Edit: I thought that the gulf of Finland was narrower than it is, and this affects the relevance of my comment. See boredtortoise’s reply below
Under UNCLOS at least, a country can board a ship within its territorial waters to investigate a crime “if the consequences of the crime extend to the coastal State” (and some other reasons). Sinking it is almost certainly illegal, but it’s an unarmed ship and Finland has marines so I can’t imagine that they’d have much trouble boarding it if they wanted to
The boat was caught on international waters without an anchor when the event happened. The Coast guard asked it kindly to move into Finnish waters where the police boarded the boat with the border guard giving a chopper ride.
No marine equivalents were actually needed which has the benefit of the apprehension not being a military action which could’ve easily been made escalatory in propaganda.
Ahh shit, I had just assumed that the gulf of Finland was narrow enough that it was all someone’s territorial water, but it isn’t. Thanks for the correction, I will edit a note into my comment
Regarding the marines thing, that was not because I thought Finland actually had used them, more an “if the crew actually did try to fight about it, Finland is quite capable of winning that fight”
Edit: I thought that the gulf of Finland was narrower than it is, and this affects the relevance of my comment. See boredtortoise’s reply below
Under UNCLOS at least, a country can board a ship within its territorial waters to investigate a crime “if the consequences of the crime extend to the coastal State” (and some other reasons). Sinking it is almost certainly illegal, but it’s an unarmed ship and Finland has marines so I can’t imagine that they’d have much trouble boarding it if they wanted to
The boat was caught on international waters without an anchor when the event happened. The Coast guard asked it kindly to move into Finnish waters where the police boarded the boat with the border guard giving a chopper ride.
No marine equivalents were actually needed which has the benefit of the apprehension not being a military action which could’ve easily been made escalatory in propaganda.
Ahh shit, I had just assumed that the gulf of Finland was narrow enough that it was all someone’s territorial water, but it isn’t. Thanks for the correction, I will edit a note into my comment
Regarding the marines thing, that was not because I thought Finland actually had used them, more an “if the crew actually did try to fight about it, Finland is quite capable of winning that fight”
Ty, I was expecting them to be russian flagged to ‘dare’ NATO to mess with them as an excuse to do… Something