A NATO plane holds and dodges Russia in the Baltic Sea

The plane of the French naval patrol fell rapidly through the clouds, leveling 900 feet above the Baltic Sea, practically skimming the waves. The target was a Russian war ship, which came to view on the port side of the plane, dark gray against a light gray horizon.

The plane, an Atlantique 2 of the French Navy, was designed to hunt underwaters and other enemy naval trades, but on this day its bay of the torpedo was empty and its only weapons were a high resolution camera and other sophisticated surveillance tools. The goal was to observe and be seen observing.

“We must show that we are here,” said Romain, a commander and member of the crew of the plane.

Never completely quiet, the Baltic Sea, with a coast heavily militarized by the Marine of Northern Europe and Russia, has become an increasingly tense theater in the conflict between Moscow and West. Later on the patrol, the Russian forces attempted to ink the GPS of the plane and, at a certain point, another Russian war ship blocked on the plane with the radar, a warning that could open fire. Russian naval ships and a submarine were visible in the sea below.

But the main reason why the French naval plane was patrol was underwater. Three times in the last year and a half, commercial ships have been suspected of having damaged the critical submarine communication cables and a gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea. European officials fear that these were acts of sabotage, with the Kremlin seen as the main suspicion, although finding concrete tests has proved difficult.

In response, NATO has announced in January the beginning of a new program called Baltic Sentry, increasing the marine and aerial patrols of the Baltic Sea. Although mostly entrusted to NATO members with Baltic coasts, as Sweden, Finland and Poland, the French and the British also participate, together with the US Marines lined up in Finland.

At its beginning, Baltic Sentry has been greeted as an example of NATO renewal and so far the mission has continued uninterrupted. This is despite the frequent attacks by President Trump at the 76 -year -old military pact and his friendly openings with the most noisy opponent of the alliance, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

Since the beginning of Baltic Sentry, announced days before Trump came in office, no further cases of suspicious sabotage in the Baltic Sea have occurred, although officials warn that the mission is still at the beginning.

“It is indicative of the ability of the alliance to respond quickly to this destabilization”, the American Army General Christopher G. Cavoli, the supreme allied commander of Europe, said of Baltic Sentry in January, “and shows the strength of our unity in front of any challenge”.

Although you feel officially Baltic is not directed against any particular country, Russia is clearly in the lead. This was evident throughout the patrol of this month aboard the French naval plane. At the beginning of his patrol, the plane dived to observe the movements of the first Russian war ship he met. There is little desire to provoke the Russians, Romain said, the commander lieutenant, even if things intensify things occasionally. By precaution, a parachute member is issued to each crew member if an evacuation is needed in mid -air.

“It is a touchy situation,” said Romain, speaking on condition that only his name and rank are used according to the French military rules.

During the 14 -hour mission, about a dozen crew members put themselves in a narrow fuselage with a series of computer monitors showing satellite and radar data. The plane took off around 6 in the morning from a French airport, crossed the length of the Baltic, from the northern coast of Germany to the mouth of the Gulf of Finland, then returned.

But it was the naval base of Baltiysk, the headquarters of the Russian Baltic fleet, which was the center of the entertainment of the crew. The plane had only been based on the Russian Kaliningrad, for a few minutes when the instruments on board began to show signs of GPS incende.

Below, a Russian attack submarine and several rips have sailed the waves. A crew member used the plane’s camera to enlarge ships, while another brought a heavy reference manual of known naval boat that tried to identify them. The camera also enlarged on the base, where more trades were anchored.

At one point, the target radar of a Russian ship blocked briefly on the French plane, which remained in international waters. Although this could be an indication that the ship was preparing to shoot, the crew members said it was probably an attempt to evaluate the altitude of the plane. In any case, the French military then expressed indignation.

“This intimidation is part of unnecessarily aggressive actions that hinder freedom of navigation,” said a message published in the X report of joint staff of the French army.

From the vast in the vast scale of Ukraine Russia in 2022, Europe has fought on how to respond to a series of unusual events, including suspicious attacks and fireproof explosions, as well as murderous plots, that intelligence services are increasingly evaluating to be part of a Kremlin sabotage campaign. Although the Kremlin denied that its agents carry out sabotage, The intelligence officials revealed Last autumn that the fires in two DHL shipping hubs in Great Britain and Germany were part of a Russian conspiracy to put incendiary devices on board the loading planes.

It was the cutting of the submarine cables in the Baltic who eventually pushed NATO to act.

At the end of December, the Finnish Commandos descended from helicopters and seized the control of a oil tanker called Eagle S, that the officials suspected had cut the electrical cables and data that connected Finland and Estonia. The robust military response followed similar episodes of civil ships that damaged submarine cables. A month earlier, a Chinese mass vector called Yi Peng 3 had been forced to anchor in the Baltic, suspected of having marked two cables in submarine optical optic. This had resembled a case for a year earlier, when a mercantile ship blocked by Hong Kong seemed to damage a pipeline between Finland and Estonia.

No concrete tests have emerged that indicate that the crews of the ships intentionally damaged the submarine infrastructure, not to mention the fact that the Kremlin ordered them to do so. The ships were all marked in different countries – although no one in Russia – had different owners and headed in different directions. In other cases, an initial suspicion of sabotage was not born. In January, the authorities seized a suspected load ship of damaging a communication cable that connects Sweden and Latvia. The investigators later established that the bad weather combined with a poor navy probably caused the damage.

What connects the other cases is a modus operandi: everyone seemed to have dropped the medium -sized anchors, dragging them along the bottom of the sea in order to damage the critical infrastructure.

Shipping experts say that it is very unlikely that crew members may not agree and face it immediately. That connection was sufficient to convince some leaders who had occurred something more harmful than a simple negligence.

“We should keep in mind that Russia is not omnipotent; it cannot do everything,” said Juha MartiLius, head of the intelligence of Finland, in television observations in January. “But it can do a lot, and therefore it is important for us both nationally and in international cooperation to be vigilant on what happens in the Baltic Sea”.

The Kremlin rejected the accusations that Russia was behind a sabotage campaign in the Baltic Sea as “absurd”.

Military and shipping experts have largely praised the Baltic Sentry operation, although some said it was too little. The Baltic Sea is vulnerable given the access of Russia through different ports, but it is also, many underline, “a born lake”, played by eight alliance members and therefore much easier to guarantee. It is more difficult to protect the critical infrastructures elsewhere, in particular the North Sea with its wind farms and oil infrastructures, as well as the cables that cross the Atlantic Ocean from the coast of Ireland.

Baltic Sentry also does very little to interfere with the so -called Russian shadow fleet, a collection of older oil tankers who, say the western officials, the USA Moscow to transport Russian crude throughout the world. The fleet is essential for Russia’s ability to finance his war in Ukraine and the western nations have been largely unable to do anything about it. An exception was the ship that the Finnish Commandos commanded in January. The officials said He brought the distinctive features of the shadow fleet ships.

“Russia is using a shadow oil fleet to make its revenues and circumvent sanctions,” said Justin Crump, CEO of a private intelligence company, Sibyllina and a maritime security expert. “We know they are doing it, we know exactly how they are doing it and yet we are not allowed to stop it. If we were serious, we would stop it. This is the missing ingredient.”

On board the French Atlantique 2, Romain said, the crews have closely monitored ships suspected of operating as part of the shadow fleet, but he recognized that there was little that the military could do if not to look at them.

“There is no procedure to stop them in international waters,” he said. “There are no specific agreements to get on board.”

In points during the patrol, the captain of the plane received news on the ships that behave suspiciously. One had recently left the Russian port of Us-Luca and another was directed to Primersk’s Russian port. In any case, the captain contacted the ships and questioned them on their journey.

“Are you aware of the activity of NATO Sentry Baltic?” The captain asked each of them, so he asked if someone had seen a suspicious maritime activity.

Everyone has the same response to RadioDile: No.

Johanna Lemola Reports contributed by Helsinki, Finland.