News & Comment

Dr Joana de Deus Pereira, a senior research fellow at Rusi Europe specialising in counterterrorism, warned against overlooking conflicts involving terrorists that could “become as lethal as ones we are observing”. She said traditional terrorist groups were resilient and their use of artificial intelligence was affecting the scale and speed at which terrorists were operating.

Gonzalo Saiz Erausquin, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, said Nordic and Baltic states had already been detaining vessels prior to the recent seizures, but that “this heightened environment creates momentum to sustain these actions...Whilst the detention of the Baltic Spirit was based on drug smuggling-related suspicions and not shadow fleet activity, vessel interceptions are gaining traction across Europe and we should expect more to follow."