and as ally of Hitler. And the first thing USSR did back then in 1939 was the "solution" of the perceived issues of the 1927 (the issues which there for the last several centuries) - Finland, Poland and the Baltic states. If you look at the current Russian TV, chats, etc. - their thinking and perception are the same as back then. For them it isn't an issue of whether to do it, it is an issue of how to do it. It took 12 years from 1927 to 1939 during which the country got prepared for the war, at least how they perceived the necessary preparations - in particular it was industrialized and the society was militarized and put completely under dictatorship, and i think we see that today too.
yes, due to geography, success at Voznesensk basically saved Odessa and the rest of the unoccupied South. That is the point - if Russia took Odessa back then it would basically be game-over. I don't see such strategic points like Voznesensk in the Baltic states though.
There is vast difference between just driving somewhere and actually controlling it. Russia learned that in first month of the invasion. If they weren't stopped at Voznesensk, they would be stopped somewhere else - there was singular BTG driving somewhere deep into hostile territory.
There's plenty of alternative communications systems in place and I presume the military does not depend exclusively on one, two, or even three systems, least of all the relatively vulnerable internet cables. NATO, borders, and the Russian invasion response playbooks predate the internet by decades, too.
While theoretically it's possible that Russia would simultaneously dismantle or jam the internet, mobile phones, radio, sattelite, and runners in fast cars, if that does happen it's already red alert everywhere.
> It takes tanks half-a-day to cross the Baltic states to reach the sea
And how long does it take for the F35 to fly across all Baltic States? 30 minutes at max speed. Without air supremacy, Russia would be dead in the water.
> That is the time Russia wants to buy. Once Russian forces are already in Riga, Tallinn, Vilnus, the NATO will have a decision to make on whether to bomb the Russian forces already placed by that time among the Baltic states population.
If you think Poland and Finland would sit on their hands and do nothing, you're being naive.
RF has no air supremacy in Ukraine, so they have high loses, but they advance anyway. Small or large losses will not stop an empire, except Imperial Japan maybe.
Ukraines Air Force is tiny and poorly equipped. Compare it to just the Nordics for example who are soon on hundreds of F-35 and Gripen. Staging any mass movements against that kind of air support will be challenging.
Besides NATO already has a large land based army as well. US, Turkey, Poland , Finland all have large ground forces
We can look at October 7th in Israel how long, with all the communications and infrastructure working, it took to organize defense in a very technologically developed country which basically had been living in the state of war readiness. Now add broken significant communications, chaos of non-working banks/ATMs, power shut-offs, clogged highways, etc. (don't get me wrong - i'm not saying that Russia can do all that, i'm saying that Russia is actively working on those capabilities, and whether they achieve it to the needed extent is the key to how the events would go in the near future)
I still don’t get how Oct 7 was not an inside job. With mossad crabs everywhere how do you miss such a major plot to attack with so many actors involved?
You're right, but I think there were a lot of other factors involved there unrelated to basic infrastructure. Not to get too in to politics but i think there was a lot of underestimation, dismissal of warning signals (focus was elsewhere, as you can see with how precise intelligence seems to be in Lebanon), and just bad timing for them. I don't think anyone living in Russia's shadow, seeing what is actively happening, will be that unprepared.
I suggest you revisit the history of the first days of the invasion, specifically the depth which the ground armored forces reached in the first 2-3 days and what and how they were stopped. The Baltic states "width" is much smaller, and thus there is much less time to organize defense, etc. It is hardly enough time even just for taking the decision to initiate defense. Of course, like in the case with Ukraine, Russia wouldn't succeed if the quick invasion turns instead into a face-to-face war midway. That is why they are looking for a way to create blackout and chaos.
I’m sure they have a plan to deal with this and loads of NATO troops there armed to the teeth and air superiority so it will be shooting fish in a barrel. We don’t know what will happen but I’m not sure cutting the internet won’t affect Russia pretty badly too - certainly China will not be a fan of the huge disruption it will cause them too.
Russia does not have the manpower or logistics to invade anywhere (else). They have spent 2 years tossing meat-waves against Ukraine to grind them down, take a few km a week, and cause demoralization until their stooge could get into the Whitehouse and give it all to them for free.
Invading the Baltics or Poland or Sweden... not on the table.
"Hybrid" warfare, yes. But that's been going on for two decades.
Thing is: cutting people's fiber optic lines isn't going to get them out of this sanction regime.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/16/russian-spy-sh...