The French Navy patrol plane quickly descended the clouds, leveling flat 900 feet above the Baltic Sea, and actually skimming the waves. The target was a Russian warship, visible from the side of the plane's port, was dark gray against the light gray horizon.
The aircraft, the Atlantic 2 of the French Navy, was designed to hunt submarines and other enemy naval crafts, but on this day the Torpedo Bay was empty, with its only weapons being a high-resolution camera and other sophisticated surveillance equipment. The goal was to observe and watch.
“We're supposed to show we're here,” said Roman, the assistant commander and plane crew.
Although never completely quiet, the Baltic Sea has become an increasingly tense theater in the conflict between Moscow and the West, with its coastline that was heavily militarized by the navy of Northern Europe and Russia. After the patrol, the Russians tried to jam the plane's GPS, and at one point another Russian warship was trapped in the plane on radar, with warnings that a fire could occur. The Russian naval ships and submarines were visible in the sea below.
However, the main reason French Navy planes were patrols was underwater. Three times over the past year and a half, commercial vessels are suspected of having damaged important submarine communication cables and gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea. European officials feared that these were sabotages and although the Kremlin is considered a major suspect, it was difficult to find any difficult evidence.
In response, NATO announced in January that it would launch a new program to boost the Baltic and Baltic Sea Sea and Sky patrol. They rely mostly on NATO members on the Baltic coastline, including Sweden, Finland, Poland, French and British, but the US Marines deployed in Finland also participate.
During its founding, Baltic Sea Athletes have been welcomed as an example of NATO updates, and so far the mission has continued uninterrupted. This is despite President Trump's frequent attacks on the 76-year-old military agreement and his friendly overture to Russian President Vladimir V. Putin, the alliance's most vocal enemy.
Since the start of the Baltic Sentry – announced just days before Trump took office – no suspected sabotage incidents have occurred in the Baltic Sea.
“This demonstrates the Alliance's ability to respond quickly to such destabilization,” said Army Christopher G. Cavoli, commander-in-chief of Europe, about the Baltic Sentry in January.
Officially, the Baltic Walk Sent is not directed at any particular country, but Russia is clearly the best mind. This was evident throughout the patrol on a French Navy aircraft this month. At the start of the patrol, the plane plunged low to observe the movement of the first Russian warship it encountered. There is little desire to provoke the Russians, Deputy Commander Romain said, but sometimes things escalate. As a precaution, each crew will be issued a parachute if air evacuation is required.
“It's a delicate situation,” Roman said, telling the terms that only his name and rank will be used in accordance with French military rules.
During the 14-hour mission, about 12 crew members narrowed down to a tight fuselage with an array of computer monitors showing satellite and radar data. The plane took off from a French airfield around 6am, crossing the length of the Baltic Sea from the north coast of Germany to the mouth of the Gulf of Finland before returning.
However, it was the Baltis Naval Base, the headquarters of the Russian Baltic Fleet, and that was the focus of the crew's attention. The plane was within the range of Kaliningrad, Russia, and only ranged from the base for a few minutes when the instruments onboard began to show signs of GPS jamming.
Below, Russian attack submarines and several frigates cruised the waves. The crew used the plane's camera to zoom in onto the ship, but another member flipped through a heavy reference manual for known naval crafts that attempted to identify them. The camera also zoomed in on the base where more crafts were docked.
At one point, the targeting radar of one Russian ship was temporarily trapped in a French plane, remaining in international waters. This could be a sign that the ship was preparing to fire, but members of the crew said it was likely an attempt to measure the plane's altitude. In any case, the French later expressed their anger.
“This threat is part of unnecessary offensive behaviour that hinders freedom of navigation,” said a message posted on the X account of the French military co-staff.
Since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Europe has struggled with how to respond to a series of unusual events, including arson attacks, suspected explosions, and assassination plots, and has increasingly rated intelligence services as part of the Kremlin campaign of sabotage. The Kremlin denied that the agents would commit sabotage, but intelligence officials revealed that firing fire at two DHL transport hubs in the UK and Germany last fall was part of a Russian plot to put fire Cen devices on cargo planes.
It was the cutting of the Baltic submarine cable that ultimately prompted NATO to action.
In late December, Finnish commanders got off the helicopter and seized control of an oil tanker known as the Eagle S. The robust military response followed a similar episode of civilian ships that damaged submarine cables. A month ago, a Chinese-owned bulk carrier called Yi Peng 3 was forced to be anchored to the Baltic Sea, where two submarine optical cables were suspected of cutting off. This was similar to the incident a year ago when Hong Kong-class cargo ships appeared to have damaged gas pipelines between Finland and Estonia.
Needless to say, the Kremlin had instructed them to do so, there was no harsh evidence that the ship's crew had intentionally damaged the undersea infrastructure. The ships were all flagged in different countries, but there were no one in Russia, but they had different owners and were heading in different directions. Otherwise, no initial suspicion of sabotage has been born. In January, authorities seized a freighter suspected of damaging a communications cable connecting Sweden to Latvia. Investigators later determined that it was likely that the damage was caused by the combination of the bad weather and poor seafarers on the ship.
Linking other cases is a measure of modality. Everything seemed to have dropped the anchor and dragged along the seabed in a way that damaged critical infrastructure.
Shipping experts say it's very unlikely that if the crew doesn't notice this, it won't be able to deal with it immediately. The connection was enough to convince some leaders that something more evil than simple negligence had happened.
“We need to remember that Russia is not almighty. We can't do it all,” Juha Martelius, director of the Intelligence Bureau in Finland, said in a January statement aired. “But it can do a lot, so it's important that we be vigilant about what will happen in the Baltic Sea, both nationally and internationally.”
The Kremlin dismissed the accusation that Russia was behind the Baltic Sea obstruction campaign as “absurd.”
Military and shipping experts largely praised the opening operations of the Baltic Sea, but some said that it was too little. The Baltic Sea is vulnerable given Russia's access through several ports, but it's easy to secure as many points to “Nato Lake” that was ringed by eight members of the Alliance. What's even more challenging is protecting critical infrastructure elsewhere, especially cables across the North Sea with wind and oil infrastructure, and across the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Ireland.
The Baltic Sea Sentry also rarely interferes with the Russian so-called Shadow Fleet. This says Moscow secretly uses it to transport Russian crude oil all over the world. The fleet was key to Russia's ability to fund wars in Ukraine, and the Western countries could not do anything about it. The exception was a ship commanded by a Finnish commander in January. Officials say it has the characteristics of a Shadow Fleet ship.
“Russia uses the Shadow Oil Fleet to generate revenue and avoid sanctions,” said Justin Crump, CEO of private intelligence company Cibilin, and Justin Crump, a maritime security expert. “We know they're doing it. We know exactly how they're doing it, but even so, we're not allowed to stop it. If we're serious, we'll stop it. That's the ingredient that's missing.”
Aboard the French Atlantic 2, Roman admits that the crew closely monitored the ship suspected to be operated as part of the Shadow Fleet, but that the troops did not only see them.
“There is no procedure to stop them in international waters,” he said. “There is no specific agreement to board them.”
At a point on patrol, the plane's captain received reports that the ship behaved suspiciously. One recently left the UST-Luga port in Russia, and the other headed to the Primordsk port in Russia. In each example, the captain contacted the ship and asked them questions about their journey.
“Do you know about the NATO Activity Balto Sentry?” the captain asked each of them, then asked if anyone had seen any suspicious maritime activities.
Each was radioed back to the same answer: No
Johanna Remora I contributed a report from Helsinki, Finland.
