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Comment by stackskipton | Hacker News Reader

I'm completely aware, used to be involved in this stuff. In international waters, these are UNCLOS requirements to board a ship not of your Navy Flag.

(a) the ship is engaged in piracy; (b) the ship is engaged in the slave trade; (c) the ship is engaged in unauthorized broadcasting and the flag State of the warship has jurisdiction under article 109; (d) the ship is without nationality; or (e) though flying a foreign flag or refusing to show its flag, the ship is, in reality, of the same nationality as the warship

Which one would you like to use to board and/or force the ship to depart against Russian cable cutting ships?

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To be clear, I am not proposing boarding Russian ships. That is pointless.

But the answer to your question is a. Referring to UNCLOS 101(a)(ii) the cables are "property in a place outside the jurisdiction of any State".

> Which one would you like to use to board and/or force the ship to depart against Russian cable cutting ships?

High seas (which is what that list applies to) is not the EEZ. I don't think anybody could legally argue thar a country wouldn't have the right to board (or fire at, if it didn't comply) a foreign ship from it's coast 24 nautical miles if it suspected it was doing something illegal. Whether that right extends to the entire EEZ isn't exactly clear.

However there are no "high seas" areas in the Baltic so all of the listed items are irrelevant.

Probably don't want to fire at the nuclear powered cargo ship that is suspected.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sevmorput

Unless the reactor is directly hit there shouldn't be any significant problems? It's not a warship so there wouldn't be any need for heavy munitions to force it to surrender.

Of course the Baltic is very shallow so if the reactor started leaking it might be a bit more problematic than if a nuclear ship/sub was sunk in the middle of the ocean.

The EEZ only applies to resource extraction. Otherwise, it is the same as high seas. What lets you board is the territorial sea, and outside that, the contiguous zone. Even then there are limits.

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