Some local context: Today is "prinsjesdag" when the budget is announced. Protests are common, particularly when sensitive decisions are made. There are multiple organized protest movements in the country that have used physical force in the past and some of them had announced protests for today.
Could it be Russia? Yes. But local protests seem significantly more likely. Moreover, if I were Putin I wouldn't expose my foreign agents this physically. I would use them in much more insidious ways such as actually starting or supporting these protest movements. In a similar vein: Could any shooting in the US be caused by foreign agents? Maybe. But usually there is a much simpler explanation; guns and bitterness.
You are jumping to the assumption that foreign agents wouldn't be exposed, but any willing idiot can be bought to conduct such activity. Recent research in Denmark showed that sabotage comes, most likely, from locals, persuaded by foreign actors.
So two things could be true at once. A local 'protestor', disengaged through some issue (whether climate, farming or anything else), persuaded to join some 'resistance' by anyone.
I don't expect this to be supported by local protesting groups, like FDF or XR, either. Way too risky, media-wise.
https://www.rtvslo.si/crna-kronika/na-zelezniski-progi-iz-ce...
similar thing happened next to a minority area where they put railroad ties (the big wooden things, usually supporting the tracks) on the tracks themselves, and well, that even got politicized for the location reasons.
It seems as if one ambiguates the other.
Zuständigkeitspingpong
competence table tennis
Interestingly this mechanism contributed a lot to Brexit in my opinion, whenever there was legislation the politicians wanted to enact but knew would be unpopular with the voters they'd blame the EU and wring their hands saying there was nothing to be done, while in the background gold-plating the legislation far beyond what the EU was even asking for. This also made it easy for populists to point to many absurd examples of the EU being comically bureaucratic, when a lot of the more nonsensical ones were literally domestic additions. When the referendum happened, the consequences were obvious to everyone.
While no Brexiteer myself, I personally would want to see the European Parliament get a lot more powers and influence before I threw my wholehearted support behind rejoining. Half the problem with the EU is that it's seen as not particularly democratic as a place for legislation to originate, and giving the elected organ more power (including the power to propose legislation in its own right, and dismiss legislation proposed by the Commission with much more prejudice) would go a long way to addressing that I think. The Parliament needs to be more, well, parliamentary in how it functions.
(Some media literally blamed putin because people voted for afd in the recent state election in germany).
https://www.propublica.org/article/donald-trump-jr-wedding-b...
Solovyov propaganda is pure nuclear revenge fantasy: https://youtu.be/dA4RP3uID6Q?is=ApmFQtgZvY7mWajP
It’s so much more likely to be the farmers, but it's easier to blame Putin and do nothing about it than it is to stop ruining the farmers and risk angering the cosmopolitan politicians whose votes in the parliament you need.
I really have no clue what this is supposed to refer to. LLMs with arms and legs, armed with pipes?
Humans are useful, easily manipulated operatives in the medium AIs are conversant in and we already have evidence of agents doing exactly this in arguing for PR requests (likely with prompting by an operator but still).
Anyway, I am surprised the BBC blogger didn't add north koreans and some linked it to porn on the internet.
Basically, the current system works by injecting a small current signal on one rail and trying to sense it on the other rail. A train's axle shorts the rails together, so sensing it means a train is present. Or, in this instance of sabotage, a jumper wire.
ERTMS L2, which is being installed over the next decade or two, primarily uses axle counters and train position reporting, so a jumper won't do a thing. You can still fool an axle counter, but that's rather easy to fix: just drive a known-good train over the section.
What one can do is provide accurate information on the one hand, and maybe flag the topic on the other.
Netherlands is one of the countries that are furthest away from Russia!
And then, there are countries that take much more active stance against Russia - Germany for example. Should Russia send a message it will probably be to the countries that stir shit.
Also, financing ukraine and supplying it with weapons does mean europe is at war with russia yet again!
It makes more sense that this is a continent wide action taken by Russia, considering the similar event in France just a few days ago.
"responsibility table tennis" would be a better fit.
Competence in english translates to the skill side of the word
I am not surprised.
> competence table tennis
Magnificent!
> over 200 incidents of suspected Russian hybrid warfare in Europe between 2014 and 2024 [..] Most incidents (86%) have taken place since early 2022
I hope you're aware of how you're framing this as European choice of entering the war, instead of placing the fault on Russia. Straight from the Russian playbook of always blaming others.
"close to Renault's factory in the town of Cléon", which is now preparing to start manufacturing drones for the French military, in collaboration with Ukrainian military-industrial groups.
https://nos.nl/video/2631081-startkabels-van-spoor-bij-meppe... ("Startkabels van spoor bij Meppel weggehaald")
Fear not! I’m sure the European Commission will promptly ban jumpstart cable ownership without a license.
From what I read, the similarity ends in “both involved trains”. This chain of attacks seems to have used short metal pipes (“Footage published by Dutch public broadcaster NOS on Tuesday showed police carrying what appeared to be metal pipes - about 1.5 metres (5ft) long”) to short a connection, making safety systems signal “there’s a train there”, stopping trains further up the track.
The France incident involved a piece of rails heavy enough to cause derailment (“The rail fragment was estimated to weigh between 250 and 300 kilograms”)
My money is on this being a rogue farmers protest.
Of course more similarity would be a stronger signal, but we shouldn't miss the forest (rail sabotage) for the trees (shorted circuit).
I'm French and I heard nothing of the sort, what makes you think of that?
About rogue farmers protest in France... well, exactly the same problem. They are always agitated by far right agents in special moments, and when people scratch a little, this people always are seen taking selfies and money from people associated with Putin. Farmers still didn't understood that are being used every single time, often again their own interests. See the Yellow Jackets movement for example.
[0] https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdwa/pr/pair-charged-interferin... [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy5zw56lnx3o [2] https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/france-leaning-towards-...
exactly today, a major farmer demonstration was already planned. They way they usually go ahead in the Netherlands is drive with their tractors over the highways towards The Hague, where our government is based. Obviously this leads to massive traffic jams.
A simultaneous disruption of the Dutch railways would add some extra effect to the expected traffic chaos.
44 person injured and a young woman between life and death. Yet when the perpetrators are caught, we'll have journalists and judges relaying the official tune of the EU: "criminals are victims too".
They'll get a slap on the wrist and be able to ruin society again in no time.
When shall the left accept that people putting 300 kilograms of rails to try to kill people has only one solution: shackles and a heavy ball?
Where do you draw the line between "we're all beautiful butterflies" and "some psychos need to be scruffed by the neck and bowed into lifetime submission"?
How many deaths?
It’s near impossible to cause two trains to run into each other (unless you are physically operating one of them), but it is really easy to cause all trains in an area to stop because a cross check or a bit has flipped. In this case, they literally flipped a bit by short circuiting the track circuit.
If done at scale, it is still possible to bypass and run trains safely the old fashioned way. It is less safe, but would probably be the decision if this was happening at multiple locations everyday.
https://nos.nl/liveblog/2631038-nog-steeds-nieuwe-sabotageac... (Use google translate to read)
(I'd assume the BBC reporter to be aware that Prinsjesdag is today, and that they'd mention that fact in this article, but apparently not.)
The day on which the reigning monarch of the Netherlands addresses a joint session of the States-General of the Netherlands (consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives) to give the Speech from the Throne (Dutch: Troonrede), similar to the annual State of the Union in the United States or the British State Opening of Parliament. This speech sets out the main features of government policy for the coming parliamentary session.
Russia may have heard about that annual event as well, of course.
Is "troonrede" essentially just the Dutch pronunciation of "Throne read"?
And troon == throne, obviously.
If the garbage men started dumping the contents of garbage bags in public places I bet they will not be given a free pass.
One has to be an idiot to assume otherwise at this point
> Geray spent several months creating a fictional online persona. Using the alias Katya, she presented herself as a pro-Russian influencer, trying to build a following organically and establish contacts on social media.
> “Katya” posted videos of herself posing in a striped Russian sailor shirt, professing her admiration for Putin, and walking around the Bundestag with a Russian flag. Before long, agents contacted her and offered her unspecified assignments and sent her payment in Bitcoin.
> Geray and other RTL journalists were able to observe the recruitment process firsthand. New agents were initially given simple tasks — taking a photo, picking up a package, or obtaining a SIM card. They were later drawn into more serious operations, though these “disposable agents” knew only their own roles and did not understand the overall plan.
> Jović invited “Katya” to meet. During their meeting, he spoke about his pro-Russian activities and hinted at the involvement of Russian intelligence agencies. Asked directly whether intelligence agencies in Moscow were directing his social media activity, he said, “Nobody knows. Well, I don’t know — in theory. In practice, I do know.” Later, when Geray approached him under her real name as a reporter, he denied taking part in a pro-Russian campaign.
https://meduza.io/en/feature/2026/09/14/an-undercover-german...
Europe is not yet at war with Russia but it will be in time.
We've been dependent on the US for this but this was also by the US' own design. They didn't want many countries to have nukes. So the whole 'Europe is not doing its bit' is not really justified.
We don't need more tanks and soldiers because if we go at Russia like Ukraine does, so many people will die that it doesn't matter who wins. We just need to be able to destroy Russia so thoroughly that they won't think about attacking us, just like they don't attack the US. Mutually assured destruction has kept the world safe for almost a century but now with the US no longer committed to NATO we just need to build our own.
Europe already has a nuclear deterrent.
On the Russian side however they are carrying out brazen attacks in EU member states and crossing air and maritime boundaries.
Whether the EU should respond in kind is a whole other question.
Yet again.
No idea when it would start but there are only two outcomes I can see:
* Russia doesn't use nukes and get flattened. They don't have the troops, material or finances to deploy on even half the frontline.
* Russia use nukes and get flattened (and so does a chunk of EU). French doctrine when it come to nuclear warfare is quite agressive. Not idea how london would react, but major russian cities and/or ressource hubs would see retalations on kind.
I don't know how much support or opposition from the population such actions would have, but people are getting fed up with external threat burning so much of our governments time and attention on external issues (brexit, babysitting trump, russian threat) that internal issues get further pushed to the future.
I would add 'Western-' to that. The Eastern Europeans are keenly aware, have been for years.
- Dutch person.
Russians been messing with your elections, blowing up factories, inducing illegal immigration, destroying infrastructure and openly threatening to turn Europe into a radioactive dust. Meanwhile people: "hopefully investigators find out".
Seriously, this is ridiculous
We’re under constant attacks from Russia… drones, sabotage, cyberattacks, propaganda campaigns derailing our elections…
I’m sick of it.
This case is more plausible than that one was, but not by much. How could the benefit from derailing a few trains possibly justify the risk of A) more sanctions, and B) triggering NATO's Article V? The benefit of these operations is what, slowing trains down by one day? The 2022 sanctions on Russia have lowered their GDP by 6% by some estimates, which is the equivalent of turning the entire Russian economy off for three weeks of the year, every year. The notion that Russia would risk war and/or crippling sanctions to mildly inconvenience a tiny share of rail customers in The Netherlands is simply absurd. Putin makes plenty of mistakes, but he remains a shrewd adversary, and he is certainly not stupid.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Nazi_Germany#National_...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Laws#Text_of_the_law...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Days_of_Repentance
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Day_of_Democracy...
Things are going badly for Russia. The war has lasted longer than the Great Patriotic War against Nazi Germany and Ukraine is actually taking back territory. Over half a million Russians are dead and probably a million wounded. The economy is imploding due to the enormous expenditures (30% or more of GDP is spent on the war). Just like in WWI Russia is running out of men to continue the fight. It either has to give up or escalate.
I believe Zelensky made a big mistake insulting Putin when things were going stellar at the front a couple months ago. By making it personal Putin is doubling down until he defeats Ukraine or Russia is destroyed in a war with NATO.
I was like hmmmm what timeline am I in now?
Do that to the US Navy and you will find yourself the target of a flare too.
> Even the U.S. Navy ships fire warning flares at other vessels when they approach close.
Yes. A helicopter is not a vessel. These kind of monitoring exercises are common amongst both Russians and Americans when operating near each other or their territorial waters.
Russians frequently overfly American and NATO craft. Russia has also been committing acts of sabotage around the world, but more specifically has been cutting undersea communication cables, so they are absolutely worthy of scrutiny.
The Russian Ambassador to Denmark stated that Russia would “thoroughly investigate all the circumstances of the incident”. That's not exactly a hardline statement indicating Russia knows it was in the right.
https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/news/2025/01/research-e...
https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/sabotage-deutschland-bka...
We should assume by default now that every single act of sabotage is linked to Russia, before any investigation even. Then if evidence points elsewhere, we can update the suspect for that single event.
[1] https://apnews.com/article/germany-leipzig-airport-explosive...
Nobody wakes up some day saying I know exactly how to stop a train without being caught. Or: I know exactly were to cut to enter in this restricted area that normal people never had heard about it just to steal a few copper cable here and there (or worse, fiber optic cable)
Random actions are truly random. This acts aren't random. They need instead planning, precise knowledge that is not available to most people, and direction to coordinate them in several locations at the same time
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Leipzig_Airport_drone_att...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Elisa_data_cable_incident
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Russian_railway_sabotage_...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbard_Undersea_Cable_System...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Estlink_2_incident
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_sabotage_operations_in...
And if this is supposed to be war, then by European standards it is incredibly mild.
Edit: some context as I'm looking like a Russian shill now, which I understand. Today is the day that the budget gets announced, and the farmer terrorist organization (farmer defence force) have announced actions - and have disrupted highways by setting bales of hay on fire, and all the disruptions happened where farmer concentrations are high.
Regardless, the situation is dire, and probably either the tankies or terror farmers are being helped by Russian destabilizing forces, it's too early to call this disruption an action from the FSB.
We in NL need to be more concerned about domestic terrorism than the Russians at the moment. Though I'm sure Russian money and bots are involved in some way.
Russia started with the hybrid war psyops shit, they don't get to complain about false accusations.
Could it be Russia? Obviously. But in my opinion the odds are less than a coin flip.
Otherwise you’re just going to continue being what is commonly called a “useful idiot”.
Edit: seeing your other posts, seems like you’re well beyond useful idiot territory and either a Russian agent or plain and simply a troll. Of course it’s always the ones you most expect.
Forcing delays on European trains in special days when a huge number of travelers are expected is the oldest trick in the book. It has been exploited for years and years.
The only way the risk to end in jail by reckless homicide would worth the effort, is that they would had been paid for this work.
And 2) we have a much simpler explanation: Infiltrated leaders organized to direct the masses as sheep.
We had seen this in the Capitol assault (Do you remember the girl trying to sell that laptop stolen in the Capitol to Russian spies?), and in Ceuta (Moroccan police videotaped leading the immigrants), and in Barcelona ("professional rioters" experts on urban warfare coming from Germany for no reason), and every single time this things happen.
And, again, this acts require precise training, skills and moves that normal people never even achieve, but can be found in spades at FSB (or CIA, or Mossad). This farmers seem the only people in the planet so lucky as to arrange everything right at the first attempt. Every tiny detail. Zero mistakes. They should be hired to make software.
I will keep the simpler explanation.
If this is XR, would be very dumb and against their message.
I think it would be of a stretch to actually claim that this specific incident caused loss of life, but it’s possible to see how such wide sabotage, especially conducted over a number of days, could result in compromised emergency services and result in loss of life.
Protests also tend to be more effective if the protesters involved actually make some clear demands about what they want. Simply breaking shit isn’t much of a protest.
And Europa has some deterrent but nothing compared to the Russian one. We have a major 'missile gap' right now.
This is not true. UK and FR have them (probably not enough though). UK/FR definitely wouldn't retaliate if Berlin or Warsaw were to be hit by a RU nuke.
Denmark shares operational intelligence, reconnaissance data, and positional tracking regarding Russian naval assets. It would be ridiculous stupidity to permit a NATO nation aircraft that explicitly admitted it was performing reconnaissance on your military vessel to come close and obtain target data sent to Ukraine to sink your ship. Esp after it ignored radio warnings.
> Russia has also been committing acts of sabotage around the world, but more specifically has been cutting undersea communication cables
Do note that the later investigations did not establish Russian responsibility and investigators found no evidence of Russian sabotage. Refer to WSJ & Reuters articles on this. Can you point me to a specific incident in which Russian sabotage was established ?
Each time Russia is suffering troubles in the war, this events happen; and they happen in clusters. A few models are recycled again and again and adapted to each country. Sabotage to railways and wildfires "caused by climate change" are two of the most popular. Another is sending people to protest and cause trouble in the streets with any excuse, supported by campaigns of disinformation online from some IP in Russian soil. Another was Russia caught cutting marine internet cables. We even may suspect that the lone wolf driving over people or backstabbing people in the streets is another.
Just last week, Ukraine killed two more Russian generals and a colonel. Losing 13 major generals, admirals and lieutenants and more than 42 colonels [1] is not a minor issue in any war. Ukraine also hit again a big refinery to the point of Trump asking Zelensky "stop doing that to refineries". "You are making my friend cry" is implicit. Ukraine is also slowly pushing back Russians in some front lines
Putin can keep doing chest thumping and faking strength in public, but the facts point to that Russia is not doing as well in the war as he would wish.
You may have noticed the huge increase in Russian provocations to NATO lately. Putin risk to be assassinated by his own generals increases with each general killed. He needs to redirect the angry towards an external target, and is desperate for a NATO move that would justify him (legally and in the eyes of Russians people) to start a major mobilization soon after the Russian elections that start in two days.
So expect more events like those in Europe in the next days, and maybe some dumb move of Trump to destroy another good thing in US, with the clock ticking before he turns into a burnt out asset.
-----------
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Russian_generals_kille...
It's important to note that AFAIK nothing in this direction has been proven. After the attack, some people claiming to be part of Vulkangruppe claimed they did the attack, but it's all just claims.
Also important to note: the Vulkangruppe's letter mentions JD Vance, but spells the name "Vans" - almost like the authors usually write/read about him in Cyrillic texts.
- Extinction Rebellion and other environmental groups always claim the action pretty quickly and openly in NL.
- If you look at the locations of sabotage, it’s all close to the ‘farmer heartland’. Most left-wing and environmental groups would do it in the randstad.
Most likely it’s farmers. They announced very heavy protests today and also burnt hay near highways to create smoke clouds. Possibly nudged by Russian operatives because the like to sow dissent.
But we’ll see.
No, I'm pretty sure this would have been a farmer splinter group. The last time they protested with tractors on the motorways it caused a deadly accident, they won't be getting away with that anymore. So they'll be looking for new ways to protest.
Also, today was Prinsjesdag, similar to the state of the Union in the US. It was a day to expect local protests. Nobody in the Netherlands thinks Russia is behind this.
I don't know enough about dutch politics but in my country if the blue collar anti-regulation people wanted to annoy the white collar pro-regulation people without annoying other blue collar people stopping the trains would accomplish that pretty handily.
>and definitely not in a way that could result in deaths.
They laid pipes and jumper cables across the tracks causing the signals to be red.
EDIT: I can't find an example for aircraft though - possibly because the US Navy just shoots down aircraft who come close. :). Famous example: Vincennes shot down Iran Air 655, killing all 290 people aboard.
If you add the qualifier of a "neutral" nation, then please note that Denmark is not neutral. Denmark provides extensive, long-term military support, target-intelligence, operative training, weapon supply along with financial support to Ukraine.
Permitting a Danish aircraft that explicitly says it is performing reconnaissance on the Russian ship to come close means that Ukraine will immediately get full target data to sink the ship later.
No, the USN generally does not shoot flares directly at people, but just near them, because i expect them to be professionals and aware of the damage a flare can make when it hits a helicopter and sets it alight...
> he US Navy just shoots down aircraft who come close. :). Famous example: Vincennes shot down Iran Air 655, kill
Ok now im sure that you are a russian troll. You have one (1) example from decades ago. Russia/Iran downed 3 in the last decade alone and a lot more during the cold war...
And the US took responsibility and made improvements to make sure this wouldnt happen again. Russia denied the KAL007 shootdown, Russia still hasnt taken responsibility for MH17 and Iran used bulldozers to bury the evidence of Ukraine Itl Air 752 in 2020 and would have never taken responsibility if it wouldnt have been filmed by hundreds of people...
And Arming Ukraine IS the neutral position because good people support victims of aggression.
I could see an activist naïvely thinking that this would sever that one power plant from the grid, making a clear anti-fossil statement. Still a bit of an odd choice (it's gas-powered, Germany has far dirtier lignite-powered ones), but not unthinkable.
I appreciate that you know what is happening near you and in your homeland. As the snowclone could go, "think locally, speak globally"? My epistemology in this regard is unfortunately limited to concrete measurements, such as the Earth's orbit around the Sun.
The English Wikipedia is such an unreliable source, that I could not even be certain whether Mary of Hungary was born in 1505.
I am sorry that I have allowed the bigger picture, or mere coincidence and happenstance, to cloud my opinion of your yearly ceremony and the annoying disruption to your daily commute.
"History may not repeat itself, but it does often rhyme." -- unknown
They have a whole political doctrine about it. It's crazy identity politics.
Part of Putin's war on Ukraine is that he doesn't want them to think of themselves as European either (although they obviously are).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasia#Russian_geopolitical_i...
In some cases, if the action is a bit too effective, you might even want to avoid it being pinned on you. Al Qaeda occasionally refused to claim ownership of things they very plainly did, and the Russians do it very often (e.g. when they shot down a Dutch passenger plane a few years ago).
Some of them already dumped asbestos on highways, which to me is beyond what any reasonable person would do.
For context: it's "Prinsjesdag" in the Netherlands which is when the budget is announced, and there are major changes to agriculture subsidies.
The only thing that is probably something else is that guy from the last week shooting wires over transmission lines (lone wolf ecoterrorist), and the Nord Stream explosion which likely was Ukrainian.
Anyone blathering about "the far left" is probably either far right or a Russian shill.
You are right in the sense that there is likely an underlying meddling causing these farmers to act this way. It does not excuse their actions.
Last that I checked, Dutch farmers are in an existential struggle with the government. I wonder how Russia disinforms them.
Edit: Seeing you're profiteering from the war [0], case closed I guess.
[0]https://sevenseed.eu/ "Seven Seed is a Brussels-based group dedicated to empowering the European startup ecosystem, focused on the technologies that matter most: Artificial Intelligence and Defence."
(I mean, I know exactly what’s wrong with you… but you get my drift)
Why derail trains though, especially in regards to the latter? Given it's one of the most environmental ways for transportation. Besides, groups like that tend to want to take responsibility, the whole point is to get attention to their groups.
Throwing paint at a painting does not help the environment, but it does create radical flank effects.
Blocking the highways does not help agriculture, but it does bring their problems in other people's home / discourse.
Look at photos from these events you refer to, people are proudly holding banners and signs here, not trying to be anonymous and flee from police and intelligence services.
Have you never participated in political activism yourself, and you have no clue why you'd do those things you cite?
Perhaps this is just as well. If Extinction Rebellion really wanted to take down the entire transport network, they could do so by 'accidentally' touring the big stations with a leaky rucksack filled with lead paint fragments or ground up asbestos tiles, to then tip off the press. This would probably reveal an unfortunate truth, that there was plenty of aforementioned toxins already on the network, from brake pads and paint of yesteryear. Nonetheless, some closure for the guys in hazmat suits would be needed.
But indeed, XR is the least likely subject. They have stopped trains before, but that was a human barricade, and it was a coal train.
This equivocation is noted but not compelling
This was something that people decried about during the BLM and Stop Oil protests, see below for some of the accidents caused by those actions:
>M25 Police Motorbike Crash (November 2022): An Essex Police motorcycle officer was injured in a collision involving two lorries during a rolling roadblock. The roadblock was set up because Just Stop Oil activists were trespassing and climbing onto overhead gantries along the M25.
>Greenpeace bridge protesters blamed for crash on Fred Hartman Bridge https://www.khou.com/article/news/local/greenpeace-bridge-pr...
>Crash data raises safety questions about bridge protests on I-40 https://www.carolinajournal.com/crash-data-raises-safety-que...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025%E2%80%932026_Birmingham_b...
Meanwhile, trash piles up quickly: https://nltimes.nl/2023/02/07/utrecht-garbage-strike-comes-e...
There have been a number of attacks in Europe of the form "deranged person drives vehicle into crowd". I'm sure the police wouldn't sit back and shrug if that was done with a tractor. The vehicle doesn't have magic properties, the driver has police protection.
And how is the "vehicle driven into crowd" even relevant here? Nobody's using these tractors to kill (intentionally), but they're just many and hard to stop.
I mean, they wouldn't have to, they just need to stop cleaning it up. Such an action likely will be given a free pass, anything other than that is strikebreaking which is either illegal or heavily discouraged depending on jurisdiction.
Get some critical media literacy and stop listening to NAFO trolls.
https://www.dw.com/en/germany-news-police-raid-vehicle-of-su...
German authorities believe a militant climate activist was behind a series of recent sabotage attacks on the country's power grid and are hunting for a 48-year-old suspect.
This suspect is now under arrest as also can be read in the following report by The Local (DE):
https://www.thelocal.de/20260908/german-police-arrest-suspec...
* German police on Tuesday arrested a suspected militant climate activist over a spate of sabotage attacks on the power grid that had apparently aimed to disrupt power from coal-fired plants.
The man, partially named in German media as Daniel V., 48, had spent days on the run since the first attacks last Tuesday in Brandenburg and North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) states.
Police in the city of Cologne said Tuesday that officers had "apprehended the wanted 48-year-old suspect near the Weisweiler power plant" in NRW state.
"The man was carrying additional explosive devices at the time of his arrest but offered no resistance," they said in a statement.*
Now that I showed these sources - none of them exactly 'Russian-friendly' as you might know, otherwise read a bit more of their reporting on similar subjects - will you agree that this specific case was not directly related to Russia? That these 'climate extremists' do not need to be directed by the FSB or GRU to attack their own country's infrastructure because they have somehow convinced themselves that their 'climate activism' is a good cause?
After you agreed to this can you also agree to the fact that blindly claiming 'Russia Russia Russia' does nobody a favour, least of all those who want to be able to show where Russia is actually responsible for similar attacks? This is quite important because in the end it is not infeasible that Russia and its Soviet Union predecessor are actually responsible for these anti-Western activities through the decades of support - financial, ideological and sometimes practical - they lent to all manners of activism in the west with the goal of undermining western society.
It’s hard to prove these things of course but you have to ask yourself who benefits most from these kind of attacks and sabotage? Who benefits from a weakened and infighting Europe?
Hybrid warfare is by definition hard to attribute
"There is no proof at this stage to link the flying bomb directly to Russia, which denies any role. But as well as the means and the motive, Moscow does have form. The BBC has seen details of the investigation into a plot in 2024 in which Russian-linked proxies in Poland and Lithuania not only handled drones and explosives but also delivered them to Germany."
One weird trick: simply commit an offense in front of the police, and suddenly they can't do anything because it's "too hard".
So yea I believe and actually support the EI pushing back and helping Ukraine against warmongers who have sacrificed hundreds of thousands of their own citizens on the frontline - for what exactly?
The war could be over tomorrow if they would just let go of their imperial ambitions - but of course Putin wants to immortalise himself as Russian emperor.
If Russia was behind it, this seems like the most likely way they would proceed.
Provide them or stop being so defensive about it, being defensive just shows you got not substance to your claim. Show, don't tell, if you can't show then you might have to do some more thinking by yourself to figure out why you ended up that way.
If one were in a charitable mood, one could think of this as a "just in case" measure of ongoing capability assurance in the event of a broader conflict. In a less charitable mood, one might imagine it as preparation for proactive action. In either case, if you don't do this kind of sub-threshold stuff at least occasionally, you often discover that when a real conflict erupts, the capabilities you thought you had are in fact literally or figuratively rusty. (See the Russian army's logistical debacle early in the Ukraine war for a recent example.)
Most top tier nation states do some version of this; each one has its own style. The Russians are somewhat unusual in that they care less than most who knows or suspects them of this kind of activity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Rainbow_Warrior
>The sinking of Rainbow Warrior, codenamed Opération Satanique, was an act of French state-terrorism carried out on 10 July 1985. The event was described by France as a "covert operation" by the "action" branch of the French foreign intelligence agency, the Directorate-General for External Security (DGSE). During the operation, two operatives (both French citizens) sank the flagship of the Greenpeace fleet, Rainbow Warrior, at the Port of Auckland on her way to a protest against a planned French nuclear test in Moruroa. Fernando Pereira, a photographer, drowned on the sinking ship.
Low level sabotage under the guise of hooliganism wasn't invented in Leningrad.
Bet you didn't see the uno reverso false false flag coming
You have both the desired threat, but no concrete biases for an official response.
Also an uncertainty limits action - it might be a random event, it could even be a false flag.
One of the problem's here is narratives are being spun by multiple actors and it depends on who you believe.
Russia throwing journalists out of windows or paining with Novachok - that’s a “it’s us, you can’t do anything about it, don’t fuck with us” power signal that benefits from “plausible” deniability - you can’t prove it was us.
It would honestly be kind of fair game to sabotage production of drones that would be used against you, even if they're made in a country you're not at war with --- if it wasn't for Russia having a lot of responsibility for that war in the first place (to put it mildly).
No one can prove anything, for example, but anyone knows that people that piss Putin off, need to stay away from windows in high places.
It's like if Russia decided to set off a few fires and explosions in the USA on July 4th. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
It started small, just check this or that, little favor there but soon escalated to proper spycraft. Some other folks reported having death threats against family. Its for peanuts, few hundred euros mostly. They just need to find the dumbest and most desperate folks to commit acts of treason.
It's fair to say that if one jumps in the middle of a fight, they should expect to get punched, but it's also fair to say that for now Russia has been avoiding throwing much in the way of punches.
* That actually happened. It was a false flag operation to discredit the Greens (party).
It is really a rather common playbook of stoking fear and even instigating war not for direct outcomes that has been used innumerable times over history. Only it seems that the majority of people are incapable of seeing, accepting, or maybe just internalizing when they are being played, lied to, and manipulated for the benefit of others at their own expense.
One thing that logic would dictate though is that Russia would be extremely low on the list of suspects since they gain nothing by some minor event like this, are negatively affected in every manner possible by being in any way behind such actions, and they could simply just send barrages of missiles to hit actually meaningful targets if they ever become sick and tired of all the CIA/MI6 clowns thinking they can salami slice their way into conquering Russia and once the Germans and Poles have been whipped up to be the battering ram of minced meat again.
It's why we have so many catastrophic and calamitous events in our history because people never ask themselves who may be benefitting from the act that is immediately used to manipulate people through fear. In spite of having been told and explained a long time ago and many times since, you should always ask you who benefits, cui bono. Russia does not benefit from scaring the populace into supporting the murderous and war mongering governments and the maniacal ruling parasites that control them in order to profit from war as they send your children in to the meat grinder.
Or one could choose not to take this in isolation from all the acts of brazen and identified sabotage Russia does, slashing deep-sea cables in international waters with their shadow fleets, organizing psyop campaigns throughout the entire continent that can be traced back right to their government units, and so on :-)
Implying that Russia somehow invented or is the undisputed leader in "psyops" is a popular hallmark of a low-information civilian, a narrative promoted by arch-propagandists like Peter Pomerantsev and Anne Applebaum.
As many other comments have said, cui bono?
They are known for actions that negatively affect them and everyone around. That's kinda their whole thing.
Even in a relatively intelligent crowd like this forum, people are gullible and easily guided to hate the Other: red ("communists", Russia, China); brown (immigrants, Muslims, Iran); or green ("far left", environmental and civil rights activists). They hate us for our freedoms!
Be afraid, people, and keep funnelling billions of your tax money into the pockets of the rich who profit from literal conspiracy, mass murder and war crimes. No wonder we have endless conflict and fascism on the rise around the world. There's so much money to be made from war and hate, defrauding the public for generations.
How can we not see it, it's the same playbook again and again. One day we will have to face the true evil, the traitors of humanity, the enemy within.
The system is already unstable due to the rampart growth of wealth inequality, especially after covid, disproportionately affecting the purchasing power and CoL of the working class, while those with assets have seen their wealth ballon. All orchestrated by EU politicians and the ECB currency inflation policies and and allocation towards banks and corporations who spent it during covid on assets and stock buybacks and left the working class footing the bill with inflation and mass layoffs years later.
The EU elites are already worried about how they can manage this bottled anger of the working class, which is why you see more and more draconical EU "chat control" and "speech control" laws trying to get passed. Pointing the peasants to vent their anger towards Russia as the scapegoat, for the fiscal irresponsibility of the EU elites that lead to the current wealth disparity, is a good way for the EU elites to avoid the angry mob.
After all, most of the wealthy European elites and nobles didn't lose their wealth after WW1 and WW2 even though millions of peasants died.
1. If France is a sabotage-justified enemy, then so is the US, which provides some intelligence to Ukraine.
2. In the other direction, Russia has been giving targeting information and weapons to Iran to attack the US forces. So if they're the enemy of the US, then certain members of the current Republican administration may have to tone down their "aid and comfort" for Russia lest it mean future treason charges.
And China has sent Iran anti air missiles and provides Russia and Iran with targeting data.
And North Korean troops all over Russia...
It's a shitshow.
random vandals -- that's just local scumbags being scumbags. These things happens, no need to start WWIII
The latter is exactly what the western world did in 2014, and its why we have this much larger war now.
Only the first 99 passes over the cables were accidental, then the anchor grabbed the two cables finally
Lol who claimed it was an "accident"? Most likely it was disgruntled Ukrainians with just enough resources and skill. And they did great work.
Anne Applebaum is a historian not a "propagandist" lol
If Anne "it's okay to kill journalists in wartime" Applebaum is not a prominent Western propagandist, then who is?
I suspect this is why there's endless stories, in pretty much every country, of dissidents handing over information to 'enemy states' who are in fact just domestic law enforcement. These people glow to everybody, and no foreign power's going to touch them.
Germany is now finding out the answer to that question, and I expect it's mere foreshadowing for much of the rest of Europe. The exact same happened with the Soviet Union. Gorbachev grew up during the Stalin years, alongside all of the joys that entails. He smiled and nodded all the way until he was at the top in power, at which point he almost immediately set about undermining the systems that had been in place.
That is still bizarre to me, how it was the media mainstream.
"hei cmon im just atacking my neighbor its fair game, what else should i do"
> Let's say I [the Netherlands] pay [!?] someone [Ukraine] to punch you [Russia] int the face every day. Then one day when you [Russia] punch me [Ukraine] in the face do I have a right to complain?
Ukraine is defending itself, and nobody is paying Ukraine to do that. Russia is the aggressor here. It's weird that I need to point that out. We're talking about Russia sabotaging someone for selling defensive capabilities to Ukraine. So a better analogy is this:
Let's say I punch you in the face every day. Then one day you buy a baseball bat from Gart Sports to defend yourself, so I go in and punch the manager of Gart Sports. Am I in the wrong?
Yes, very obviously, when you frame the analogy correctly, you are in the wrong.
But, you can and should fault Russia for getting into that position in the first place, that their neighbor is attacking them back with drones.
Can you answer my question?
That would be enforcing international law, not pushing for war.
Different countries work differently. What would work for russia would not necessarily work for the USA.
With you up until there. There's nothing defensive about drones. Retributive capabilities certainly, pre-emptive capabilities maybe, but absolutely offensive capabilities, not defensive ones. Attacking Russia back was a line that was definitively crossed in May 2024. You may argue it was justified, but not that it wasn't attacking. In terms of that stupid punching analogy (which wasn't yours to begin with, I know) this is going over to your bully's neighborhood with that baseball bat.
Why? EU countries have shown time and time again they won't do anything. I mean for God's sake, Russia was caught sending THREE remote controlled flying bomb on a German airfield, with another one found by a passerby before it was launched.
They contained professionally made Russian explosives. There is no doubt who did it. This was not the first, or the 10th time they got caught. I mean Russia murdered someone in the UK with polonium, for God's sake.
The idea that the Kremlin is worried in the slightest that you can prove it's them is absurd. They leave their fingerprints knowing there will be no reaction.
I mean they are. That is the reason they haven’t sent balistic missiles to the same airfield. They could have sent the same agents who placed those drones to the fence of the airport with a shoulder mounted missile and shot down the planes as they were departing. Or even shoot them down on the ground.
Or similarly they could send a submarine and disrupt the railway services of the Netherlands with missiles from that.
Those would be clearly attributable actions which trigger an immediate military response. That is the reason why they don’t do them.
You look at the actions they take and conclude that they don’t have any restraint or worries. But you should also be looking at the actions they could have but did not take to see that they are in fact restrained and probably quite a bit worried. If they werent they would play the game differently.
This compounds because NATO needs to act collectively to effectively act militarily (maybe Poland could go it alone).
Do they? Why? They're already in a stalemate of a conflict, why would they want more fully-mobilized enemies?
The goal is to ensure all reasonable people know, while keeping enough deniability that Russian-funded right-wing groups can sow doubt about attribution and response policy’s
They don’t care whether it can be proven in court or by people paying close attention. They care whether it can’t be denied even by their aligned agents in western countries.
Look up how successful the US has been in getting right wing crazy people elected as the heads of state in nearly every Central and South American country by funding right-wing groups, with the exception of Mexico and Brazil (but top minds are working on this).
If you wanted you could claim you have evidence, without having any. Doesn't matter.
"This better stop or there will be sanctions, and if its not within your power to stop it, tough luck" is a valid response.
Whether that's wise is another question.
Here's a recent example where Germany so far claimed that it tied the attack to Russia, but whether that's actually true is anyone guess (since there's little publicly verifiable information released so far): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Leipzig_Airport_drone_att...
It wouldn't be terribly surprising if Russia was behind it, but on the other hand it wouldn't be the first false flag incident of this war either.
First order, maybe. But the clearer the attribution the more political capital there is to act. Just look at the article. We don’t know, and won’t know for a while, if this was caused by Russia or the FDF protestors or who. That is all confusion all kind of actors can use to criticise a government who puts more sanctions on Russia.
In many countries, russia’s psyop tactics do work frighteningly well, and we see this resulting in a renaissance of the far-right, who are explicitly against supporting Ukraine, and explicitly seek the rehabilitation of russia.
Originally Europe didn't want to supply tanks, then it was only short range missiles, then it was longer range missiles as long as they weren't used to attack targets inside Russia - now it's actively supporting doing military strikes deep into Russia, and openly talking about European boots on the ground in Ukraine ( not that they likely didn't have deniable special forces there from the beginning ).
Strategically it's not in Russia's interests at all to have a wider escalation right now - they have their hands full. Any Russia sabotage is a direct response to missiles and drones using Western technology blowing up warehouses and oil installations deep inside Russia - widening the war is not in their interest or their aim here - they are trying to deter that.
There is the wider question of whether Russia's long term goal is to take back the old soviet states bit by bit in a way that doesn't trigger a full response - but I'd argue there is already a clear red line there - and that's the Nato border.
Just because the US does something bad, does not mean others don't do 100x worse. In both meanings of the word.
I thought I loved Red Dawn, I rewatched it recently, it's really stupid.
But that leaves us back where we started doesn't it? If it's fair game to attack civilian infrastructure which was used or could be used to make the weapons you are getting hit with - then why should it make a difference if it's in the Netherlands? Or in China for that matter? I'm pretty sure that if Russian weapons were made in a state technically not in the conflict (say Belarus), that wouldn't stop Ukraine from sabotaging them.
I'm not denying that Russia was the initial aggressor. I am saying enough lines have been crossed that we really can't fault Russia if they wanted to sabotage weapons production in the west.
Ukraine has not attacked Iran.
So you might be “pretty sure”, but to me it looks like you’re just wrong.
35% pensions (usually also has some health care here)
35% social security and health care
15% education
15% everything else, roads, bridges, government buildings, ... (army is in here @ maybe 5%)
They're also drowning in debt, of the non-tiny, only Germany does better than the US. So they can't realistically borrow to finance this for 5 years. They're trying to cheat, and treat the EU like a separate country (meaning get investors to treat the EU as a separate state that is not on the hook for the debt of member countries but levies it's own taxes, then borrow against that, but EU countries are cheating, for example using money the EU borrowed for military purposes to fund general expenses like fixing roads)
If the EU countries mobilize the army will go to 20-25% of government expenditures easily.
That means either pensions or social security HAVE TO go down 15% (or 7.5% each). That will cause a revolt since a great many people can't survive like that. At that point there will be no choice for a lot of people but to tear the government down.
That may be the plan of course.
Lol, no, not by themselves no. But in case you didn't notice, Ukraine's most powerful ally did.
Ukraine totally would attack Iran's drone production capabilities, if they could and didn't have other options/more pressing things to do.
And the same goes for them as for Russia, you couldn't blame them for it if they did.
Who are you talking about? Surely not Trump.
If you are… what planet are you living on?