Young journalists expose Russian-linked vessels off the Dutch and German coast

https://www.digitaldigging.org/p/they-droned-back

by harshreality • 7 months ago

149 127 7 months ago

This just shows how amateurish the German state apparatus is when it comes to things like this. Maybe they're playing a game one level deeper and show them only what they want the Russians to see or see it as inevitable, I don't know. But I don't have high trust in our defense.

flohofwoe5• 7 months ago

From the article:

---

European intelligence services assess the three documented ships as operating “with high confidence“ on behalf of Russian interests. Their movement profiles are “very conspicuous” and show “little evidence of commercial activity.”

---

...of course they know, but for whatever reason they didn't find a smoking gun so far (e.g. drones on the ships or drones taking off/landing) - or maybe they did but keep it to themselves.

Official inspections were “symbolic”—not all containers opened

...this might to be the core of the problem.

roflmaostc• 7 months ago

or maybe they did but keep it to themselves.

Yes agree. There is no incentive that intelligence services would communicate their findings, in fact it's the opposite lol

mytailorisrich3• 7 months ago

Of course European countries' intelligence and military know about this.

The question we should ask ourselves is why they let it happen... My take is that the "Russian scare" serves the EU's agenda. You'll notice how European leaders and the EU are stroking fear at every opportunity.

jillesvangurp2• 7 months ago

This is not just a German topic (several NATO countries had drone sightings) but a NATO topic. And probably also a US topic (some 'alien' activity recently).

And you are forgetting that there are still US troops in Germany. The US is not some passive bystander in this conflict but a very active part of the decision process here. And given that some of those military installations probably have US military in them, it's very much a topic that concerns them.

I don't think anyone believes an attack is imminent. But that kind of intelligence gathering is a pretty serious breach of security.

This weakness is a NATO wide problem and you can't ignore the role of the US in this apparent weakness. It's apparently pushing for de-escalation rather than further escalation. I think we'd know of Trump felt strongly about this. He'd be tweeting about this. His silence on this is suggestive.

kleiba• 7 months ago

I don't know to what degree this is known to people outside Europe, but has been on the news over here for the last few months:

drones aren’t just buzzing airports. They’re systematically surveilling military installations—often during sensitive operations

Now, if you live in the US or anywhere else outside Europe - please pause for a moment and see how it makes you feel to imagine having Russian drones hover over your military installations regularly, or other important places of your public infrastructure.

TheChaplain• 7 months ago

There are plenty of people even inside Europe who downplay these events.

GuestFAUniverse• 7 months ago

Often enough that coincidences with an unexplainable increase of wealth.

jwr• 7 months ago

As someone who currently lives in Poland, I hope this will be a wakeup call for Western Europe, which has so far been living a medieval dream of "the aggressor is far away and there are countries between us and the aggressor, so we can carry on as usual". That used to be a valid assumption several hundred years ago, but now no longer holds.

I hope the lukewarm support for Ukraine will become at least a bit stronger. And I really hope the EU will stop funding the Russian military machine. Not everyone realizes this, but just in October 2025, the five largest EU importers of Russian fossil fuels paid Russia nearly 1 billion €. ONE BILLION EUR per month. Compare that to the military aid we are sending to Ukraine. (source: https://energyandcleanair.org/october-2025-monthly-analysis-...)

krapp• 7 months ago

Now, if you live in the US or anywhere else outside Europe - please pause for a moment and see how it makes you feel to imagine having Russian drones hover over your military installations regularly, or other important places of your public infrastructure.

Something like that has happened in the US recently but Americans believed they were alien spacecraft as they tend to do and the whole thing got swallowed up in memes and Reddit threads.

Also apparently the US is ride or die with Putin now so Russia can't have done anything of the sort. Must have been aliens.

dragonelite• 7 months ago

Of course the Russians will do this we helped Ukrainians attack the Russian nuclear fleet with drones they are most definitely organising some payback actions.

Be glad stuff isn't exploding yet, we are at war with Russia. Did people expect no damage would happen inside Europe?

Nextgrid• 7 months ago

Are any of those drones being shot down? Is anything being done about it besides (AI-assisted) fear-mongering? That is the real question. If the drones are a problem, shoot/neutralize them and thank Russia for the free target-practice exercise.

It seems like the danger even bigger than Russia is government incompetence and the system of broken incentives where everyone does everything to appear busy but actually solving the problem.

If there's a drone there, and you don't want it there, the solution is obvious. It's obvious enough to any nutcase in the US with access to a shotgun (with various degrees of success, but at least they're got the right spirit). If nobody's taking out the proverbial shotgun then I have to assume the drones are not an actual problem and merely yet another excuse for busywork.

Edit: I am not saying to literally use a shotgun against them. But offensive solutions need to be developed and put to use; otherwise if we sit helpless now, what will we do when those drones evolve and start carrying offensive payloads? Fear-mongering and finding endless excuses about not doing anything is not going to help.

flohofwoe5• 7 months ago

How would you 'shoot them down' over densely populated areas without endangering civilians, genius?

In reality it's a bit more complicated, e.g. https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/germany-a...

Also it's not like the US did any better when their airports and military bases had those massive drone sightings a little while back, except in that case it wasn't the Russians but "aliens" (lol).

jonathanstrange• 7 months ago

The Dutch military fired on drones. However, they are all over Europe and generally not shot down for various reasons. First, shooting at them can be very dangerous. Debris and whatever is used to shoot at them (usually bullets) can hit civilians. Second, the laws tend to not allow military and police to shoot at drones that don't pose an immediate threat to life. A new police law has been passed in Germany to fix this issue, but it was only passed very recently. I suspect other countries have similar legal issues that first need to be fixed.

seszett• 7 months ago

any nutcase in the US with access to a shotgun

It's actually not easy to shoot down a drone with a gun if it takes any measure to evade interception. It's not like shooting ducks taking off from a lake.

That said, last week the French navy did shoot at drones around the Île Longue nuclear submarine base, but as far as I understand just one drone came within close enough range to be targeted by radio jammers (which means maybe a few hundred meters at sea) and either it went away on its own or sunk but it apparently wasn't retrieved. It's very unlikely they could shoot it down with conventional firearms.

exDM693• 7 months ago

The drones here aren't your neighbor's kids' quadrotors. Some sightings over airports have been large (>2m) fixed wing aircraft travelling at 200 km/h. Even the quads are pretty fast. And they can appear out of nowhere, taking off from the ground near the target.

Shooting them down from the ground is next to impossible. They don't hover around waiting for someone to come by with a shotgun in their hand, catching them by land (ie. chasing them in a car) is not feasible.

Just to give an idea how hard it is to hit airborne targets from the ground with traditional guns: I once spent an afternoon shooting at a slow moving fixed wing target drone with tracer rounds from a 12.7mm anti-aircraft machine gun. There were about 50 of us taking turns, each with a few hundred rounds to shoot at the damn thing and the target aircraft didn't get a single hit.

My guess is that the drones are conducting signals intelligence, listening to radar signals and radio comms around sensitive installations (airports, military bases) and surveying the response time to a sighting.

egorfine5• 7 months ago

Are any of those drones being shot down?

Of course not. Because reasons. Because it's illegal to shot drones. Because let's not provoke putin. Because they pose no threat. Because the debris can hit civilians. russians will continue observing military installations with full impunity.

lm284692• 7 months ago

The solution is only obvious if you're naive and/or don't know what you're talking about. They can't reliably shut down drones in active war zones with complete disregard for any kind of safety and you think we could do this in populated areas ?

Do you realise some drones can fly hundreds of meter above the site, even a few kilometres ? Do you realise that what you send up must come down eventually ? Do you realise that you need to send massive amount of projectiles to take down an object that size ? Do you think you're smarter than everyone on the ground and in the command chain ? If shotguns were the solution you'd see much more videos of them being used on the front line, but they're only sporadically used, and from videos circulating online you can clearly see they're barely better than useless.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mORdXxZ2uKU

codedokode7• 7 months ago

Shutting down a drone with a machine gun is difficult, there are lot of videos where you can see it. There is even video of a Russian-Iranian drone destroying a car with a machine gun which cannot even protect itself. What is efficient against drones, are Soviet ground-air missiles (which might be dangerous to use around airports), and interceptor drones (which Europe doesn't have). Jamming the radio/GPS probably won't help because drones have antennas on top which form a simple phased array, to ignore the signal from the ground. Drones might also use mobile networks, and there were reports that Russia used Starlink antennas on some drones.

sonorous_sub• 7 months ago

Thank you for your service.

otabdeveloper4• 7 months ago

Try giving Ukraine more drones, maybe that will fix your problem.

BSDobelix• 7 months ago

Those Russian drone sightings remind me a lot of the "Russian" submarines off the coast of Sweden in the '80s.

Hint:

https://www.amazon.com/Secret-War-Against-Sweden-Submarine/d...

jillesvangurp2• 7 months ago

The political question here isn't why intelligence agencies aren't all over this but why politicians are deciding to not do anything about it.

A bunch of kids were able to figure out which ships were the source of these drones. Good work. I assume/hope this information wasn't new to intelligence agencies.

Relevant questions to ask here:

- were these ships not tracked and monitored 24/7 since they left Russian ports?

- in fact aren't all ships that leave those ports not tracked?

- isn't the journey of ships in the so-called shadow fleet documented in detail so that it is exactly known what's on board and who is buying it?

The answer to this is: of course that is all happening and known.

And the obvious one: why weren't these ships dragged to a port and completely dismantled to the last bolt?

Answer to that: that would be an escalation as these ships are in international waters and protected by maritime law. The obvious counter to that is that military aerial activity launched from foreign ships technically is an escalation in itself that could be considered a direct act of war.

I'm not going to speculate further on this. But it's obviously a highly political topic and not some kind of intelligence failure.

CapricornNoble8• 7 months ago

plays world's smallest violin

Here in the First Island Chain we've had Chinese drones buzzing our military installations since before COVID.

In Afghanistan, Yemen, or Somalia, the sound of drones buzzing overhead usually means an entire family is about to get murdered because ONE guy's pattern of behaviors pegged him as a "terrorist" in some computer system.

Europeans are just finally being shaken out of their false sense of security and don't know how to handle it.

BobaFloutist• 7 months ago

It would certainly make me feel motivated to fund my military, and send military aid and seized Russian assets to Ukraine.

D_Alex3• 7 months ago

Ramstein is like 400 km from the sea, Munich is 800 km.

I am puzzled that the alleged ship-launched drone swarms were allegedly able to penetrate this far undetected.

shermozle• 7 months ago

These young journos are legends.

nephihaha4• 7 months ago

A lot of these drone scares remind me of UFO flaps. There was one over London Gatwick not long ago and no one ever managed to photograph the thing as far as I can remember.

I'm sure NATO has drone swarms all over Russian bases right now, but that's the bit they miss. Part of a long tradition of trying out each other's defences.

sam_lowry_2• 7 months ago

NATO has satellites and spies. Why would they need to use drones?

Russia OTOH has an aging fleet of spy satellites, and drones serve to intimidate as much as gather intelligence.

jeroenhd• 7 months ago

Does NATO have satellites, or do the Americans? With the recent threats to the ICC and more and more American politicians turning against NATO, it's getting quite hard to take American NATO membership seriously.

However, I doubt the drones are part of any kind of spying operation. They're trivially detectable, have limited range, and I very much doubt these journalists found anything that European intelligence agencies haven't found already. If the Russians want to map out European bases, they can just look at the data leaked by Fitbit/Strava and "data broker" companies.

Instead, I firmly believe this is a power move intended to spread fear. They're saying "look at what we're capable of", and _maybe_ measuring anti-drone response strategies, but any competent military wouldn't let themselves get baited into showing their hand too much. The Dutch army has stated that there's no need to panic and that the anti drone measures we currently have is perfectly capable of taking action if necessary.

Russia showing off their capabilities is hardly news, either. Russia likes taunting its enemies by flying fighter jets and sending nuclear subs through shipping channels. The same way America likes to send war ships through shipping lanes in Asia, and during the cold war by flying spy planes awfully close to borders.

blitzar3• 7 months ago

I'm sure NATO has drone swarms all over Russian bases right now

I'm pretty sure NATO doesnt have drone swarms all over Russian territory right now.

codedokode7• 7 months ago

They don't even fly close to Russia in the Black Sea, I think, after an expensive US spy drone was involuntarily landed into the sea.

nephihaha4• 7 months ago

NATO has been buzzing the borders of Russia all my lifetime with aircraft erc and beyond (Gary Powers anyone?) I doubt they ever stopped and have moved onto drones by now.

Even in Cold War Berlin each side tried to test out the limits of the other although the Red Army was allowed into a couple of places in West Berlin by agreement like a war memorial.

Xss33• 7 months ago

NATO doesnt use small cheap drones. Why would they?

The only reason iran and russia do is because theyre too broke to stack mq9 reapers.

codedokode7• 7 months ago

If you can take out the target using less resources, how is this bad? If a drone cost as much as 1/100 of an air defense missile, it means that you can have more drones than your enemy has missiles given the equal budget.

nephihaha4• 7 months ago

Drone swarms are seen as a more cost efficient way of gathering intel than one or two larger ones. Not all the drones reported are cheap according to some reports and may have been perceived as UFOs by civilians.

I take the point about satellites. That is completely valid. However, one thing military industrial complexes are good at is creating jobs and gobbling up money. Russia's is no different from the west's in that regard.

There is evidence China does this too.

ktallett2• 7 months ago

I don't read every news source internationally however I always wonder just how often UK, German, US linked vessels, drones, etc are found within close proximity of Russia/China/Iran and how often they get reported.

flohofwoe5• 7 months ago

If the same thing would happen to Russia you can be sure that Medvedev and Peskov would whine about it for months, including the occasional nuclear annihilation threat towards the 'collective West'.

Protostome• 7 months ago

Authoritarian regimes don’t act aggressively because they’re provoked; they act aggressively because projecting power and testing limits is part of how they survive internally. History is full of cases where no meaningful provocation existed at all.

Nazi Germany didn’t need Allied ships near its coast to invade Poland. Saddam Hussein didn’t need US aircraft nearby to invade Kuwait. Argentina didn’t need British naval pressure to seize the Falklands. Russia didn’t need NATO forces near Kyiv to annex Crimea in 2014 or launch a full invasion in 2022.

Tyrannies tend to frame any foreign presence as “provocation” after the fact, because it’s politically useful at home. Liberal democracies publish their movements precisely because they operate under scrutiny; authoritarian states act first and justify later.

Proximity makes for a convenient narrative, not a causal explanation.

ktallett2• 7 months ago

When I think of liberal democracies, I am thinking of places like Estonia, I am not including the current US, UK, and Germany in liberal democracies, Considering the current state in every single one and the recent cases for spying on their own citizens illegally I sincerely doubt they are publishing openly.

cs02rm0• 7 months ago

Neat.

Amazes me that the Russians always seem to have the capacity for this sort of, I can't think of a clean word, let's inadequately say gamesmanship. When I'd have thought they have enough on their plate in Ukraine.

yread• 7 months ago

Apparently not. They did just drilled missile launches on Tokyo with the Chinese

https://nitter.net/avivector/status/1998516670399152245#m

zelphirkalt4• 7 months ago

Anything necessary to keep up the sharades and appearance. He likes to play in the league of the big. Let's see for how long, until more cracks start showing up.

tim3336• 7 months ago

They have a strange attitude to the world and have had government funded people dedicated to attacking much of the world for decades. See this book review:

“This must be the essence of our greatness. . . enemies everywhere” (p.20). The central thesis of Russia’s War on Everybody is that the Kremlin defines its enemies sweepingly, such that only a fraction of these “enemies” consider Russia to be their enemy. As Giles documents, “the Kremlin’s daily business” includes what some in the West would consider “acts of war” – poisoning dissidents, shooting down planes, election meddling, cyberattacks, and blatant political assassinations. Giles describes the Kremlin’s zero-sum worldview, in which anything benefitting others is a threat to Russia, and demonstrates that the Kremlin’s ambitions are far broader, and its methods more pervasive, than most realise. https://www.e-ir.info/2025/11/18/review-russias-war-on-every...

flanked-evergl2• 7 months ago

There is a massive anti-western infiltration operation being driven by Russia and it's allies, like Iran, Qatar and China. The biggest tragedy of the Russia-Russia hoax of Trumps first term is that people have become numb to something which was not really happening, but now is happening at an unprecedented scale.

I can only really speak for the media in Norway, but they spend almost no time covering this anymore and instead just print partisan American political things as if we are the 51st state and also a deep blue state. The media in Western Europe needs to stop acting like this, and start focusing on Europe and our challenges.

Just another example of the total insanity of Western Europe is that there is some expectation that USA will defend Europe when the majority of people in almost every single western European country has no interest in defending themselves. People expect US to send troops when there is no political support in any western European country to send troops. I love Europe, it's my home, but that is also why I don't think it's helpful to ignore the truth. Europe is the sick and dying man of the world. We need to turn this around.

tim3336• 7 months ago

The "Russia-Russia hoax" wasn't that hoaxy. Form Wikipedia on the Muller report:

The report states that Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election was illegal and occurred "in sweeping and systematic fashion", and was welcomed by the Trump campaign as it expected to benefit from such efforts. It also identifies multiple links between the Trump campaign and Russian officials.

I guess the US people just decided they were ok with a Russian backed president?

Europe is the sick and dying man is maybe overstating things. They've been understandably a bit anti-war following the centuries of war culminating in WW2.

flanked-evergl2• 7 months ago

I guess the Europeans have to ask themselves if they are okay being entirely useless and always crying to daddy USA when the Russians push their shit in while also crying that daddy USA is not kind enough to them. It's honestly pathetic and I don't want this anymore.

We either need to squash Russia like the toxic vermin it is, or accept that we are too useless to even do that.

secult• 7 months ago

Good job! OSINT rules. And regarding drones, surely any state actor may be doing this, however doing surveillance by drones over military bases is just so noob. That just points out they don't have a capacity to do reconnaissance with satellites, or they are doing something completely different. Probably making sure the target knows someone is watching, saying "We know where you have your sensitive spots".

adammarples• 7 months ago

They don't need satellites, they can surveil us close up with £200 drones and we don't do anything about it. It's like the story about the astronaut and the pencil.

juliusceasar3• 7 months ago

Unfortunately Dutch MP Geert Wilders from PVV and German AfD are acting like Putin's puppet.

Both are still defending the action of Russia and blaming the EU and NATO for the Russian aggression.

sam_lowry_2• 7 months ago

Even after Malaysia_Airlines Flight 17 [1]?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_17

tgv• 7 months ago

Wilders received a Russia-Netherlands friendship pin, and posted the picture of him posing with it (in the Duma, IIRC) on this twitter account on Mar 1, 2018.

littlecranky676• 7 months ago

It is at least 50% NATOs fault. Mexico and Canada are democratic and sovereign nations, but if either would decide to allow chinese or russian military bases to be built in their country, you can safely asume the US would not hesitate to brake international laws and take military actions on those sovereign countries. NATO expanded closer and closer to russias border, and you can't just expect for Russia to be okay with that, just as the US wouldn't be okay with that.

juliusceasar3• 7 months ago

NATO didn't expand, those countries DECIDED to join. Why? Because they have lived under the cruelty of Russian aggression.

Just like countries DECIDE to join the EU and not the Warshaw pact.

But, I see that Russian propaganda is doing its job.

skrebbel• 7 months ago

For decades the West, and Germany in particular, tried to turn Russia from an enemy into a trading partner and eventually an ally. Naive, in hindsight? Sure thing. But that doesn’t change the fact that there’s absolutely no reason for Russia to be enemies with the West other than Putin’s imperialist ambitions.

discreteevent• 7 months ago

And yet when Finland actually joined NATO, Russia said they had no problem with that. Something doesn't add up in your story - and it happens to be the same story told by Russian trolls and useful idiots.

asimpletune4• 7 months ago

So what? Everyone acts in to further their interests. NATO expands because it's in NATO's interest to do so. Russia says that this expansion is not in Russia's interest. Why only say the Russian part and leave out the NATO part?

Furthermore, if having an interest in something gives the right to use military power to achieve that interest then the argument applies to everyone.

The point about foreign bases in Canada or Mexico gets repeated a lot online, but what is the ultimate point? The USA would not like it, but it's also not a political reality. On the other hand a NATO build out IS a political reality.

So I think rather than focusing purely on what one country wishes it's better to analyze things in terms of what the political realities are and which is better.

In that sense NATO is meant to be a deterrence. Russia doesn't like that. If you ask yourself whose vision of the future is better then the answer is clear. A world of where rule of law is the norm and invasions are deterred is preferable. There has been tremendous peace and prosperity in the EU because of NATO and people have just gotten used to it. They have taken for granted the cost and sacrifice that this peace came from.

However, simply saying that Russia has an interest in not having NATO on their border is almost tautological. Of course they don't want that, but so what. Peace only works if it's enforceable.

tim3336• 7 months ago

I'd go 25% NATOs fault. You'll note Ukraine didn't apply to join NATO, was not invited to join NATO so Russia saw it as easy game and invaded.

A problem with the west is they persuaded Ukraine to give up its nukes in return for a bit of paper saying the west would help protect it and then when push came to shove they were wimpy about it.

_DeadFred_• 7 months ago

Russia's war and invasion of Ukraine have brought NATO along more Russian border with new voluntary NATO members. And Russia claims it doesn't care about that/it isn't an issue.

You're argument is just a way to work backwards from the outcome Russia wants, not a reality.

Russia has said it is about Russian speakers. Russia has said it is about nazis. Russia will say anything to try to validate their war.

egorfine5• 7 months ago

Unfortunately this is not going to make a dent in the current policies. First of all, russia surveying military bases with drones, really? What else is new? Second, currently there is no way to shoot drones in EU due to variety of bullshit legal reasons.

So this article will change nothing. russia will continue blocking airports and EU won't do anything about it.

davedx• 7 months ago

currently there is no way to shoot drones in EU due to variety of bullshit legal reasons

Citation?

littlecranky676• 7 months ago

Literally any news media in the EU in the last 4 weeks. Drone sightings everywhere, action equals none.

lnsru• 7 months ago

Statistics! Nobody took any action during hundreds of drone incidents in many countries.

blitzar3• 7 months ago

bullshit citation reasons

codeduck• 7 months ago

Germany has passed legislation to permit the police and I believe the Bundeswehr to shoot down or disable unauthorised drones.

Denmark is also (I believe) looking into this.

I suspect that over the next year more and more EU countries will follow suit.

egorfine5• 7 months ago

There could be years between looking into it and passing a legislation. There could be years between passing a legislation and actually shooting drones. It's EU, we won't do shit until the comprehensive environmental impact study is finished.

But we are slowly waking up.

tim3336• 7 months ago

In headlines today

EU set to indefinitely freeze Russian assets

https://www.rte.ie/news/europe/2025/1212/1548621-eu-russia/

You don't have to respond to provocations in a simplistic way that doesn't really effect the enemy

Shooting the drones would probably have Russia laugh and send twice as many next time. Financial actions can help. Blocading their oil might finish things.

egorfine5• 7 months ago

And this is precisely what EU is known for. Deliberating for years and coming up with an empty inconsequential legislation instead of, you know, actions.

This legislation does not make any difference nor to putin nor to the russia in general.

Drones will continue flying over NATO bases with full impunity.

pacifika• 7 months ago

How trustworthy is a medium/ substance article versus a reputable newspaper?

Young journalists expose Russian-linked vessels off the Dutch and German coast

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