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This week saw yet another incident of alleged submarine cable sabotage in the Baltic Sea. A power line running along the seabed from Finland to Estonia was reportedly disrupted. Western news media have fingered a tanker carrying Russian crude oil as being responsible, with the implication that the damage was caused deliberately.

In recent weeks, there have been other incidents of alleged sabotage of telecommunication cables under the Baltic Sea. On November 17, a data link between Finland and Lithuania was damaged. The next day, on November 18, another internet line lying on the seabed from Finland to Germany was reportedly cut. Both cables were said to have been wrecked by external force.

Germany’s defense minister Boris Pistorius and other Russophobic politicians have insinuated that the alleged sabotage is a form of “hybrid warfare” being waged by Russia and possibly with China’s help in the case of the November incidents.

Moscow and Beijing have categorically denied any involvement in interfering with subsea infrastructure in the Baltic region. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed the accusations against Russia of aggravated damage as “absurd” and, he noted, typically made without any verifiable evidence.

Conveniently, following the latest incident this week, NATO head Mark Rutte is assuring Finland, Sweden, and the Baltic states that the alliance is responding to their calls for more security by increasing the alliance’s military forces for patrolling the sea lanes.

Any independent criminal investigator would easily find credible answers to the question of Cui Bono (Who Gains?).

Cables are cut with unusual frequency (suggesting not accidental damage); the people reporting the damage do so without showing evidence (we are relying on their version); the accusations are basely leveled at Russia without evidence but reliant on Russophobic prejudice; the accusations, in turn, are cited to make calls for increased NATO protection; and NATO duly provides the requested “protection”.

One upshot is that the NATO military is giving itself a license to increase warships, warplanes and surveillance systems on Russia’s northern flank  – all under the pretext of “responding to Russian sabotage”.

Such a move is, of course, part of the long-term strategic attempt to encircle Russia, threaten its national security and destabilize its sovereignty. In other words, this is all part of the long-term geopolitical confrontation between the U.S.-led NATO bloc and Russia, in which the war in Ukraine is but one theater.

The control of the Arctic sea routes and resources is a top strategic goal of the United States and its Scandinavian NATO partners, in particular. Russia has a natural advantage in the Arctic region owing to its geography. One way of tipping the balance of advantage is for NATO to militarize the region.

Another strategic aim is to curb Russian cargo shipping via the Baltic Sea. Tankers operating from the Russian Baltic Sea ports of Primorsk, Ust-Luga, St Petersburg, Vyborg and Vystok provide a vital maritime route for Russian crude oil exports.

It is significant that NATO intelligence agencies are turning their attention to cutting off Russia’s oil exports via the Baltic Sea. There is huge consternation, as our columnist Ian Proud alluded to last week,  among Western enemies that unprecedented economic sanctions imposed over the last decade have failed to cripple the Russian economy. Indeed, far from it, Russia’s economy is powering ahead, partly because its oil and gas exports are finding alternative world markets to the traditional European ones which have been cut off by their unilaterally imposed sanctions against Russia.

A telling headline in European Pravda (a CIA-sponsored propaganda outlet) was this: “Why the EU still fails to restrict Russian oil exports and what should be done instead”.

The article went on to state: “The volume of seaborne crude oil exports from Russian ports in the Baltic Sea accounts for approximately 60% of Russia’s total maritime oil exports… Sooner or later, the EU or a coalition of Baltic Sea countries, together with Norway and the United Kingdom, will be forced to implement restrictive measures against this maritime oil trade.”

Given the context that the U.S.-led NATO agenda of defeating Russia via its proxy in Ukraine has failed, and given that the Western economic sanctions against Russia have proven useless, it is anticipated that other forms of coercion and aggression are to be sought. Cutting off Russia’s oil and other cargo routes in the Baltic Sea would be a calculated blow.

To make that offensive plausible, the NATO and extremely Russophobic members in the Baltic states of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia, along with the Scandinavians, can reliably be expected to indulge in provocations against Russia to justify a NATO “security response”.

By crowding the Baltic region with NATO forces this would allow for harassing Russian tankers and creating the circumstances for a blockade on Russia’s seaports.

Russia has no motive to sabotage submarine cables in the Baltic Sea. The NATO powers do.

After all, it was the United States that blew up the Nord Stream gas pipelines that ran from Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea. That act of state-sponsored terrorism in September 2022 was cogently reported by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh. The whole point of that sabotage was to damage the Russian and European economies for the strategic benefit of the United States.

Shamefully, no European investigation has been properly conducted to determine the culprit when it is obvious that it was the U.S.

The alleged vandalism of the submarine cables is a return to the scene of the Nord Stream crime. It is obvious that the U.S.-led NATO gains from the latest incidents.

The irony is that while the next leader of the United States, Donald Trump, has taken to threatening NATO members Canada and Denmark (Greenland) with the annexation of their territory, other NATO members in the Baltic region are “crying uncle” to the American imperialist bully for protection.

You could not make this up. But such is the absurdity of the U.S. and NATO imperialist lunacy.