"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.
I don't think they look similar, the synchronicity notwithstanding. The sabotage in France was a 250–300 kg rail fragment (per your link). The objects in the Netherlands look much smaller, and look like they're intended to short-circuit two rails to trigger a signal fault. In one place they found car jumper cables with clamps attached to both rails,
Not asserting this is definitely a Russian op (given the amount of simultaneous farmers' protests and all in NL today), but their modus operandi for foreign operations of this kind involves paying random thugs a few hundred to a couple thousand euros to carry out acts of sabotage using whatever items they have on hand. The items don't need to match, the people involved don't need to know each other.
Correct, this is their exact MO and has been for decades. "Random thug" recruitment notwithstanding, part of the point of such ops is to prove to themselves that they can, in fact, reach out and touch a target - i.e., exercising the entire operational chain from C&C down to the minutiae of execution. A kind of integration test for sabotage, if you will. (Not saying this specific incident is or isn't anything in particular, just commenting on the general MO.)
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.
You don't need a real basis for a response. There's nobody here enforcing any rules.
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.
Well yes technically countries can just attack others. In practice they need to justify those attacks to their allies and populace if they want to maintain the status quo with them. That's where "they started it, we're only defending ourselves" is very helpful.
Right, but you absolutely need the suspicion. If it's too deniable, it rather loses efficacy. It seems in this situation it could be any number of actors, which rather dilutes any intended message.
> The ideal scenario is everyone suspects it's you but can't prove it.
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.
Because being too blatant will galvanize the public and create support for open war.
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.
This isn’t a show of power. Sabotage works best when your target doesn’t even realize it was sabotage. Similarly it’s best if you misattribute blame because then you’re fighting the wrong party and looking for ghosts.
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.
If the main point is slowing/frustrating drone production?
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).
I mean what I said: if you're being attacked by drones, then no one can fault you for trying to sabotage the production of those drones, even if they're made in a different country than the one which is sending them against you.
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.
To achieve what exactly? All the Russians would get from this is BBC warmongering articles and increased resolve of EU politicians.
The latter is desired by Ukraine and by the US, which wants more proxies against Russia.
The only known operation was the Nord Stream sabotage done by Ukraine. I have enough of this. If the US is so desperate to weaken Russia, please attack through the Bering Strait and leave the EU alone.
There was recently this german lady reporter who posed as actively pro-Putin for few months and it didn't take long for fsb/gru to come to her online.
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.
The chances of this being real are basically zero, or Russia would be getting double agented, and reverse intelling themselves, out the arse. Instead all we get are attempts to connect random events, of which there are endless viable suspects, to Russia.
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.
It's odd that you would jump to "Russian op" and hedging by _not_ asserting that it is "definitely" one; but it very well could also be and arguably even is far more likely an act by someone who would benefit form scaring the public and manipulating the affected governments. I'm not going to assert at all, one way or another who it may be because it could be several actors with interests in producing outcomes of fear among the public and animating and manipulating the respective governments and the clowns in the EU to take actions without thinking.
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.
> One thing that logic would dictate though is that Russia would be extremely low on the list of suspects since they gain nothing and are negatively affected in every manner possible by being in any way behind such actions.
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 :-)
\One thing that logic would dictate though is that Russia would be extremely low on the list of suspects since they gain nothing and are negatively affected in every manner possible by being in any way behind such actions.
They are known for actions that negatively affect them and everyone around. That's kinda their whole thing.
The ruling class in Europe needs this war (at least the threat of it) for economic reasons. They're orchestrating and selling it to the public by constant fear mongering and provoking conflict.
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 and mass murder. 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 last thing ‘the ruling class in Europe needs’ is a pan European war! Stability and the system that stability enables is what has put them into positions of power and prosperity in the first place. They actively don’t want outright war and Russia knows this, which is why Russia continually provokes and gets away with acts of sabotage.
Surely there is a lot of Russian-motivated sabotage going on in Europe, but there's another group that might be motivated:
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.
Quite easy to go from a misdemeanor to terrorism charge if you sabotage the train network. IMHO likely those ** farmers causing insane amounts of damage while getting a slap on the wrist every time, that has to end. At least the climate activists only block one highway which you can work around. Unless it turns out it's them. Then they need be treated the same but it's not their MO.
> Just days after a similar (criminal) incident causing a train to derail in France
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.
The similarity is also timing and geopolitical context. It doesn't have to be an identical method to merit the comparison as the means for sabotage can be variable.
Of course more similarity would be a stronger signal, but we shouldn't miss the forest (rail sabotage) for the trees (shorted circuit).
The easiest way to hide the incompetence of local european politics, be it expensive diesel or the upcoming economic prices is to blame it all on russia.
Volkswagen is laying off 100k of workers, because they can't make cars people can afford anymore... blame russia! Germans fed up with merz and vote afd? Russia! Macron doesn't even have 20% of support in polls anymore? Russia! Stub your pinky on the corner of the bed? russia!
It seems unlikely they would let any political divisions or legitimate grievances go unexploited. It is their cultural core competency for centuries. That does not mean the greivances being exploited aren't valid, or that the parties themselves don't aid in the fracture so they don't have to worry about competition with parties whose ideology is too close to theirs.
Edit: This is reductive, Russia has tons of culture besides this trait, but it is the fundamental strategy that allowed a landlocked state with no natural borders to survive and expand. When you learn a strategy to survive or cope with adversity, it sticks long after it is beneficial.
But all those political divisions are a result of national politics of those countries. People want higher wages, less taxes, affordable housing, more recently cheaper gas/diesel, and in the last decade (or more in some places), less foreign migrants. If no other political party will do anything about that, people are forced to vote for Alternatives (intentionally capitalized).
Especially after all the anti-russian propaganda being false ("three days of rockets left", etc.), after double standards ("ukraine is being attacked, we must help them!", vs "israel is commiting a genocide, we must continue selling them weapons", and "iran was attacked by our buddies, let's send nato (uk, etc) planes to shoot down their counterattacks"). Americans started a war that hurts us every time we go to a gas station and no politician even points a finger at them, no sanctions, no nothing.
It's not russia exploiting the divisions, it's the eu governments being incompetent to the levels never seen before, be it local national governments or EU levels (eg. 3eur customs on everything from china, chat control, etc.).
Look at this for example: https://cbnunfiltered.com/macrons-approval-rating-falls-to-h... macron has 16% approval rating, while 81% see him "unfavorably"... how shitty of a politician do you have to be to not step down when 81% of the country hates you?
If the governments listened to what people wanted and did at least something in that direction (again, top paragraph), people would not be looking for Alternatives (again, intentionally capitalized). Since they don't the Alternatives are the only thing left.
The way I see it, both things are true - European politicians and major parties have stirred anger by their incompetence, AND Russia has exploited this anger for their own purposes.
EU has huge flaws, but it's still better than Russia. Germans, French and the British may not understand it, but us unfortunate enough to live next to Russia do. There is a reason why Poland, Baltic countries and now even Finland and Sweden joined NATO. Russia is ruled by evil, murderous tyrants (as is always has been), while EU elite is merely lazy, greedy and incompetent.
I'll choose pro-EU parties over pro-Russian parties as long as EU is not bombing children's hospitals and massacring civilians. I can only hope citizens of other countries do the same, or otherwise there's a pretty good possibility my country will face what Ukraine has suffered.
It's unfortunate that so many alternatives to mainstream parties in big EU countries are also more or less pro-Russian. One should be able to vote against the flaws of European Union without voting for closer ties with Putin.
Yes, and Stalin was Georgian, Kaganowitch was Ukrainian (and orchestrated the Ukrainian Holodomor), Breshnev was Ukrainian and so on.
The alternative parties are not pro-Russia. They want to trade with a totalitarian regime just like we trade with Saudi Arabia. And they'll break their election promises anyway just like Meloni and Trump broke theirs.
All that's being said is, "Russia is known to exploit political conflicts to harm their enemies".
WHY those conflicts exist is irrelevant.
No one is saying it absolutely, unquestionably was Russian interference. Just that it could be. EDIT: OK, at least one person is saying that. But most people are likely thinking, "Well, could be, might not be... dunno."
Why those conflicts exist is actually very relevant when those responsible for them keep using "wawawa russians" as a diversion to avoid doing anything about the issues. If both my local politicians and foreign countries are working against my interests I am going to first vote for better local politicians because at least there I am supposed to have agency.
This is a completely all over the place gish gallop. Both can be true: there's real reporting on acts of sabotage that aren't made up, and there are domestic tensions happening independently of that. The skill is keeping both things in your mind at the same time.
As far as sabotage goes doing it in a way that is disruptive but causes no permanent damage is a bit odd. As a protest, however, it makes perfect sense.
I'm surprised people jump to Russia instead of the radical left. Left-wing environmentalist terrorists attached shunts to rail lines to short out the safety signals back in 2020 in the US [0]. Vulkangruppe has been conducting sabotage in Germany, and a 48-year-old named Daniel V was arrested on suspicion of sabotaging Germany's electrical grid because he hated fossil fuels [1]. The French had left-wing environmentalist terrorists sabotaging the rail network in 2024 [2]. The left has been conducting infrastructure attacks all over Europe this decade, but it's probably more politically expedient to blame Russia.
- 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.
Most consumers know Renault as an ordinary car manufacturer but also worth mentioning it's a major manufacturer of armored vehicles for the French armed forces.
Yes. And in combination it completely rules out the suggestion that the Netherlands attack is some kind of local activist protest. (The France attack resulted in several grave injuries and could have just as easily resulted in dozens of deaths.)
No I agree with that, but if it's "activists" I would expect them to claim credit otherwise it's all pointless. The same doesn't follow for Russian fuckery, IMO.
"Live by the sword, die by the sword", meaning that the Western-European military alliance should also become aware of the consequences of being involved in a war against Russia, there's no hiding behind the bush anymore since they've started doing that. And before anyone starts crying: "These are civilian targets!", which would be true, I'd remind them that the Wildberries logistics centers in Russia were also civilian targets.
> the Wildberries logistics centers in Russia were also civilian targets
They've now hidden the label, but Wildberries carry almost a 1/4 million items tagged "Everything for the SMO" ("special military operation"), so hardly a civilian target. Ukraine has been highly disciplined in going after military targets, other than energy, which of course also feeds the Russian war machine.
There is a big difference between starting fires in a warehouse which gives most people a chance to escape, and being like the Russians who were murdering and raping civilians in Dobas etc, firing missiles non-stop into civilian areas of Kyiv.
Really Western Europe has been ignoring Russia's war for far too long; the MH17 shootdown was in 2014 and the situation has only deteriorated since then.
While the consensus is that it's likely a Russia controlled/allied battery shot it down - I'm not sure anybody thinks it was anything other than an accident, not an intentional act of sabotage.
You cannot ignore war - Ukraine found that out the hard way. Just because you want to be peaceful doesn't mean everybody else does and you cannot stop them from attacking by being peaceful.
Hay here it is: The idiot of the day award. Go move to russia. Hopefully we will send back their millions of "proud" migrants that are swarming Europe still.
My grandfather was a Communist Party member, as was my dad, unfortunately I ended up living in this neo-liberal hell. Which is to say that I had sincerely wished to be a "tovarăș", but those days are by now long behind me.
Of course, the only reason wild berries got hit is because Putin started the war. The only reason why why Russians (and Russian speaking Ukrainians) are dying in large numbers is Putin.
The pro-russian historic fanfiction asserts that "Putin was forced to war or NATO would have expanded to ukraine or something"
There is no conceivable scenario where Russians would have worse safety than what Putin's decision caused. Heck, the long range drones attacking Russia today would simple not exist.
People say trump is Putin's stooge, but honestly Putin looks like a western plant. Nobody else since Stalin has killed as many Russians than Putin.
> also sells to the military... where have you been hiding?
And the Western-built railway system has been used for war/military reasons since its very inception (almost), it's how Prussia got the best over the Habsburgs at Sadowa in the 1860s. One could also say that Tsarist Russia not yet having a rail connection to Crimea just before that caused them to be defeated against the Western incursion at Sevastopol.
One side is primarily targeting civilians and infrastructure, also committing acts of war crimes, other is targeting exclusively infrastructure used by the military.
Yeah, yeah, I know you'd love to paint your comrades as the poor military attacked from the all sides, but we all know had they not invade Crimea and then start all-out war against civilian targets, they'd live peacefully today.
I hope western countries will respond in kind with the mass sabotage acts: disrupting the transportation (roads and railroads are used by the military, per your own classification), pipelines and perhaps more.
russia declared war on whole west (including this open forum) in 2014, if you cared about the topic a bit you would know that. They are not even hiding it, quite contrary. Attacks keep happening basically daily in entire Europe now, thats a text book declaration of war from russia.
They repeatedly declared razing whole western Europe and western world with nuclear weapons, annihilating hundreds of millions. They repeatedly stated their goal is to at least restore former USSR with eastern bloc acting as a shield/nuclear battlefield at all costs, same as it was during cold war.
Then they started their military push, and if Ukraine didn't fight back with everything they had they may have stopped only at Austria/German eastern border (probably West Germany one).
But you should know all this mister troll, don't you. I don't mind, repeating (sad) facts about russia can be a hobby and internet should be full of it.
russia never formally declares war. you can check the history and correct me on this if you can. nevertheless russia has repeatedly threatened to nuke europe.
Russia's biggest asset is general apathy in the rich West. People with names written in funny script that sound like Bond characters shooting at each other a thousand kilometers away is hard to get Peter and Paddy and Pierre and Pontus and Pablo living comfortable lives with comfortable jobs to give a shit about. There's a reason Western governments make sure the media prints stories about intercepting Russian jets.
Bringing the war to them and getting the public to want their government to commit blood and treasure to doing something about it is a ferociously poor strategic decision from the Kremlin. "That Putin killed a 17 year old French girl on her way to school on the train" is unlikely to cause the public in the West to back down.
I don't think that funding far right parties, neo nazi groups, threatening with nuclear holocaust, sending drones into neighbors, occupying neighbors territories, etc is aimed at the "goal of bringing apathy to Western Europeans."
But somehow you're trying to spin it into it's Western governments are the ones wanting to bring war?
You know, the guys that had a huge part of their economy on top of Russian gas? The guys that closed their eyes when part of Georgia was occupied? Or ignored Crimea occupation?
Those people are the ones who watched Russia kill 200 people in the flight MH17 without consequences.
I do engineering on these systems and have some expertise on this particular class of event. We’ve had tabletop red teams, and the general outcome is that rail systems being designed to ‘fail safe’ is an easy target. Failing safe at an individual actual ‘fault’ is still the best option, but it could be abused at scale.
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.
So today's the yearly presentation of the new budget, with protests expected in several places. Whether this sabotage campaign is (part of a) misguided protest action or something else is yet to be determined.
That does mean that I would not automatically jump to conclusions about Russia or war or whatever; since much of national public policy is presented today, it's also a popular day to express disagreement, and apparently some farmers had already announced they would be doing so today.
(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.)
Might be related to today's yearly 'Prinsjesdag' in the Netherlands:
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.
Farmers protesting new nitrogen emissions regulation. They are also setting hay bales on fire next to highways. The rail sabotage is relatively harmless, the tracks use block signalling so if you use a conductive metal bar or jumper cables to connect the rails, the system thinks a train is present and the preceding signal will stay red.
I would be surprised if it wasn’t by Russia. Russian infrastructure is being systematically destroyed by Ukraine with funding, training, intelligence and materiel from Europe. This is an attempt to discourage European support by disrupting Europeans.
Likely organized by farmer protest groups (FDF for example) to protest against emission restriction regulation. They are known for their dangerous stunts, including driving their tractors on the highway and spraying manure on government buildings. These actions are tolerated by the Dutch police, which willingly and purposefully refuses to punish these acts.
Look to Birmingham in the UK for evidence of the same deference. Many have been on strike since 2025. The city was a rat infested public waste dump for nearly 3 months until the government hired private firms to do the waste handling while the public worker strike action continued.
Rubbish. They don't want to. The tractors have license plates, allowing them to be pursued after the fact, and the NL police have firearms if they want to get spicy.
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.
Farmers and right wing people in all of Europe are actively being disinformed by Russian intelligence service and either wilfully ignores it or too incompetent to realize it.
We are all being disinformed, whether it's by a foreign or our own government. This is not a problem unique to Europe, right-wingers, farmers or Russia. The goal is to have us fight while the powerful become even more powerful. It is important to be aware of this fact, it is not just "the other side I don't agree with" that are affected, and thinking of them as willfully ignorant or incompetent is what the powerful would like you to think (infighting is the goal).
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.
Russia spends a huge amount on manipulating western citizens via the internet, let's not play dumb about that. You may not think that it has any effect, but apparently Russian intelligence does.
We're all being misinformed by various interest groups. If you think you're immune and have some perfect understanding of reality, you're kidding yourself.
Ockham's razor may be? Big protests are common on Prinsjesdag, particularly when sensitive decisions or policies are made. A local protest organisation is therefore significantly more likely than an organized foreign sabotage. If I were Putin and had foreign agents in the Netherlands I certainly wouldn't expose them this physically.
Why do people automatically jump to conclusion that it was Russia in the comments? They haven't even released any evidence or investigation yet in official sense.
This is getting concerning. Multiple locations and deliberate disruption suggest this may be more than random vandalism. Hopefully investigators find out who is behind it and why.
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".
If we think about public infrastructure in an adversarial way, the same way we think about software systems; we could say that it's full of critical zero-day vulnerabilities.
Or maybe they do realise it how close it is.
It is not a certainty yet, but we can see russia circling.
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.
Define Europeans - us Poles absolutely understand the danger. In fact I'd say we're already at war with Russia, the way they attack our democracy, our institutions and politics daily. But someone in Portugal might not see it the same way we do.
Yes, obviously - but I'm not sure how that's related. Or maybe actually in fact it speaks of the fact that some terrorist acts within Russia were commited by or on the order of the Russian government.
Little by little, people are realising that Europe is at war. Politicians are trying so hard not to say it because of the implications, but there’s only so long you can keep your head buried in the sand.
We’re under constant attacks from Russia… drones, sabotage, cyberattacks, propaganda campaigns derailing our elections…
It is indeed possible Russia is behind it, but considering a domestic farmers' terror group has told its followers to cause disruption today (as it is a politically-significant day), and those are definitely disrupting highways, chances are good they are also responsible for the railway disruptions.
And if this is supposed to be war, then by European standards it is incredibly mild.
We don't know whether this was Russia, it's just as likely it was the "farmers defence force" or climate activists.
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.
In the case of France it is pretty obvious, they would never attack random people in such a way. They either target public infrastructure or very specific politician/execs properties, not random people, and definitely not in a way that could result in deaths.
>or very specific politician/execs properties, not random people,
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.
no? if you are diligent you can say nothing and people will hopefully attribute it to your enemies and you get off with your own ploy of looking peaceful and harmless
You can claim ownership via restricted channels, e.g. a phone call to key politicians, and rely on their self-interest to keep things quiet while understanding the threat.
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).
Yeah, my bet is on the farmers. The locations where this happened are all pretty rural and farmers have announced havy actions today.
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.
Climate activists are definitely known for disliking fossil fuel plants - and there's one directly next to that.
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'm not defending Russia, it's just that the farmers terrorist organisation has announced major disruptions today and has also set hay bales on fire to shut down highways.
For context: it's "Prinsjesdag" in the Netherlands which is when the budget is announced, and there are major changes to agriculture subsidies.
We've had a bunch of these acts of terrorism in Germany in the recent years. Mostly power, but also train and industrial targets. They all came from the same source, which is very much not Russian.
lol come on, I'm German. Of course a lot of the terrorism was probably (Vulkangruppe) or proven (the DHL and airport incidents, Tiergartenmord, SUV Bauschaum) Russian.
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.
Not really, I do not buy that. Ukrainian intelligence can sabotage train tracks deep within Belarus and Russia. And given how convient it would be to blame Russia here I wonder why they do not.
Yeah, not sure why not at least being upfront about the possibility is so hard. In Spain we've had train derailments, flocks of people being directed on social media to force themselves across borders, subterfuge deluxe everywhere and what not, yet the government is mostly silent and claim it's all unrelated, but it's hard to not also see the parallels across the continent and reach your own conclusions. But then also, don't wanna fall into some conspiracy theory trap either...
Russia isn't the only group interested in doing terrorism in The Netherlands. Recently the Farmers Defense Force and Extinction Rebellion have caused far greater disruption.
Could it be Russia? Obviously. But in my opinion the odds are less than a coin flip.
> Recently the Farmers Defense Force and Extinction Rebellion
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.
You're misunderstanding why they do those things in the first place. You're referencing real activities here, how many of those activities you references people refused to take responsibility for doing?
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?
Please, do suggest this to any of these environmental activism groups and see how they'll laugh at you. You seriously think these people think like that??
Groups such as Extinction Rebellion are easy to steer off course by the state into taking meaningless actions such as gluing themselves to London Underground trains.
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.
I think of it the other way: EU politicians want war but are not able to say it out loud and clear. Instead we get a bunch of "russian sabotage" all over the place with flimsy evidence to back it. Get the simple people into a paranoid state and use it to justify decisions which are already made. Classic FUD.
And the people seem to swallow it.
Yeah mate whatever. Instead of scrolling twitter or whatever, donate some of your actual time to Ukraine and start getting up to speed with what Russia is really doing, straight from the source.
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.
Wont donate anything to Ukraine – hopefully the part of my family from there has managed to bring out their boys. Yes, busification is a thing over there, "mate".
If the useful idiots here in Europe are strong enough to back a political decision to go to war with Russia, I'm out. But you can go and fight, "mate".
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."
And Russia is winning, they already have neutralized if not subjugated the US, but most of Europe is also heading towards that outcome, and fast. Russia is not this near omnipotent 5D chess mastermind behind all of the scenes in all of politics all across the West, but they are terrifyingly good at exploiting existing trends and influencing trajectories just so and they have been at it with great continuity over many decades. It's starting to really pay off. At this point, it's hard to imagine how the next German federal government could be anything else than either a completely dead-on-arrival coalition of polar opposites that only barely hangs on to keep the AfD out of government but will be unable to do anything at all, or an extremely Russia-friendly government the AfD is part of if not leads that is pretty much certain to continue within the EU what Trump started within NATO. Both outcomes serve Russia well, and the establishment has pretty much handed them that opportunity without meaningful resistance.
NATO is certainly weaker with the USA having lost her mind. But Russia seems to have gotten herself into a total quagmire in Ukraine and she is bleeding badly with no end in sight. Nobody is winning here.
It should be noted that today is Prinsjesdag and the new yearly budget is being presented, or however that is properly translated in english. Especially now that farmers are also lighting hay bales on fire next to highways the most likely explanation is nationals doing this
Out of all the ignorant comments in this thread that clearly do not know what is happening in the netherlands and are just assuming wild stuff, you made the most insane one. Congratulations.
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.
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
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.
Putin’s exit narrative requires escalation. Defeat vs Ukraine is a pathetic wound- “we would have won if it weren’t for.. europe” is preferable to narcissistic permanent victimhood.
Well this is natural, terrorism in Europe is almost entirely Russia-originating (and have always been, see drop to nearly zero after 1991 when Russia lost the capability).
Putin must be really happy - whatever happens in Europe, he's blamed for it, making him look omnipotent. Most countries would love to have that kind of power.
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.
Putin became a meme. He's almighty and weak at the same time. He's the Zar, Stalin AND Hitler in one person. He's been cloned at least a dozen times but seems to have a grave illness and will die soon. On the one hand it's funny to watch how people are losing their minds over it but on the other it just prevents a clear dialogue and assessment of a politician.
Sad to see so many people here in the comments jump the gun and think of Russia.
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.
Protests draw attention to your cause. This doesn't draw attention to anything, it is straightforward sabotage. Neither is it in line with how typical protestors operated before.
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.
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.
A similar hijack will soon(ish) become impossible, as the current train protection system will be replaced by ERTMS.
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.
This is very much why I find most people's AI doom scenarios trite.
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).
Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
Yes, and that's one of the reasons politics - which this is - used to be shunned on this site. It is like catnip for those who have an opinion - whether agreeing or disagreeing - on the subject and quickly turns into a mud fight. In combination with the down-voting system on HN this gives rise to a strong and unhelpful herd mentality where those with itchy down-vote fingers quickly make opinions outside of their desired narrative fade to grey. Unfortunately this 'no politics' rule has never been free from bias even before the rise of The Orange Man and seems to have been dropped off the radar ever since. This only serves to increase the level of polarisation, the bitter fruits of which are ripe for the picking right here in this thread.
Browsing through comments I'm not really surprised. It seems like Russia is everything Europeans think about daily.
Guys, your railroads used to work very bad all the way along. Just fix them at last, and ensure safety.
How is Europe attacking Russia? I haven't seen any of our soldiers or jets flying over Russia; We would have flattened St. Petersburg and Moscow years ago if we wanted to. In fact, before Putin's conquering ambitions we were doing a great amount of trade with Russia in a very peaceful way.
The russian shadow fleet, you mean, illegally operating against sanctions imposed for the invasion of a sovereign nation and the use of war crimes? Yeah, they're going to get seized.
Just days after a similar (criminal) incident causing a train to derail in France: https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2026/09/12/french-p...
"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.
I don't think they look similar, the synchronicity notwithstanding. The sabotage in France was a 250–300 kg rail fragment (per your link). The objects in the Netherlands look much smaller, and look like they're intended to short-circuit two rails to trigger a signal fault. In one place they found car jumper cables with clamps attached to both rails,
https://nos.nl/video/2631081-startkabels-van-spoor-bij-meppe... ("Startkabels van spoor bij Meppel weggehaald")
Not asserting this is definitely a Russian op (given the amount of simultaneous farmers' protests and all in NL today), but their modus operandi for foreign operations of this kind involves paying random thugs a few hundred to a couple thousand euros to carry out acts of sabotage using whatever items they have on hand. The items don't need to match, the people involved don't need to know each other.
Correct, this is their exact MO and has been for decades. "Random thug" recruitment notwithstanding, part of the point of such ops is to prove to themselves that they can, in fact, reach out and touch a target - i.e., exercising the entire operational chain from C&C down to the minutiae of execution. A kind of integration test for sabotage, if you will. (Not saying this specific incident is or isn't anything in particular, just commenting on the general MO.)
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.
Exactly this, and also they are trying to keep some deniability here, so variations are good.
Why would you want to keep it deniable? What's the point in this sort of sabotage if nobody knows you did it?
The ideal scenario is everyone suspects it's you but can't prove it.
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.
You don't need a real basis for a response. There's nobody here enforcing any rules.
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.
Well yes technically countries can just attack others. In practice they need to justify those attacks to their allies and populace if they want to maintain the status quo with them. That's where "they started it, we're only defending ourselves" is very helpful.
The response is typically sending diplomats home, cancelling agreements, and sanctions. Something proportional. Not immediate outright war.
Right, but you absolutely need the suspicion. If it's too deniable, it rather loses efficacy. It seems in this situation it could be any number of actors, which rather dilutes any intended message.
> The ideal scenario is everyone suspects it's you but can't prove it.
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.
Because being too blatant will galvanize the public and create support for open war.
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.
This isn’t a show of power. Sabotage works best when your target doesn’t even realize it was sabotage. Similarly it’s best if you misattribute blame because then you’re fighting the wrong party and looking for ghosts.
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.
Because otherwise it would be an act of war. At which point they might as well have just fired a rocket into the country.
If the main point is slowing/frustrating drone production?
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).
what do you mean "fair game"? by the same logic russia attacking ukraine is also "fair game".
"hei cmon im just atacking my neighbor its fair game, what else should i do"
Let's say I pay someone to punch you int the face every day. Then one day when you punch me in the face do I have a right to complain?
I mean what I said: if you're being attacked by drones, then no one can fault you for trying to sabotage the production of those drones, even if they're made in a different country than the one which is sending them against you.
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.
but why are you attacked by drones thats the million dollar question...
Russia is trying to avoid retaliation through stricter sanctions, for example.
They seem to be very good at "mob tactics."
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.
That’s because the distinction between the Russian mob and the government is nonexistent
The windows are entirely blameless. If a window gets near you, it’s already too late, you’re now just a message “pour encourager les autres”.
Doubt is always good.
To achieve what exactly? All the Russians would get from this is BBC warmongering articles and increased resolve of EU politicians.
The latter is desired by Ukraine and by the US, which wants more proxies against Russia.
The only known operation was the Nord Stream sabotage done by Ukraine. I have enough of this. If the US is so desperate to weaken Russia, please attack through the Bering Strait and leave the EU alone.
There was recently this german lady reporter who posed as actively pro-Putin for few months and it didn't take long for fsb/gru to come to her online.
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.
The chances of this being real are basically zero, or Russia would be getting double agented, and reverse intelling themselves, out the arse. Instead all we get are attempts to connect random events, of which there are endless viable suspects, to Russia.
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.
Here's the article in Germany about the incident: https://www.rtl.de/news/russische-spionage-rtl-reporter-unde...
It's odd that you would jump to "Russian op" and hedging by _not_ asserting that it is "definitely" one; but it very well could also be and arguably even is far more likely an act by someone who would benefit form scaring the public and manipulating the affected governments. I'm not going to assert at all, one way or another who it may be because it could be several actors with interests in producing outcomes of fear among the public and animating and manipulating the respective governments and the clowns in the EU to take actions without thinking.
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.
> One thing that logic would dictate though is that Russia would be extremely low on the list of suspects since they gain nothing and are negatively affected in every manner possible by being in any way behind such actions.
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 :-)
As they say, if you want peace then prepare for war.
Might wanna update your facts on that pipeline.
I'm referring to telecom cables in nordic and baltic waters, not nordstream.
I can’t read apparently, apologies
Just like North Stream 2? /s
\One thing that logic would dictate though is that Russia would be extremely low on the list of suspects since they gain nothing and are negatively affected in every manner possible by being in any way behind such actions.
They are known for actions that negatively affect them and everyone around. That's kinda their whole thing.
[Quote] They are known for actions that negatively affect them and everyone around. That's kinda their whole thing. [/quote]
You honestly cannot be that gullible?
The ruling class in Europe needs this war (at least the threat of it) for economic reasons. They're orchestrating and selling it to the public by constant fear mongering and provoking conflict.
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 and mass murder. 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 last thing ‘the ruling class in Europe needs’ is a pan European war! Stability and the system that stability enables is what has put them into positions of power and prosperity in the first place. They actively don’t want outright war and Russia knows this, which is why Russia continually provokes and gets away with acts of sabotage.
Sabotage is sabotage, doesn't have to be the same down to the minutae to be called similar.
Surely there is a lot of Russian-motivated sabotage going on in Europe, but there's another group that might be motivated:
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.
Quite easy to go from a misdemeanor to terrorism charge if you sabotage the train network. IMHO likely those ** farmers causing insane amounts of damage while getting a slap on the wrist every time, that has to end. At least the climate activists only block one highway which you can work around. Unless it turns out it's them. Then they need be treated the same but it's not their MO.
Or the other group, instead of actually being motivated are being influenced by the those who would benefit even more from the distribution of chaos.
> Just days after a similar (criminal) incident causing a train to derail in France
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.
The similarity is also timing and geopolitical context. It doesn't have to be an identical method to merit the comparison as the means for sabotage can be variable.
Of course more similarity would be a stronger signal, but we shouldn't miss the forest (rail sabotage) for the trees (shorted circuit).
Could be also rogue farmers paid by Russia. Easiest way for Russia to cause havoc in Europe is through exploiting existing political issues.
The easiest way to hide the incompetence of local european politics, be it expensive diesel or the upcoming economic prices is to blame it all on russia.
Volkswagen is laying off 100k of workers, because they can't make cars people can afford anymore... blame russia! Germans fed up with merz and vote afd? Russia! Macron doesn't even have 20% of support in polls anymore? Russia! Stub your pinky on the corner of the bed? russia!
It seems unlikely they would let any political divisions or legitimate grievances go unexploited. It is their cultural core competency for centuries. That does not mean the greivances being exploited aren't valid, or that the parties themselves don't aid in the fracture so they don't have to worry about competition with parties whose ideology is too close to theirs.
Edit: This is reductive, Russia has tons of culture besides this trait, but it is the fundamental strategy that allowed a landlocked state with no natural borders to survive and expand. When you learn a strategy to survive or cope with adversity, it sticks long after it is beneficial.
But all those political divisions are a result of national politics of those countries. People want higher wages, less taxes, affordable housing, more recently cheaper gas/diesel, and in the last decade (or more in some places), less foreign migrants. If no other political party will do anything about that, people are forced to vote for Alternatives (intentionally capitalized).
Especially after all the anti-russian propaganda being false ("three days of rockets left", etc.), after double standards ("ukraine is being attacked, we must help them!", vs "israel is commiting a genocide, we must continue selling them weapons", and "iran was attacked by our buddies, let's send nato (uk, etc) planes to shoot down their counterattacks"). Americans started a war that hurts us every time we go to a gas station and no politician even points a finger at them, no sanctions, no nothing.
It's not russia exploiting the divisions, it's the eu governments being incompetent to the levels never seen before, be it local national governments or EU levels (eg. 3eur customs on everything from china, chat control, etc.).
Look at this for example: https://cbnunfiltered.com/macrons-approval-rating-falls-to-h... macron has 16% approval rating, while 81% see him "unfavorably"... how shitty of a politician do you have to be to not step down when 81% of the country hates you?
If the governments listened to what people wanted and did at least something in that direction (again, top paragraph), people would not be looking for Alternatives (again, intentionally capitalized). Since they don't the Alternatives are the only thing left.
The way I see it, both things are true - European politicians and major parties have stirred anger by their incompetence, AND Russia has exploited this anger for their own purposes.
EU has huge flaws, but it's still better than Russia. Germans, French and the British may not understand it, but us unfortunate enough to live next to Russia do. There is a reason why Poland, Baltic countries and now even Finland and Sweden joined NATO. Russia is ruled by evil, murderous tyrants (as is always has been), while EU elite is merely lazy, greedy and incompetent.
I'll choose pro-EU parties over pro-Russian parties as long as EU is not bombing children's hospitals and massacring civilians. I can only hope citizens of other countries do the same, or otherwise there's a pretty good possibility my country will face what Ukraine has suffered.
It's unfortunate that so many alternatives to mainstream parties in big EU countries are also more or less pro-Russian. One should be able to vote against the flaws of European Union without voting for closer ties with Putin.
> Russia is ruled by evil, murderous tyrants
Yes, and Stalin was Georgian, Kaganowitch was Ukrainian (and orchestrated the Ukrainian Holodomor), Breshnev was Ukrainian and so on.
The alternative parties are not pro-Russia. They want to trade with a totalitarian regime just like we trade with Saudi Arabia. And they'll break their election promises anyway just like Meloni and Trump broke theirs.
Calling them incompetent gives them the benefit of the doubt which they do not deserve.
All that's being said is, "Russia is known to exploit political conflicts to harm their enemies".
WHY those conflicts exist is irrelevant.
No one is saying it absolutely, unquestionably was Russian interference. Just that it could be. EDIT: OK, at least one person is saying that. But most people are likely thinking, "Well, could be, might not be... dunno."
Why those conflicts exist is actually very relevant when those responsible for them keep using "wawawa russians" as a diversion to avoid doing anything about the issues. If both my local politicians and foreign countries are working against my interests I am going to first vote for better local politicians because at least there I am supposed to have agency.
> But all those political divisions are a result of national politics of those countries.
Do you claim that Russia doesn't invest in disinformation campaigns against the West?
This is a completely all over the place gish gallop. Both can be true: there's real reporting on acts of sabotage that aren't made up, and there are domestic tensions happening independently of that. The skill is keeping both things in your mind at the same time.
Explosive-equipped drone attack on airport - Russia! Numerous arson attacks on businesses supplying Ukraine - Russia! Country invaded, cities destroyed, tens of thousands of civilians killed, raped, tortured - Russia.
Don't forget the 2014 Vrbětice explosions:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Vrb%C4%9Btice_ammunition_...
As far as sabotage goes doing it in a way that is disruptive but causes no permanent damage is a bit odd. As a protest, however, it makes perfect sense.
>My money is on this being a rogue farmers protest.
I'm French and I heard nothing of the sort, what makes you think of that?
Not the Normandy event, but the NL event.
I'm surprised people jump to Russia instead of the radical left. Left-wing environmentalist terrorists attached shunts to rail lines to short out the safety signals back in 2020 in the US [0]. Vulkangruppe has been conducting sabotage in Germany, and a 48-year-old named Daniel V was arrested on suspicion of sabotaging Germany's electrical grid because he hated fossil fuels [1]. The French had left-wing environmentalist terrorists sabotaging the rail network in 2024 [2]. The left has been conducting infrastructure attacks all over Europe this decade, but it's probably more politically expedient to blame Russia.
[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-...
Several reasons:
- 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.
Most consumers know Renault as an ordinary car manufacturer but also worth mentioning it's a major manufacturer of armored vehicles for the French armed forces.
Yes. And in combination it completely rules out the suggestion that the Netherlands attack is some kind of local activist protest. (The France attack resulted in several grave injuries and could have just as easily resulted in dozens of deaths.)
that's a huge leap
We should see some claim of responsibility if it was indeed anyone other than the usual suspects.
Why? Russia gains nothing from taking responsibility.
No I agree with that, but if it's "activists" I would expect them to claim credit otherwise it's all pointless. The same doesn't follow for Russian fuckery, IMO.
"Live by the sword, die by the sword", meaning that the Western-European military alliance should also become aware of the consequences of being involved in a war against Russia, there's no hiding behind the bush anymore since they've started doing that. And before anyone starts crying: "These are civilian targets!", which would be true, I'd remind them that the Wildberries logistics centers in Russia were also civilian targets.
> the Wildberries logistics centers in Russia were also civilian targets
They've now hidden the label, but Wildberries carry almost a 1/4 million items tagged "Everything for the SMO" ("special military operation"), so hardly a civilian target. Ukraine has been highly disciplined in going after military targets, other than energy, which of course also feeds the Russian war machine.
There is a big difference between starting fires in a warehouse which gives most people a chance to escape, and being like the Russians who were murdering and raping civilians in Dobas etc, firing missiles non-stop into civilian areas of Kyiv.
Really Western Europe has been ignoring Russia's war for far too long; the MH17 shootdown was in 2014 and the situation has only deteriorated since then.
Not sure how MH17 shooting is relevant here.
While the consensus is that it's likely a Russia controlled/allied battery shot it down - I'm not sure anybody thinks it was anything other than an accident, not an intentional act of sabotage.
> I'm not sure anybody thinks it was anything other than an accident
How do you accidentally shoot down a passenger airplane?
You cannot ignore war - Ukraine found that out the hard way. Just because you want to be peaceful doesn't mean everybody else does and you cannot stop them from attacking by being peaceful.
There are certainly consequences in participating in a war against Russia.
There are also consequences in letting Russia take Ukraine militarily.
Whatever you think about the motivations and the desired end goal, actions and lack of actions both have consequences
Hay here it is: The idiot of the day award. Go move to russia. Hopefully we will send back their millions of "proud" migrants that are swarming Europe still.
Civilian targets heavily involved in handling "dual-use" items that the Russian army isn't providing to its soldiers, so they have to buy it by themselves (https://factually.co/fact-checks/business/wildberries-milita...).
...this after Russia has been targeting civilian targets in Ukraine from the first days of the invasion.
Those were downed by Ukraine. Not, that facts matter to Russian bot. Well done comrade.
> comrade
My grandfather was a Communist Party member, as was my dad, unfortunately I ended up living in this neo-liberal hell. Which is to say that I had sincerely wished to be a "tovarăș", but those days are by now long behind me.
Of course, the only reason wild berries got hit is because Putin started the war. The only reason why why Russians (and Russian speaking Ukrainians) are dying in large numbers is Putin.
The pro-russian historic fanfiction asserts that "Putin was forced to war or NATO would have expanded to ukraine or something"
There is no conceivable scenario where Russians would have worse safety than what Putin's decision caused. Heck, the long range drones attacking Russia today would simple not exist.
People say trump is Putin's stooge, but honestly Putin looks like a western plant. Nobody else since Stalin has killed as many Russians than Putin.
its been mentioned ad-nauseam that wildberries also sells to the military... where have you been hiding?
> also sells to the military... where have you been hiding?
And the Western-built railway system has been used for war/military reasons since its very inception (almost), it's how Prussia got the best over the Habsburgs at Sadowa in the 1860s. One could also say that Tsarist Russia not yet having a rail connection to Crimea just before that caused them to be defeated against the Western incursion at Sevastopol.
One side is primarily targeting civilians and infrastructure, also committing acts of war crimes, other is targeting exclusively infrastructure used by the military.
Yeah, yeah, I know you'd love to paint your comrades as the poor military attacked from the all sides, but we all know had they not invade Crimea and then start all-out war against civilian targets, they'd live peacefully today.
I hope western countries will respond in kind with the mass sabotage acts: disrupting the transportation (roads and railroads are used by the military, per your own classification), pipelines and perhaps more.
russia declared war on whole west (including this open forum) in 2014, if you cared about the topic a bit you would know that. They are not even hiding it, quite contrary. Attacks keep happening basically daily in entire Europe now, thats a text book declaration of war from russia.
They repeatedly declared razing whole western Europe and western world with nuclear weapons, annihilating hundreds of millions. They repeatedly stated their goal is to at least restore former USSR with eastern bloc acting as a shield/nuclear battlefield at all costs, same as it was during cold war.
Then they started their military push, and if Ukraine didn't fight back with everything they had they may have stopped only at Austria/German eastern border (probably West Germany one).
But you should know all this mister troll, don't you. I don't mind, repeating (sad) facts about russia can be a hobby and internet should be full of it.
[quote]Russia declared war on whole west (including this open forum) in 2014[/quote]
I dont remember seeing Lavrov delivering a declaration of war to this “whole west” diplomatic core. Got any real sources to back this absurd claim?
russia never formally declares war. you can check the history and correct me on this if you can. nevertheless russia has repeatedly threatened to nuke europe.
Russia's biggest asset is general apathy in the rich West. People with names written in funny script that sound like Bond characters shooting at each other a thousand kilometers away is hard to get Peter and Paddy and Pierre and Pontus and Pablo living comfortable lives with comfortable jobs to give a shit about. There's a reason Western governments make sure the media prints stories about intercepting Russian jets.
Bringing the war to them and getting the public to want their government to commit blood and treasure to doing something about it is a ferociously poor strategic decision from the Kremlin. "That Putin killed a 17 year old French girl on her way to school on the train" is unlikely to cause the public in the West to back down.
I don't think that funding far right parties, neo nazi groups, threatening with nuclear holocaust, sending drones into neighbors, occupying neighbors territories, etc is aimed at the "goal of bringing apathy to Western Europeans."
But somehow you're trying to spin it into it's Western governments are the ones wanting to bring war?
You know, the guys that had a huge part of their economy on top of Russian gas? The guys that closed their eyes when part of Georgia was occupied? Or ignored Crimea occupation?
Those people are the ones who watched Russia kill 200 people in the flight MH17 without consequences.
That's cultivating apathy?
I do engineering on these systems and have some expertise on this particular class of event. We’ve had tabletop red teams, and the general outcome is that rail systems being designed to ‘fail safe’ is an easy target. Failing safe at an individual actual ‘fault’ is still the best option, but it could be abused at scale.
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.
So today's the yearly presentation of the new budget, with protests expected in several places. Whether this sabotage campaign is (part of a) misguided protest action or something else is yet to be determined.
https://nos.nl/liveblog/2631038-nog-steeds-nieuwe-sabotageac... (Use google translate to read)
That does mean that I would not automatically jump to conclusions about Russia or war or whatever; since much of national public policy is presented today, it's also a popular day to express disagreement, and apparently some farmers had already announced they would be doing so today.
(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.)
You'll find the answer in who is organizing these groups.
https://nos-nl.translate.goog/liveblog/2631038-hooibalen-in-...
"Radical Farmer Leaders" are mentioned as stimulating these actions today.
A Russian warship fired flares at a Danish military helicopter in international waters in the Baltic sea too.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwn8mjl31p5yo
on same day today: Nato jets down drone that entered Lithuanian airspace
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjx2zgk7edlzo
Might be related to today's yearly 'Prinsjesdag' in the Netherlands:
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prinsjesdag
>Might be related to today's yearly 'Prinsjesdag' in the Netherlands:
Russia may have heard about that annual event as well, of course.
maybe, but it's a step or two up from blocking roads?
Stopping traffic on railways isn't much different from stopping traffic on highways, is it?
Farmers protesting new nitrogen emissions regulation. They are also setting hay bales on fire next to highways. The rail sabotage is relatively harmless, the tracks use block signalling so if you use a conductive metal bar or jumper cables to connect the rails, the system thinks a train is present and the preceding signal will stay red.
The harm is in the cost. Not the actual danger. Or are they going to pay for the damages caused due to lost productivity?
And on the same day that a (very likely Russian) UAV had to be shot down in Lithuanian air space.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjx2zgk7edlzo
I would be surprised if it wasn’t by Russia. Russian infrastructure is being systematically destroyed by Ukraine with funding, training, intelligence and materiel from Europe. This is an attempt to discourage European support by disrupting Europeans.
Likely organized by farmer protest groups (FDF for example) to protest against emission restriction regulation. They are known for their dangerous stunts, including driving their tractors on the highway and spraying manure on government buildings. These actions are tolerated by the Dutch police, which willingly and purposefully refuses to punish these acts.
It's crazy how much deference is given to farmers compared to every other occupation.
If the garbage men started dumping the contents of garbage bags in public places I bet they will not be given a free pass.
Look to Birmingham in the UK for evidence of the same deference. Many have been on strike since 2025. The city was a rat infested public waste dump for nearly 3 months until the government hired private firms to do the waste handling while the public worker strike action continued.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025%E2%80%932026_Birmingham_b...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cqxlxv0vvnxo
I think this deference is largely inspired by the police not knowing how to deal with these huge tractors.
Rubbish. They don't want to. The tractors have license plates, allowing them to be pursued after the fact, and the NL police have firearms if they want to get spicy.
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.
You can go a long while without your trash being taken away for you.. you can't go very long without food.
Most of the food the farmers produce in the Netherlands is exported.
Meanwhile, trash piles up quickly: https://nltimes.nl/2023/02/07/utrecht-garbage-strike-comes-e...
Don't believe everything you read.
This is russian sabotage + russian trolls now trying to make it look like it's something else
Who's the troll here? Do you even know what you're talking about?
Farmers and right wing people in all of Europe are actively being disinformed by Russian intelligence service and either wilfully ignores it or too incompetent to realize it.
We are all being disinformed, whether it's by a foreign or our own government. This is not a problem unique to Europe, right-wingers, farmers or Russia. The goal is to have us fight while the powerful become even more powerful. It is important to be aware of this fact, it is not just "the other side I don't agree with" that are affected, and thinking of them as willfully ignorant or incompetent is what the powerful would like you to think (infighting is the goal).
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.
can you explain how Dutch farmers are being disinformed by Russian intelligence services? I am REALLy curious.
Russia spends a huge amount on manipulating western citizens via the internet, let's not play dumb about that. You may not think that it has any effect, but apparently Russian intelligence does.
We're all being misinformed by various interest groups. If you think you're immune and have some perfect understanding of reality, you're kidding yourself.
Too bad Russia 'had to' go to war in the first place.
"had to go", lol.
Go drink some vodka Vasily.
Russia is not even in the top 20 countries who consume the most alcohol:
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/alcohol-c...
Interesting point. It seems that they have simply improved in this metric over the past decades, but the stereotype is stuck in the Soviet era.
Yet the one who is the most proud of it
It is good for Russ.a even if they didn't even organize it: everybody thinks it's them, but they might not have even spent anything on it.
Ockham's razor may be? Big protests are common on Prinsjesdag, particularly when sensitive decisions or policies are made. A local protest organisation is therefore significantly more likely than an organized foreign sabotage. If I were Putin and had foreign agents in the Netherlands I certainly wouldn't expose them this physically.
To be fair, Russia also sends people out to inflame active protests and try to push them into greater extremism.
It is russia, no surprises.
One has to be an idiot to assume otherwise at this point
Why do people automatically jump to conclusion that it was Russia in the comments? They haven't even released any evidence or investigation yet in official sense.
Highly likely associated with yearly national budget fiesta. No reason for foreign interference, we can easily mess it up on our own.
Russia is at war with Europe.
Europe is not yet at war with Russia but it will be in time.
I am not saying that Russia was behind this, but 99% likely.
This is getting concerning. Multiple locations and deliberate disruption suggest this may be more than random vandalism. Hopefully investigators find out who is behind it and why.
Oh, these wannabe intellectualist.
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
It's baffling honestly. EU running around like a Metal Gear Solid NPC "What was that noise?" "Who's footprints are these?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjPpX1g1juo
If we think about public infrastructure in an adversarial way, the same way we think about software systems; we could say that it's full of critical zero-day vulnerabilities.
Europeans don't realise how close war is to their homes. Russia won't stop unless it's stopped.
Or maybe they do realise it how close it is. It is not a certainty yet, but we can see russia circling.
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.
We are at war with Russia, but just as with climate or mass immigration, we refuse to address it.
>Europeans don't realise how close war is to their homes.
I would add 'Western-' to that. The Eastern Europeans are keenly aware, have been for years.
- Dutch person.
Define Europeans - us Poles absolutely understand the danger. In fact I'd say we're already at war with Russia, the way they attack our democracy, our institutions and politics daily. But someone in Portugal might not see it the same way we do.
Russians are Europeans.
Yes, obviously - but I'm not sure how that's related. Or maybe actually in fact it speaks of the fact that some terrorist acts within Russia were commited by or on the order of the Russian government.
Cmon NATO do your thing
pre-coffee and I kept reading that as "sabotage causes major Neanderthal rail disruption"
I was like hmmmm what timeline am I in now?
Robert J. Sawyer's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Neanderthal_Parallax
Little by little, people are realising that Europe is at war. Politicians are trying so hard not to say it because of the implications, but there’s only so long you can keep your head buried in the sand.
We’re under constant attacks from Russia… drones, sabotage, cyberattacks, propaganda campaigns derailing our elections…
I’m sick of it.
It is indeed possible Russia is behind it, but considering a domestic farmers' terror group has told its followers to cause disruption today (as it is a politically-significant day), and those are definitely disrupting highways, chances are good they are also responsible for the railway disruptions.
And if this is supposed to be war, then by European standards it is incredibly mild.
We don't know whether this was Russia, it's just as likely it was the "farmers defence force" or climate activists.
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.
In the case of France it is pretty obvious, they would never attack random people in such a way. They either target public infrastructure or very specific politician/execs properties, not random people, and definitely not in a way that could result in deaths.
>or very specific politician/execs properties, not random people,
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.
Those famously anti-train climate activists…
Farmer advocates are not climate activists, surprisingly they have a negative correlation
Agreed
Don't you think those groups would have claimed responsibility by now?
no? if you are diligent you can say nothing and people will hopefully attribute it to your enemies and you get off with your own ploy of looking peaceful and harmless
In which case what do they gain here?
You can claim ownership via restricted channels, e.g. a phone call to key politicians, and rely on their self-interest to keep things quiet while understanding the threat.
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).
Yeah, my bet is on the farmers. The locations where this happened are all pretty rural and farmers have announced havy actions today.
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.
You think farmers are willing to risk the murder of hundreds of their fellow countrymen as a form of protest? That’s plain terrorism.
Yes, they've already murdered people by causing accidents on the highway.
Are we allowed to call it terrorism now? Or just when it is farmers? I know that both climate activists and BLM have disrupted highways as well....
>caused accidents vs >"disrupted"
This equivocation is noted but not compelling
Yes, I definitely think they are willing. I don't think all farmers are, not even that many of them are, but I think some are.
Some of them already dumped asbestos on highways, which to me is beyond what any reasonable person would do.
Definitely, and destabilizing by proxy is still an attack
Ah yes, climate activists are widely known for hating public transport especially trains.
I wouldn't say they are widely known for hating the electric grid but hey here we are: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_arson_attack_on_the_Berli...
Climate activists are definitely known for disliking fossil fuel plants - and there's one directly next to that.
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.
if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck...
Russia started with the hybrid war psyops shit, they don't get to complain about false accusations.
I'm not defending Russia, it's just that the farmers terrorist organisation has announced major disruptions today and has also set hay bales on fire to shut down highways.
For context: it's "Prinsjesdag" in the Netherlands which is when the budget is announced, and there are major changes to agriculture subsidies.
We've had a bunch of these acts of terrorism in Germany in the recent years. Mostly power, but also train and industrial targets. They all came from the same source, which is very much not Russian.
lol come on, I'm German. Of course a lot of the terrorism was probably (Vulkangruppe) or proven (the DHL and airport incidents, Tiergartenmord, SUV Bauschaum) Russian.
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.
uhu, sure thing boris!
What implications? Why wouldn't they want an, in this case real, external enemy they could use to distract the people from their own failures?
Perhaps the external enemy being able to do these things is, in fact, their own failure in a way.
Not really, I do not buy that. Ukrainian intelligence can sabotage train tracks deep within Belarus and Russia. And given how convient it would be to blame Russia here I wonder why they do not.
Yeah, not sure why not at least being upfront about the possibility is so hard. In Spain we've had train derailments, flocks of people being directed on social media to force themselves across borders, subterfuge deluxe everywhere and what not, yet the government is mostly silent and claim it's all unrelated, but it's hard to not also see the parallels across the continent and reach your own conclusions. But then also, don't wanna fall into some conspiracy theory trap either...
Russia isn't the only group interested in doing terrorism in The Netherlands. Recently the Farmers Defense Force and Extinction Rebellion have caused far greater disruption.
Could it be Russia? Obviously. But in my opinion the odds are less than a coin flip.
> Recently the Farmers Defense Force and Extinction Rebellion
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.
You're assuming rational goals instead of thinking in radical acts of terrorism.
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.
You're misunderstanding why they do those things in the first place. You're referencing real activities here, how many of those activities you references people refused to take responsibility for doing?
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?
It's a spectrum. You derail a train and nobody gets hurt? Shout it from the rooftops! You derail a train and people die? "Wasn't me, guv."
Please, do suggest this to any of these environmental activism groups and see how they'll laugh at you. You seriously think these people think like that??
People fuck up, man. They don't plan to, but they do.
"Fucking up" in terms of "accidentally derailed a train more than wanted"? Sure, I used to do that too when I was a teenager...
Stop, not derail. The saboteurs aren't physically damaging the railways: they are shorting the rails together, causing a fake train to be detected.
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.
Groups such as Extinction Rebellion are easy to steer off course by the state into taking meaningless actions such as gluing themselves to London Underground trains.
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.
I think of it the other way: EU politicians want war but are not able to say it out loud and clear. Instead we get a bunch of "russian sabotage" all over the place with flimsy evidence to back it. Get the simple people into a paranoid state and use it to justify decisions which are already made. Classic FUD. And the people seem to swallow it.
Yeah mate whatever. Instead of scrolling twitter or whatever, donate some of your actual time to Ukraine and start getting up to speed with what Russia is really doing, straight from the source.
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.
Wont donate anything to Ukraine – hopefully the part of my family from there has managed to bring out their boys. Yes, busification is a thing over there, "mate". If the useful idiots here in Europe are strong enough to back a political decision to go to war with Russia, I'm out. But you can go and fight, "mate".
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’m not profiting from the war, I’m donating my time. Idfk what’s wrong with you.
(I mean, I know exactly what’s wrong with you… but you get my drift)
donating your time to milk the eu defence fund, sure Jerome. I hope that figure skating will help you in battle ;)
And Russia is winning, they already have neutralized if not subjugated the US, but most of Europe is also heading towards that outcome, and fast. Russia is not this near omnipotent 5D chess mastermind behind all of the scenes in all of politics all across the West, but they are terrifyingly good at exploiting existing trends and influencing trajectories just so and they have been at it with great continuity over many decades. It's starting to really pay off. At this point, it's hard to imagine how the next German federal government could be anything else than either a completely dead-on-arrival coalition of polar opposites that only barely hangs on to keep the AfD out of government but will be unable to do anything at all, or an extremely Russia-friendly government the AfD is part of if not leads that is pretty much certain to continue within the EU what Trump started within NATO. Both outcomes serve Russia well, and the establishment has pretty much handed them that opportunity without meaningful resistance.
NATO is certainly weaker with the USA having lost her mind. But Russia seems to have gotten herself into a total quagmire in Ukraine and she is bleeding badly with no end in sight. Nobody is winning here.
It should be noted that today is Prinsjesdag and the new yearly budget is being presented, or however that is properly translated in english. Especially now that farmers are also lighting hay bales on fire next to highways the most likely explanation is nationals doing this
Checking some other calendars yields:
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...
Prinsjesdag is held on the third tuesday of september. You are trying to insinuate some weird stuff.
A nationwide railway disruption on September 15th is some weird stuff, my friend
Out of all the ignorant comments in this thread that clearly do not know what is happening in the netherlands and are just assuming wild stuff, you made the most insane one. Congratulations.
Thank you.
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.
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
As a european, for the love of god, can we address any single of our concerns by either the national or the supranational government?
It seems as if one ambiguates the other.
It's useful because if an issue is difficult, both levels can disavow responsibility.
in german there is a word for this
Zuständigkeitspingpong
competence table tennis
Sry to be pedantic (it is german after all) but,
"responsibility table tennis" would be a better fit.
Competence in english translates to the skill side of the word
> in german there is a word for this
I am not surprised.
> competence table tennis
Magnificent!
> It seems as if one ambiguates the other.
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.
No, it seems governments can only ignore the concerns then complain the 'alt-right' parties get voted
...or blame russia!
(Some media literally blamed putin because people voted for afd in the recent state election in germany).
I'm starting to be a little worried about what Putin has planned for Europe.
Starting? I've been worried for more than 4 years.
A desperate megalomaniac is a dangerous thing.
Putin’s exit narrative requires escalation. Defeat vs Ukraine is a pathetic wound- “we would have won if it weren’t for.. europe” is preferable to narcissistic permanent victimhood.
Solovyov propaganda is pure nuclear revenge fantasy: https://youtu.be/dA4RP3uID6Q?is=ApmFQtgZvY7mWajP
And Putin has trump in his pocket. Some oligarch just had to pay a couple of big bucks for his sons wedding...
https://www.propublica.org/article/donald-trump-jr-wedding-b...
The little green men
Well this is natural, terrorism in Europe is almost entirely Russia-originating (and have always been, see drop to nearly zero after 1991 when Russia lost the capability).
Europeans really hates sabotage when it happens to them. Nobody blinked an eye when Nord Stream (a civilian infrastructure) was blown up.
FYI Nord Stream had one end in Germany, which happens to be in Europe. So Nord Stream was driving oil to Europe, and some Europeans mattered.
FYI Nord Stream did not transport oil, but gas (not to be confused with gasoline).
Putin must be really happy - whatever happens in Europe, he's blamed for it, making him look omnipotent. Most countries would love to have that kind of power.
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 don't think he's very happy that his three day "special operation" is approaching five years.
Yeah - looks more impotent than omnipotent.
Putin became a meme. He's almighty and weak at the same time. He's the Zar, Stalin AND Hitler in one person. He's been cloned at least a dozen times but seems to have a grave illness and will die soon. On the one hand it's funny to watch how people are losing their minds over it but on the other it just prevents a clear dialogue and assessment of a politician.
Zero karma and all comments are pro-Russia, anti-EU, and anti-Ukraine.
HN is successful enough to be on the radar of Russian troll factories eh?
> Zero karma Yep, that is the high price one must pay for dissenting opinions in a discourse where nuance and discussion no longer exist.
Sad to see so many people here in the comments jump the gun and think of Russia.
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.
If this was a protest it would be clear who did it. The farmers' have no incentive to mess with infrastructure without being visible for their cause.
Protests draw attention to your cause. This doesn't draw attention to anything, it is straightforward sabotage. Neither is it in line with how typical protestors operated before.
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.
It could also be kids doing it "for the lolz", like in slovenia:
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.
Why is it sad for you for people to assume that recurring events with the same source are a base assumption to be made?
Came for the news for nerds, got a blog from the BBC propaganda machine.
Anyway, I am surprised the BBC blogger didn't add north koreans and some linked it to porn on the internet.
the railway was hacked with a metal tube... perfectly suited news
A similar hijack will soon(ish) become impossible, as the current train protection system will be replaced by ERTMS.
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.
lol, nice try.
Makes you think. If Russia can get a bunch of teenagers to put pipes on the railway tracks or fly some drones near an airport, then so can AI.
It's surprisingly cheap to recruit a few mugs to cause a bit of havoc: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_arson_attacks_against_Kei...
This is very much why I find most people's AI doom scenarios trite.
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).
It's not a "bunch of teenagers", a regular pipe won't cause a train to derail, one would need heavy machinery to move that rail in France
Nothing was derailed, they put pipes on the rails that tricked the system into believing there was a train on the track, shutting it down
There are two sabotage acts being discussed; a train was derailed in the other one.
I don't understand. What does this have to do with HN, the typical topics, and the typical users who come here?
International politics is intellectually stimulating.
Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
You're right, this is a political topic.
What one can do is provide accurate information on the one hand, and maybe flag the topic on the other.
By the upvotes - a lot.
Yes, and that's one of the reasons politics - which this is - used to be shunned on this site. It is like catnip for those who have an opinion - whether agreeing or disagreeing - on the subject and quickly turns into a mud fight. In combination with the down-voting system on HN this gives rise to a strong and unhelpful herd mentality where those with itchy down-vote fingers quickly make opinions outside of their desired narrative fade to grey. Unfortunately this 'no politics' rule has never been free from bias even before the rise of The Orange Man and seems to have been dropped off the radar ever since. This only serves to increase the level of polarisation, the bitter fruits of which are ripe for the picking right here in this thread.
Nerds like trains. A fair few of us live in NL too.
I think AI was mentioned in the article...
Browsing through comments I'm not really surprised. It seems like Russia is everything Europeans think about daily. Guys, your railroads used to work very bad all the way along. Just fix them at last, and ensure safety.
> It seems like Russia is everything Europeans think about daily.
Brilliant reply. Maybe if they stop attacking half of Europe, we'll stop thinking about them daily.
Well. Maybe Europe should stop attacking Russia then, come to think of it. Oh well, that is completely different right?
Do you mean here?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Russian_invasion_of_Ukrai...
Or here, where Russia just annexed parts of Europe?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Ukrainian_war
Or perhaps one of the hundreds of instances in:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_sabotage_operations_in...
Or, what do you mean? Any non-state-propaganda supporting your claim?
>Russia just annexed parts of Europe?
Europe is not a country; this is nonsense. Most European countries routinely take part in completely unprovoked agressions by the way.
>Or, what do you mean?
Every each case when Ukraine has used European weapons to attack Russia; also every case when European countries seized Russian ships.
> Europe is not a country
I'm just using your own words, my dude:
> It seems like Russia is everything Europeans think about daily.
>Every each case when Ukraine has used European weapons to attack Russia; also every case when European countries seized Russian ships.
It's not an attack when you're defending against an invasion. Go take your weak propaganda-farm talking points elsewhere.
How is Europe attacking Russia? I haven't seen any of our soldiers or jets flying over Russia; We would have flattened St. Petersburg and Moscow years ago if we wanted to. In fact, before Putin's conquering ambitions we were doing a great amount of trade with Russia in a very peaceful way.
Particularly, Europe is constantly trying to seize Russian ships.
Re: flattening Moscow and Petersburg: all "potential" threats are really pathetic.
The russian shadow fleet, you mean, illegally operating against sanctions imposed for the invasion of a sovereign nation and the use of war crimes? Yeah, they're going to get seized.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_shadow_fleet
Still posting without any sources?