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.
---
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.
Yes agree. There is no incentive that intelligence services would communicate their findings, in fact it's the opposite lol
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.
Imagine the German military would shoot those drones down over Germany, the self-proclaimed 'pacifists' would be all about 'escalation', 'war-mongering' and 'militarization'. There are clear and very restrictive rules what the military and police are allowed and not allowed to do in cilivized countries, and those restrictions are in general a good thing and shouldn't be changed on a whim.
They have a right to protest and the government is free to ignore them and do its job. This is not a serious argument and the kip about "civilized countries" is ridiculous, frankly.
Drones don't fly from Russia. They are launched more locally. The vessels mentioned in this article could be taken over by special forces today if the neighbouring governments decided to. So again why don't they? I can't find any sensible answer to that apart from "because they are useful".
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/german-court-blocks-...
We're now basically stuck with an old Russian shadow-fleet rust-bucket anchored at our coast which we cannot get rid of.
Again, trying to find too many excuses why it is not possible usually indicates that in reality they don't want to for whatever reasons (alreayd mentioned my theory). Or ask the French to do it as they seem to at least have a working defense chain of command...
Generally, whatever happens, or not happens, in those situations has been decided, and we should never take any public narratives at face value.