Europe Is at War. Why Can’t It Say So?

For the past three years, Russia has used missiles and drones to locate and destroy vital infrastructure in Ukraine—power plants, dams, electrical-transmission lines. Everyone understands that these attacks are acts of war, no matter how steadfastly President Vladimir Putin describes them as part of a “special military operation.” When Russia targets other European neighbors, though, the West resorts to its own euphemisms to avoid directly acknowledging what Putin is doing.

Last month, the undersea power cable Estlink 2, which connects Estonia with fellow European Union and NATO member Finland, was suddenly cut. The EU’s top foreign-policy official described the incident somewhat dryly and without explicitly blaming Russian agents: It was, she said, merely “part of a pattern of deliberate and coordinated actions to damage our digital and energy infrastructure.” Obviously, cutting a power line is a less overt form of aggression than the full-scale invasion that Putin launched in Ukraine. The common thread, though, is that Russia is using force to undermine a recognized country’s independence and its ability to fight back.

Undersea cables have been vital to the sovereignty of Estonia, a former Soviet republic that borders Russia and desperately needs to maintain power and communications channels that are free from Moscow’s control. Soon after Estlink 2 was sabotaged, Finnish authorities seized the oil tanker Eagle S, which was en route from St. Petersburg, Russia, to Egypt. Registered in the Cook Islands in the Pacific Ocean, the ship is likely part of Russia’s so-called shadow fleet—a collection of foreign-flagged tankers that Putin’s regime uses to sell Russian oil and skirt international economic sanctions imposed after his invasion of Ukraine.