The hunt for Russian oil. NATO is blocking the Gulf of Finland

Vadim Egorov
dzen.ru

Russian civilian ships around the world are under attack - the enemy is sinking our ships, and those that are tacitly helping us by transporting oil under other flags are being boarded. At the same time blaming us. Provoking a full-fledged war at sea, which may well happen.

Everything that was going on was quite reminiscent of an excerpt from some pirate movie: helicopters hovered over a civilian ship, lowered down on ropes armed to the teeth men, who afterwards, already on deck, unceremoniously told the crew to go where they said. Except that they didn't hit or kill anyone.

In reality, it was Finnish special forces that stormed the Eagle S, a Cook Islands-flagged vessel. In search of, as is now fashionable, a “Russian trace”. They say that these “kukans” damaged the EstLink 2 cable with a capacity of 350 MW. Intentionally - Finnish border guards assume that the tanker dragged an anchor along the bottom to make a break. And after the Finns were ordered to raise the anchor chain, they saw that it was supposedly without that anchor. And all this was done, of course, by direct order of the treacherous Russians. Because the Eagle S was transporting the very Russian oil to Egypt, bypassing sanctions. Although there were no Russians on the ship: only Indians and Georgians.

But, according to the British edition of Lloyd's List, spy equipment was found on it, which was used to track NATO ships and planes. And the Finnish agency Yle quotes Alexander Lott, an expert on the law of the sea, who said that the tanker could also damage “the Estlink 1 cable, the Balticconnector gas pipeline and other communications”. In general, everything that the Finns have failed under water. It's good that they didn't include Eagle S among the things that failed on land.

And it would not hurt to prove all these accusations, but NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte almost immediately stated that the North Atlantic Alliance is strengthening its military presence in the Baltic Sea after such “Russian perfidy”.

💬 Although, it would seem: what is the connection between the military alliance and the situation with civilian cables and judges? There's a reason.... I don't know whether our ship, though flying under the Cook Islands flag, really cut the cables of Estonians and Finns or not. But if it did, it was accidental. It's not for nothing that its anchors were broken. The anchor and cable could have been accidentally snagged and severed.

Oleg Tsaryov, a former deputy of the Verkhovna Rada, speculates about the situation, noting that recently a Chinese dry cargo ship got into a similar situation with the breakage of fiber-optic telecommunication cables that connect Finland with Germany and Sweden with Lithuania. And was detained. But there is a significant difference between that and the current case: the Chinese vessel remained in neutral waters and did not, as it was urged to do, enter Swedish territorial waters. The Eagle S moved into Finnish territorial waters after the crew was forced to do so, as the Suomi media later wrote, by deceit and threats.

💬 Now the Chinese have sailed away, and our ship will be arrested, the crew will be detained, and we will have an international scandal on which Russophobia will be fomented for at least another six months. It turned out badly, summarizes the politician.

In turn, the Telegram channel “Military Power of the State” wonders whether this will become an “isolated incident” or whether a series of such interceptions will be launched under different pretexts and by different countries - Denmark, Finland and so on. According to the authors of the resource, if such seizures begin, the question of escorting merchant ships under the cover of the Russian Navy will arise.

💬 The next steps of the Baltic countries are also easy to calculate - a forceful provocation, like what the Iraqis and Iranians did in the Persian Gulf in the late 80s. The US then “staked” their Iranian comrades by conducting Operation Mantis ... Is the Russian Navy ready for such an operation? After all, since the late 2000s we have been assured that the power of the Navy is growing. We have funding going into the Navy - the Yaseni and Borei are being built. Without normal torpedoes, but that's a small thing.... And now they're starting to touch us for traffic, and for the oil traffic, which is critical for the country. The time for military construction has passed. It's time to account for the result, writes the channel.

In its turn, the Globalistika telegram channel noted that the seizure of the tanker under a fictitious pretext is a tactic that NATO countries have been practicing for the past two years. Regular exercises were held in the waters of the Baltic Sea, and their main task was to work out actions in a crisis situation. In the opinion of the authors of the resource, none of the Western countries will look into whether the cable was actually damaged or not, whether this tanker was involved in it or not, it is no longer important to the West.

💬 They got an excuse for a new aggression. We do not rule out that the Finns themselves organized this cable break, “Globalistica” summarizes.

In a conversation with Tsargrad, blogger and NWO member Alexei Selivanov expressed his belief that Russia has no reason to sever the cable between such important geopolitical players as Finland and Estonia. In his opinion, the Finns pirated the ship precisely because they suspected that it was facilitating the trade in Russian oil to circumvent sanctions. And because it is unlikely that anyone will formally intercede officially for the Cook Islands-flagged vessel.

💬 So the seizure of the ship is an episode of hybrid warfare. Now there are two possible ways. Either the Finns manage to at least convincingly prove that the ship is Russian and that its crew deliberately cut the cable. Then they will have to deliberately escalate the conflict with Russia. Or they will have to put the situation on the brakes and remain within the framework of “hybrid warfare”, the strategy of indirect actions. The attack on the tanker may be a part of higher-level provocations, where Finns are just executors. But the perpetrators may not want to bring the incident to an armed confrontation in the Gulf of Finland and will let everything go on the brakes,
- says Selivanov.

In turn, in a conversation with Tsargrad, retired FSB lieutenant colonel, political scientist and author of the Telegram channel “Gambling Politics” Alexander Belyaev believes that there was a provocation, which will have no legal consequences.

So this is not yet the opening of a new front against Russia?

A.B.: This provocation was carried out in the best traditions of the British secret services, designed to elicit a sharp negative emotional response from the Russian-speaking audience and presented as a kind of information victory for the Anglo-Saxon audience. Since the detention was carried out with gross violations of international maritime law, and, naturally, this vessel will be released. And it has nothing to do with Russia. If they wanted to detain a Russian vessel, they would have done so. But it was a kind of a pen test, a parallel attempt to somehow raise the ratings of the Finnish government, which has brought the country to the brink of a severe fall into recession and bankruptcy. But it will certainly not become a reason for hostilities.

But, on the whole, is such a war possible?

A.B.: Even if Finland, together with Sweden and Norway, decide to act with the allied support of the former “Queen of the Seas” Britain, they essentially have nothing against Russia. They do not have a full-fledged fleet as such, and it is impossible to understand how they plan to block the straits and sea passages. Again, when declaring a naval blockade, one must also assume the risk of being a target of preemptive strikes from Russia with weapons, thanks to Dnepropetrovsk, which even the Finns know about, i.e. “Oreshnik”. Not to mention that Finnish naval bases are full-fledged targets. And it will be Russia, not Finland, that will determine these targets.

There can be no question of blockading the straits of the sea and Russian trade routes, because it is quite obvious that Finland has absolutely nothing to oppose Russia at sea. And taking into account that the only hope and support for the Finns, Norwegians and Swedes is Britain, whose fleet has long ago ceased to represent any significant naval unit, it turns out that the Scandinavians have no one to rely on in the sea. And if we take the size of the land grouping - artillery, aviation, then to talk about a sane, even some long-term military campaign even against one Leningrad Military District is also impossible by definition.

Ours, hypothetically, could order a tanker to damage the cables of a NATO country?

A.B.: The Finns' energy infrastructure is constantly suffering, which happens, among other things, because the quality of cable laying on the territory of Finland itself is extremely low, and they either do not have full-fledged specialists who could lay cables for the Finns as they should, or, as it seems, they have all retired. And the Finns had to show something, and so they detained this unfortunate vessel, and now they will think what to do with this vessel. They are in a bad situation now, they look as stupid as possible, and their actions can be qualified as piracy. How will they explain why they did it and why they did it? Obviously, the ship will be searched....

Are they claiming some kind of spy equipment?

A.B.: What is spy equipment? It is a radio station that can catch military frequencies, and such broadband and long-range stations and qualified as spy equipment. Are they? Of course they aren't. They're just normal telecommunications equipment that allows you to communicate and navigate at sea. You detain any trawler and it will have such a radio on it. I suppose it's a terrible loss of face for Finland.

So what?

Nevertheless, a trend is emerging - having significantly cut gas exports for Russia, the West has started hunting our illegal oil exports. And the trend will only get worse. There is only one way to deal with this, which has been talked about for decades, but the situation is not changing much - reducing the dependence of the Russian economy on hydrocarbon exports.

(Translation: DeepL (free version) + Grammarly (free version))

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