From the Telegraph:
"Russia is spying on Nato. We can’t do anything to stop it
Putin exploits weak maritime laws as West threatened by surveillance and sabotage
At one level, European defence officials insist, the case against the crew of the Eagle S was unimpeachable.
For more than six hours on Christmas Day last year, the ramshackle oil tanker deviated from established sea lanes and dragged its anchor along the seabed for more than 50 miles, severely damaging five cables carrying power and data across the Gulf of Finland.
When Finnish special forces boarded and seized the vessel, believed to be part of Russia’s shadow fleet, the crew responded with wide-eyed innocence.
It was mere coincidence, they swore, that the ship had altered course to pass over a narrow corridor of critical undersea infrastructure clearly marked on nautical charts.
And it was simply a misunderstanding that, when challenged, they claimed their anchor was secured and they had failed to notice the drag that slowed the vessel to a crawl.
Personnel aboard the Eagle S have form when it comes to wounded bewilderment. During earlier inspections in Danish waters, crew members were reportedly at a loss to explain the presence of suitcases containing specialised equipment capable of monitoring Nato ships and warplanes – or the identity of a mysterious, unlisted passenger with no apparent knowledge of seafaring.
It remains unclear whether suspicions that the vessel had also been deploying seabed sensors in the English Channel – to spy on British submarines and map the UK’s critical undersea infrastructure – were ever put to the crew. It is, however, a safe bet that they would have denied it.
In October, however, the Helsinki District Court dismissed criminal charges against the crew – two Georgians and an Indian – in a ruling that has unsettled European governments, who fear it amounts to an open invitation for Russia to unleash anarchy at sea.
The judges ruled less on the merits of the case than on jurisdiction. The suspected sabotage had taken place not in Finland’s territorial waters but in its exclusive economic zone.
Under international maritime law, they held, the crew should therefore be tried not in Finland but by the state under whose flag the Eagle S sailed: the Cook Islands.
A sparsely inhabited archipelago in the South Pacific, the Cook Islands are better known for coconut palms and turquoise lagoons than for waging hybrid warfare against Nato.
The Polynesian state had merely – if controversially – lent its flag to a vessel suspected of being part of Russia’s sanctions-busting shadow fleet, used to transport energy exports and wage a “grey-zone war” of espionage, sabotage and intimidation against the West.
Russia, Western officials argue, has been able to exploit weak and outdated maritime laws to threaten and undermine Europe. Moscow could now escalate its campaign following the collapse of the Eagle S case, emboldening shadow fleet vessels to ignore orders to enter territorial waters for inspection.
“It sends a rather chilling effect to coastal state authorities,” said Alexander Lott, a specialist in the law of the sea at the Arctic University of Norway.
“Next time we have an anchor-dragging ship making its way through a maritime area which is full of critical underwater infrastructure, it may simply refuse to comply and continue in its way and continue dragging its anchor.”
Law is ‘really, really weak’
For decades, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) has underpinned international maritime order, protecting freedom of navigation on the high seas and guaranteeing transit through choke points and territorial waters.
Russia is now accused of turning those protections into a shield. When vessels operate outside territorial waters, UNCLOS – which is notoriously difficult to amend – gives Nato limited power to intervene, even if ships are spying on undersea infrastructure, sabotaging cables or launching drones at the behest of a hostile state.
“The legal frameworks we have to be able to board ships on the high seas are really, really weak,” Adml Sir Keith Blount, the alliance’s deputy supreme commander Europe, told the IISS Manama Dialogue security conference last month. “In ports it’s easy. In territorial waters it’s easier. But on the high seas it becomes very, very difficult … as the Finns found out.”..."
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Apparently the correct move is not to arrest but to submerge these vessels - and I would not mind if no efforts are wasted in rescuing their super innocent crews.
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