Recently heard a podcast about this. The current law about international waters was made before sea cables became widespread. So it just doesn’t contain anything useful about sabotage acts like this.
The only way to do anything is by suing the country under whose flag the ship is registered at the sea court in Hamburg. But it’s not like the random countries that those ships are registered under would care much. Usually these are small island states that are cheap in terms of taxes, and don’t care much about European cables.
Well, if it is small island statea with lots of ships registeres to them, the EU seizing all ships under that flag until the relevant countries end the shenanigans happening under their flag, would exert a lot of pressure quickly.
It is a terrible system of dodging reslonsibilities like you have pointed out. It should be abolished towards ship registrations fitting the actual commerce of the nations.
It’s just we let international shipping become a tangled mess under US driven deregulation, and as long as it’s just basic worker and human rights of sailors were affected we didn’t give a shit, but now that this Cold War II idiocy is coming, it’s biting us in the ass.
It’s like the whole US ideological system and everything that was influenced by it assumed only corporations and the wealthy would be abusing the lack of sensible regulations, not hostile nation states.
The Danish straits are territorial waters of Denmark. As international straits Denmark needs to allow innocent passage, which of course doesn’t include ships that commit sabotage. I wonder if a case could be made to block ships using flags of convenience, since countries like Panama or Liberia allow effective pirate fleets to use their flags, so innocent passage can’t be assumed anymore
The ships that were caught or suspected of doing this kind of attacks all entered the Baltic though the Danish straits.
Theoretically Russia could use the White Sea–Baltic Canal to take the ships to the Baltic, but that would limit the ship size, be more cumbersome, and basically paint a target on the ships as soon as they show up outside russian waters.
Yeah, but we can’t blockade the whole area, that would be unlawful and disruptive as well. And these ships are not “technically Russian”, everyone flies some flag of convenience, so it comes back to the first problem of international shipping being and unregulated wild west.
How long can they keep doing this without some type of significant action being taken? Couldn’t Russian ships be blocked from the canal?
Recently heard a podcast about this. The current law about international waters was made before sea cables became widespread. So it just doesn’t contain anything useful about sabotage acts like this.
The only way to do anything is by suing the country under whose flag the ship is registered at the sea court in Hamburg. But it’s not like the random countries that those ships are registered under would care much. Usually these are small island states that are cheap in terms of taxes, and don’t care much about European cables.
Well, if it is small island statea with lots of ships registeres to them, the EU seizing all ships under that flag until the relevant countries end the shenanigans happening under their flag, would exert a lot of pressure quickly.
It is a terrible system of dodging reslonsibilities like you have pointed out. It should be abolished towards ship registrations fitting the actual commerce of the nations.
It’s just we let international shipping become a tangled mess under US driven deregulation, and as long as it’s just basic worker and human rights of sailors were affected we didn’t give a shit, but now that this Cold War II idiocy is coming, it’s biting us in the ass.
It’s like the whole US ideological system and everything that was influenced by it assumed only corporations and the wealthy would be abusing the lack of sensible regulations, not hostile nation states.
If they lost their ass in fines they might care a little.
It’s international waters, or at most EEZs, so if they did that, it would validate all of China’s shenanigans against the Philippines.
They could bomb Russian oil pipes I guess, but economic instability would get worse.
The Danish straits are territorial waters of Denmark. As international straits Denmark needs to allow innocent passage, which of course doesn’t include ships that commit sabotage. I wonder if a case could be made to block ships using flags of convenience, since countries like Panama or Liberia allow effective pirate fleets to use their flags, so innocent passage can’t be assumed anymore
But this didn’t happen in the Danish straits, it happened near Gotland, far enough from it that it’s not Danish waters.
Or didn’t it? The article doesn’t load correctly for me.
The ships that were caught or suspected of doing this kind of attacks all entered the Baltic though the Danish straits. Theoretically Russia could use the White Sea–Baltic Canal to take the ships to the Baltic, but that would limit the ship size, be more cumbersome, and basically paint a target on the ships as soon as they show up outside russian waters.
Yeah, but we can’t blockade the whole area, that would be unlawful and disruptive as well. And these ships are not “technically Russian”, everyone flies some flag of convenience, so it comes back to the first problem of international shipping being and unregulated wild west.
Which ships would you ban from crossing?
… canal?
The Baltic Canal :)