Thread by @khodorkovsky_en

How do you attack a NATO country without firing a shot?

For the last two years, Russia has been giving a masterclass in the Baltic Sea. The Kremlin utilized ghost ships, anchor-dragging, spy drones.

🧵Here is how the West is starting to fight back.

The campaign began in October 2023. The Balticconnector gas pipeline between Finland and Estonia suddenly lost pressure. A Chinese-flagged ship with Russian ties, the Newnew Polar Bear, dragged its anchor for miles along the seabed. news.err.ee/1609161313/anc…

One year later, it happened again. In October 2024, another Chinese-flagged ship, the Yi Peng 3, severed two more undersea cables using the same anchor-dragging method. European intelligence sources suspected the crew had been bribed by Russian services.

This time, the ship was stopped. But due to maritime law, authorities had to wait a full month for China's permission to board. The inspection was brief, and the ship was released without charges. Their actions were deniable and difficult to prosecute. reuters.com/world/chinese-…

The escalation peaked on Christmas Day, 2024. The Eagle S, a tanker from Russia's "shadow fleet," took out FIVE separate undersea cables in a single run. You can fool me once, you can fool me twice... the official narrative of "accidents" was no longer believable. istories.media/en/news/2024/1…

That night, the West’s patience ran out. In a daring midnight raid, Finnish special forces deployed from helicopters, boarded the Eagle S in international waters, and forced it to a Finnish port. For the first time, a crew was in custody. theguardian.com/world/2024/dec…

With a captain and two crew members facing sabotage charges in Finland, NATO officially launched "Operation Baltic Sentry" in January 2025. Warships and patrol aircraft began 24/7 surveillance of the sea. The cable-cutting incidents stopped immediately.

But the confrontation simply shifted. Front-line states, led by Estonia, began targeting Russia's shadow fleet, the tankers used to illegally export sanctioned oil. On April 11, 2025, Estonian patrols forced the tanker Kiwala into their waters and detained it. news.err.ee/1609666928/det…

Soon after, Estonia attempted to intercept another tanker, the Jaguar. This time, Russia showed its hand. A Su-35 fighter jet scrambled to protect the tanker and confronted the Estonian naval ship - the first time they exposed a direct link between the military and the shadow fleet. reuters.com/world/europe/e…

Russia retaliated swiftly. It detained a tanker, the Green Admire, that had just left an Estonian port, using a route through Russian waters that had been agreed upon by both countries. It's been released later in May: bairdmaritime.com/shipping/tanke…

While the ship-vs-ship confrontations have since cooled, a new, more insidious threat has emerged: spy drones. Dozens of incidents involving drones flying over critical infrastructure like chemical plants, military sites have persisted.

Intelligence sources believe these drones are launched from Russian-linked vessels in the Baltic. Their purpose is twofold: to map vulnerabilities in Western defenses and to psychologically demonstrate NATO's lack of preparedness for a real confrontation.

This is the reality of 21st-century hybrid warfare. It’s fought not on a traditional battlefield, but in the gray zones of international law, using commercial vessels as weapons and plausible deniability as a shield.

Publicly, many European officials still downplay the incidents. Privately, they are engaged in a tit-for-tat escalation involving special forces, fighter jets, and a full-scale NATO military operation.

Russia is treating the Baltic as a battlefield, and using infrastructure, energy flows and ambiguity as its weapons of choice. Europe must tread carefully in responding to this threat to security.

Based on the reporting by the @dossier_center: