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")

> 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.

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.

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.)

"Live by the sword, die by the sword", meaning that the Western-European military alliance should also become aware of the consequences of being involved in a war against Russia, there's no hiding behind the bush anymore since they've started doing that. And before anyone starts crying: "These are civilian targets!", which would be true, I'd remind them that the Wildberries logistics centers in Russia were also civilian targets.

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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.)

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Yes, a dangerous provocation which - had the helicopter been hit - could have led to serious consequences.

Also, very much unlikely to be related to the issue of activists sabotaging the Dutch railways. There's hardly a weekend which goes by without some activist group doing something stupid in the Netherlands, often 'climate' activists but sometimes others - 'palestine' being another popular 'cause'. In a Dutch newspaper there was a suggestion that this was related to upcoming actions by farmers but I doubt it, they tend to be more rational in their activism by taking to the motorways in their tractors to slow down (or stop) traffic.

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maybe, but it's a step or two up from blocking roads?

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.

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.

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 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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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

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.

A desperate megalomaniac is a dangerous thing.

It's useful because if an issue is difficult, both levels can disavow responsibility.

> 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.

No, it seems governments can only ignore the concerns then complain the 'alt-right' parties get voted

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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...

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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International politics is intellectually stimulating.

Nerds like trains. A fair few of us live in NL too.

I think AI was mentioned in the article...

By the upvotes - a lot.