Blogathon 13/25: Cables

This is only being covered by the mainstream media as a peripheral item, but there’s a lot going on in Scandinavia.

There’s a GPS jamming/spoofing operation in St Petersburg, and another one in Kaliningrad. Incidentally, both of these operations seem to be using the same spoofing actions I described in my book Tempest. Anyway, the actions of both of these operations have impacted shipping and aviation.

There’s a fleet of Russian shadow vessels (operating under various flags of convenience) which are routinely sabotaging power and telecoms cables which are laid on the seabed across the Baltic Sea. There are dozens of these cables, they are vital links between Finland, Sweden, Lithuania, and Poland.

History books tell us the Cold War ended in 1991, but these actions (the GPS spoofers in St Petersburg and Kaliningrad and the sabotaging of undersea cables) are not those of a benign force.

There are a dozen or so social media accounts (particularly on Bluesky) across Scandinavia that report on the activities of the Russian shadow fleet and they do it in a professional and detailed manner. They produce maps, locations, direction of travel, and even radio intercepts. They’re all a good read, but bloody hell the British media needs to look over the wall at what’s happening in our backyard. The Cold War is still running and, it seems, escalating.