"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.
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.
> 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).
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.
Those aren't the first trains that had problems in Europe recently. Spain has been plagued with thousands of Train delays, cable stolen before a holiday, sabotages and rocks in the railway are also very popular. Russians are obsessed with trains, and the Kremlin even tried to buy the main Spanish train maker disguised as Hungarians, before to be blocked by the Spanish government.
About rogue farmers protest in France... well, exactly the same problem. They are always agitated by far right agents in special moments, and when people scratch a little, this people always are seen taking selfies and money from people associated with Putin. Farmers still didn't understood that are being used every single time, often again their own interests. See the Yellow Jackets movement for example.
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.
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.
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.)
Last week we had four train-truck collisions at Polish level crossings resulting in derailment and passenger death, and afaik 2 or 3 involved foreign truck drivers.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
The climate activists mostly do something stupid like obstructing traffic, unlike the farmers, who obstruct traffic in a way you apparently consider rational.
I think national news indeed is somewhat carefully suggesting farmers (ie [0]), actually it looks like it is escalating and they burning hay now. This article speaks of "Radical Farmer Leaders".
Russia is involved in many acts of sabotage in Europe over past 2 or 3 years, so this is a very natural first guess for us, European citizens. They also started increasing their activity recently.
There are some indications that make Russian saboteurs a very likely culprit. It would be unwise to look at every occurrence of sabotage as a singular incident in the context of the ongoing campaign against European political stability.
Who did it is irrelevant. The more important thing is who the propaganda is blaming. Then we know what the elites (behind this piece of propaganda) want.
I knew before clicking it will be one of the things they say. people are sheeps. they will say whatever they think is right up to a limit. then they will break this limit and punish everyone that is deviating from it. this is what happened in nazi germany, soviet union, china and in the US under biden and I can already see the premises of the next term of US presidency through the lindsay clancy reaction from millions of women. to me it feels like we broke this limit in the modern developed world now. sad that as humans we cant use our brains for better than following what our hiveminds say is truth
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.
Yes and no. "rede" is a noun and has two syllables (ray-də) and means address (as in Gettysburg address). It's an archaic word, nowadays we would use "toespraak" (speech) or "lezing" (lecture). The word does share its origin with the modern English "to read", but no Dutch speaker would interpret "rede" to mean the same as a parent reading a child a bedtime story.
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.
Protests are much less effective if they can just be ignored. At the very least "lost productivity" is a very abstract harm and not something that endangers human lives directly.
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.
There are over 200 incidents of suspected Russian sabotage in Europe in recent years. [1] They continuously drum up the EU as the enemy. I think it's prudent to take them at their own word, and accept we're at active hybrid war with them.
We should assume by default now that every single act of sabotage is linked to Russia, before any investigation even. Then if evidence points elsewhere, we can update the suspect for that single event.
European governments (and American) have been drumming up fear and hatred of Russia for more than 50 years.
It's my default assumption at this point that all blame placed on Russia is either from those trying to stoke those feelings, or those who have been swayed by them.
That is not to say that Russia does nothing, but I think it is blamed for more publicly known events than it is actually responsible for.
European governments (and American) have been drumming up fear and hatred of Russia for more than 50 years.
Let's see Russia is actively committing genocide against Ukrainians, Actively commits war crimes against civilian infrastructure, Invaded Crimea, Shot down MH17 and murdered 283 innocent people, constantly broadcasted plans and imagery of nuking American cities, assassinated people in the UK using extremely dangerous nerve agents, is actively boasting about and planning sabotage within the European uninion against civilian targets...
So yeah,,,weird that people would be worried about them?
Because we had seen the same old tricks a thousand times before.
Nobody wakes up some day saying I know exactly how to stop a train without being caught. Or: I know exactly were to cut to enter in this restricted area that normal people never had heard about it just to steal a few copper cable here and there (or worse, fiber optic cable)
Random actions are truly random. This acts aren't random. They need instead planning, precise knowledge that is not available to most people, and direction to coordinate them in several locations at the same time
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.
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.
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.
> German journalist Angelique Geray posed as a fan of Vladimir Putin on social media while investigating how covert Russian agents operate in Germany.
> Geray spent several months creating a fictional online persona. Using the alias Katya, she presented herself as a pro-Russian influencer, trying to build a following organically and establish contacts on social media.
> “Katya” posted videos of herself posing in a striped Russian sailor shirt, professing her admiration for Putin, and walking around the Bundestag with a Russian flag. Before long, agents contacted her and offered her unspecified assignments and sent her payment in Bitcoin.
> Geray and other RTL journalists were able to observe the recruitment process firsthand. New agents were initially given simple tasks — taking a photo, picking up a package, or obtaining a SIM card. They were later drawn into more serious operations, though these “disposable agents” knew only their own roles and did not understand the overall plan.
> Jović invited “Katya” to meet. During their meeting, he spoke about his pro-Russian activities and hinted at the involvement of Russian intelligence agencies. Asked directly whether intelligence agencies in Moscow were directing his social media activity, he said, “Nobody knows. Well, I don’t know — in theory. In practice, I do know.” Later, when Geray approached him under her real name as a reporter, he denied taking part in a pro-Russian campaign.
We should just build up enough nuclear deterrent to prevent Russia from attacking us.
We've been dependent on the US for this but this was also by the US' own design. They didn't want many countries to have nukes. So the whole 'Europe is not doing its bit' is not really justified.
We don't need more tanks and soldiers because if we go at Russia like Ukraine does, so many people will die that it doesn't matter who wins. We just need to be able to destroy Russia so thoroughly that they won't think about attacking us, just like they don't attack the US. Mutually assured destruction has kept the world safe for almost a century but now with the US no longer committed to NATO we just need to build our own.
I live here. It is the disgruntled farmers whodunnit. There is no measure these onions wont take to defend their stranglehold on our little land. Block the highways with tractors. Sabotage the railways. Intimidate politicians. All because we are sensibly trying to limit their ability to pollute our soils with nitrogen and ask them to leave some space for people to build houses on but nay tmust all be spent towards producing cowfeed yuck
It's easy enough to make a human level self driving car, that's not the problem. The expectation is not human level it's much closer to perfection. Security is the same way, the expectation requires near zero defection. Western governments have slowly accepted compounding marginal decreases in security assuming it doesn't move the needle much. Now they are reaping the consequences of their ignorance of security posture.
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".
A lot of the commenters blame Russia, and ... have you looked at the map?
Netherlands is one of the countries that are furthest away from Russia!
And then, there are countries that take much more active stance against Russia - Germany for example. Should Russia send a message it will probably be to the countries that stir shit.
There are over 200 acts of sabotage in Europe linked/suspected to Russia. There's plenty to go around for everyone, and somehow people are still hesitant to say we're in active hybrid war.
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.
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.
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.
They're trying to dissuade European NATO members from continuing their support for Ukraine.
Things are going badly for Russia. The war has lasted longer than the Great Patriotic War against Nazi Germany and Ukraine is actually taking back territory. Over half a million Russians are dead and probably a million wounded. The economy is imploding due to the enormous expenditures (30% or more of GDP is spent on the war). Just like in WWI Russia is running out of men to continue the fight. It either has to give up or escalate.
I believe Zelensky made a big mistake insulting Putin when things were going stellar at the front a couple months ago. By making it personal Putin is doubling down until he defeats Ukraine or Russia is destroyed in a war with NATO.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Dutch person here. I never heard of these but Prinjesdag is big national news each year. Considering that this is happening in the Netherlands, it's about as likely related to the, eh, ten days of repetitice as it is to the moon landing
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.
All the Russia conspiracism in here reminds me of the claims that they blew up their own pipeline. The cost/benefit analysis of that situation was so obviously out of whack that no serious person should could have considered it to be a possibility.
This case is more plausible than that one was, but not by much. How could the benefit from derailing a few trains possibly justify the risk of A) more sanctions, and B) triggering NATO's Article V? The benefit of these operations is what, slowing trains down by one day? The 2022 sanctions on Russia have lowered their GDP by 6% by some estimates, which is the equivalent of turning the entire Russian economy off for three weeks of the year, every year. The notion that Russia would risk war and/or crippling sanctions to mildly inconvenience a tiny share of rail customers in The Netherlands is simply absurd. Putin makes plenty of mistakes, but he remains a shrewd adversary, and he is certainly not stupid.
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.
That’s not true. It was (and is) a huge thing in the German news and public discussion, especially now that it’s brought up again with recent arrests of suspects, the explosives targeting cargo airports, etc.
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.
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.
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.
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Sabotage is sabotage, doesn't have to be the same down to the minutae to be called similar.
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.
> 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.
Could be also rogue farmers paid by Russia. Easiest way for Russia to cause havoc in Europe is through exploiting existing political issues.
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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).
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?
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Those aren't the first trains that had problems in Europe recently. Spain has been plagued with thousands of Train delays, cable stolen before a holiday, sabotages and rocks in the railway are also very popular. Russians are obsessed with trains, and the Kremlin even tried to buy the main Spanish train maker disguised as Hungarians, before to be blocked by the Spanish government.
About rogue farmers protest in France... well, exactly the same problem. They are always agitated by far right agents in special moments, and when people scratch a little, this people always are seen taking selfies and money from people associated with Putin. Farmers still didn't understood that are being used every single time, often again their own interests. See the Yellow Jackets movement for example.
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-...
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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.
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
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Last week we had four train-truck collisions at Polish level crossings resulting in derailment and passenger death, and afaik 2 or 3 involved foreign truck drivers.
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> 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.
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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
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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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.
Why all this farmers know so much about how to sabotage trains suddenly?
LLMs, likely.
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
and another ru drone washed ashore in Poland https://www.reuters.com/world/poland-finds-suspected-russian...
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The climate activists mostly do something stupid like obstructing traffic, unlike the farmers, who obstruct traffic in a way you apparently consider rational.
Of those, the "tractors on highways" is the only one which has resulted in someone dying. So much for rational...
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I think national news indeed is somewhat carefully suggesting farmers (ie [0]), actually it looks like it is escalating and they burning hay now. This article speaks of "Radical Farmer Leaders".
[0] https://nos.nl/liveblog/2631038-hooibalen-in-brand-langs-sne...
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Russia is involved in many acts of sabotage in Europe over past 2 or 3 years, so this is a very natural first guess for us, European citizens. They also started increasing their activity recently.
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They have a habit of being involved. It's not exactly plucked out of thin air!
I'm trained by Russian occupation of my country.
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There are some indications that make Russian saboteurs a very likely culprit. It would be unwise to look at every occurrence of sabotage as a singular incident in the context of the ongoing campaign against European political stability.
https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/news/2025/01/research-e...
https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/sabotage-deutschland-bka...
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Who did it is irrelevant. The more important thing is who the propaganda is blaming. Then we know what the elites (behind this piece of propaganda) want.
I knew before clicking it will be one of the things they say. people are sheeps. they will say whatever they think is right up to a limit. then they will break this limit and punish everyone that is deviating from it. this is what happened in nazi germany, soviet union, china and in the US under biden and I can already see the premises of the next term of US presidency through the lindsay clancy reaction from millions of women. to me it feels like we broke this limit in the modern developed world now. sad that as humans we cant use our brains for better than following what our hiveminds say is truth
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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.
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https://nos-nl.translate.goog/liveblog/2631038-hooibalen-in-...
"Radical Farmer Leaders" are mentioned as stimulating these actions today.
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?
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>Speech from the Throne (Dutch: Troonrede)
Is "troonrede" essentially just the Dutch pronunciation of "Throne read"?
More akin to the German verb 'reden' I think: talk. It's a talk from the throne.
Yes and no. "rede" is a noun and has two syllables (ray-də) and means address (as in Gettysburg address). It's an archaic word, nowadays we would use "toespraak" (speech) or "lezing" (lecture). The word does share its origin with the modern English "to read", but no Dutch speaker would interpret "rede" to mean the same as a parent reading a child a bedtime story.
And troon == throne, obviously.
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?
Protests are much less effective if they can just be ignored. At the very least "lost productivity" is a very abstract harm and not something that endangers human lives directly.
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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
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.
There are over 200 incidents of suspected Russian sabotage in Europe in recent years. [1] They continuously drum up the EU as the enemy. I think it's prudent to take them at their own word, and accept we're at active hybrid war with them.
We should assume by default now that every single act of sabotage is linked to Russia, before any investigation even. Then if evidence points elsewhere, we can update the suspect for that single event.
[1] https://apnews.com/article/germany-leipzig-airport-explosive...
European governments (and American) have been drumming up fear and hatred of Russia for more than 50 years.
It's my default assumption at this point that all blame placed on Russia is either from those trying to stoke those feelings, or those who have been swayed by them.
That is not to say that Russia does nothing, but I think it is blamed for more publicly known events than it is actually responsible for.
European governments (and American) have been drumming up fear and hatred of Russia for more than 50 years.
Let's see Russia is actively committing genocide against Ukrainians, Actively commits war crimes against civilian infrastructure, Invaded Crimea, Shot down MH17 and murdered 283 innocent people, constantly broadcasted plans and imagery of nuking American cities, assassinated people in the UK using extremely dangerous nerve agents, is actively boasting about and planning sabotage within the European uninion against civilian targets...
So yeah,,,weird that people would be worried about them?
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Because we had seen the same old tricks a thousand times before.
Nobody wakes up some day saying I know exactly how to stop a train without being caught. Or: I know exactly were to cut to enter in this restricted area that normal people never had heard about it just to steal a few copper cable here and there (or worse, fiber optic cable)
Random actions are truly random. This acts aren't random. They need instead planning, precise knowledge that is not available to most people, and direction to coordinate them in several locations at the same time
Do you have evidence that Russia did this ?
Highly likely associated with yearly national budget fiesta. No reason for foreign interference, we can easily mess it up on our own.
NOS thinks it's individual farmers getting a bit too frisky: https://nos.nl/artikel/2631141-boerenactivisten-mogelijk-ver...
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.
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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.
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Too bad Russia 'had to' go to war in the first place.
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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.
I don't think it's good for them. The more people see Russia as the enemy, the stronger the support for Ukraine.
I believe it will only accelerate the end of Putin and his regime, so I don't actually think this is good for Russia if it wasn't them.
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
> German journalist Angelique Geray posed as a fan of Vladimir Putin on social media while investigating how covert Russian agents operate in Germany.
> Geray spent several months creating a fictional online persona. Using the alias Katya, she presented herself as a pro-Russian influencer, trying to build a following organically and establish contacts on social media.
> “Katya” posted videos of herself posing in a striped Russian sailor shirt, professing her admiration for Putin, and walking around the Bundestag with a Russian flag. Before long, agents contacted her and offered her unspecified assignments and sent her payment in Bitcoin.
> Geray and other RTL journalists were able to observe the recruitment process firsthand. New agents were initially given simple tasks — taking a photo, picking up a package, or obtaining a SIM card. They were later drawn into more serious operations, though these “disposable agents” knew only their own roles and did not understand the overall plan.
> Jović invited “Katya” to meet. During their meeting, he spoke about his pro-Russian activities and hinted at the involvement of Russian intelligence agencies. Asked directly whether intelligence agencies in Moscow were directing his social media activity, he said, “Nobody knows. Well, I don’t know — in theory. In practice, I do know.” Later, when Geray approached him under her real name as a reporter, he denied taking part in a pro-Russian campaign.
https://meduza.io/en/feature/2026/09/14/an-undercover-german...
Russia is at war with Europe.
Europe is not yet at war with Russia but it will be in time.
We should just build up enough nuclear deterrent to prevent Russia from attacking us.
We've been dependent on the US for this but this was also by the US' own design. They didn't want many countries to have nukes. So the whole 'Europe is not doing its bit' is not really justified.
We don't need more tanks and soldiers because if we go at Russia like Ukraine does, so many people will die that it doesn't matter who wins. We just need to be able to destroy Russia so thoroughly that they won't think about attacking us, just like they don't attack the US. Mutually assured destruction has kept the world safe for almost a century but now with the US no longer committed to NATO we just need to build our own.
Except... it finances and arms Ukraine. Yeah, Europe is at war with Russia.
Yet again.
The plan is to turn Europe into a Pro Russia right wing empire before that happens though. AfD etc.
A multi-pronged plan, starting with funding Brexit to weaken Europe.
I live here. It is the disgruntled farmers whodunnit. There is no measure these onions wont take to defend their stranglehold on our little land. Block the highways with tractors. Sabotage the railways. Intimidate politicians. All because we are sensibly trying to limit their ability to pollute our soils with nitrogen and ask them to leave some space for people to build houses on but nay tmust all be spent towards producing cowfeed yuck
It's easy enough to make a human level self driving car, that's not the problem. The expectation is not human level it's much closer to perfection. Security is the same way, the expectation requires near zero defection. Western governments have slowly accepted compounding marginal decreases in security assuming it doesn't move the needle much. Now they are reaping the consequences of their ignorance of security posture.
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
A lot of the commenters blame Russia, and ... have you looked at the map?
Netherlands is one of the countries that are furthest away from Russia!
And then, there are countries that take much more active stance against Russia - Germany for example. Should Russia send a message it will probably be to the countries that stir shit.
There are over 200 acts of sabotage in Europe linked/suspected to Russia. There's plenty to go around for everyone, and somehow people are still hesitant to say we're in active hybrid war.
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.
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.
yes they do, it hurts their image more directly if you claim it's you.
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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.
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Why is it sad for you for people to assume that recurring events with the same source are a base assumption to be made?
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.
>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.
We are at war with Russia, but just as with climate or mass immigration, we refuse to address it.
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.
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Europeans are just mentally incapable of reasoning about security matters. It's essentially forbidden to research.
They're trying to dissuade European NATO members from continuing their support for Ukraine.
Things are going badly for Russia. The war has lasted longer than the Great Patriotic War against Nazi Germany and Ukraine is actually taking back territory. Over half a million Russians are dead and probably a million wounded. The economy is imploding due to the enormous expenditures (30% or more of GDP is spent on the war). Just like in WWI Russia is running out of men to continue the fight. It either has to give up or escalate.
I believe Zelensky made a big mistake insulting Putin when things were going stellar at the front a couple months ago. By making it personal Putin is doubling down until he defeats Ukraine or Russia is destroyed in a war with NATO.
A drone just crashed 1km from Wunstorf airbase in Germany too.
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.
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).
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.
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Those famously anti-train climate activists…
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Don't you think those groups would have claimed responsibility by now?
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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.
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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.
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Ah yes, climate activists are widely known for hating public transport especially trains.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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.
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
might be time to read it
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...
Dutch person here. I never heard of these but Prinjesdag is big national news each year. Considering that this is happening in the Netherlands, it's about as likely related to the, eh, ten days of repetitice as it is to the moon landing
Prinsjesdag is held on the third tuesday of september. You are trying to insinuate some weird stuff.
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The little green men
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
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> 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.
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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).
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Cmon NATO do your thing
All the Russia conspiracism in here reminds me of the claims that they blew up their own pipeline. The cost/benefit analysis of that situation was so obviously out of whack that no serious person should could have considered it to be a possibility.
This case is more plausible than that one was, but not by much. How could the benefit from derailing a few trains possibly justify the risk of A) more sanctions, and B) triggering NATO's Article V? The benefit of these operations is what, slowing trains down by one day? The 2022 sanctions on Russia have lowered their GDP by 6% by some estimates, which is the equivalent of turning the entire Russian economy off for three weeks of the year, every year. The notion that Russia would risk war and/or crippling sanctions to mildly inconvenience a tiny share of rail customers in The Netherlands is simply absurd. Putin makes plenty of mistakes, but he remains a shrewd adversary, and he is certainly not stupid.
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...
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What do you mean?
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> 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.
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We've banned this account.
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
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).
That’s not true. It was (and is) a huge thing in the German news and public discussion, especially now that it’s brought up again with recent arrests of suspects, the explosives targeting cargo airports, etc.
Not sure where you get your news from, but plenty blinked.
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.
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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
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Surprisingly few people mentioning that AI might be the culprit here?
Also nobody is talking about aliens as an option?? /s
I really have no clue what this is supposed to refer to. LLMs with arms and legs, armed with pipes?
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
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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.
Nerds like trains. A fair few of us live in NL too.
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.
I think AI was mentioned in the article...