British Defense Secretary John Healey has said that three Russian submarines have carried out covert operations over undersea cables and pipelines in waters north of Britain, the BBC reports.
The minister said a British warship and aircraft were dispatched to the scene after malicious activity was detected, and there is currently no evidence that British infrastructure in the Atlantic has been damaged. Addressing Russian dictator Vladimir Putin directly, Healey said the British see him: ” We see your activity over our cables and our pipelines, and you should know that any attempt to damage them will not be tolerated and will have serious consequences.”
The Russian Embassy in London has denied Healey’s allegations.
Britain’s data and energy infrastructure relies on undersea cables and pipelines, with around 60 undersea cables reaching the coast at several locations, mainly in the east and southwest of the island. Undersea cables provide around 90% of Britain’s internet connections.
Healey told a press conference on the 9th of April that Russia had sent a Akula class submarine to conduct a diversion while two GUGI spy submarines conducted reconnaissance along the cables.
The submarine left British waters shortly after it was spotted, but the GUGI submarines continued their work.
Russia’s state news agency Tass reported that Russia was not threatening the undersea infrastructure that is truly important to Britain, and was not using aggressive rhetoric.
Other countries have also been involved in monitoring Russian activities, but Healey only named Norway.
GUGI is not as widely known as the KGB or FSB, but this Russian agency also poses a threat to Western countries. The acronym is derived from the Russian language and stands for the Main Directorate for Deep-Sea Exploration. Although GUGI is part of the Russian Navy, it is so secretive that it reports directly to the Minister of Defense and Putin.
The agency is headquartered in St. Petersburg, but it also has an Arctic base on the Kola Peninsula, where Russia’s nuclear submarine fleet is also based. GUGI’s main areas of expertise are underwater reconnaissance, sabotage, and surveillance. Only one other country, the United States, has the same capacity to conduct military operations at extreme depths. GUGI also operates small unmanned submarines, which are believed to have been used to monitor British cables and pipelines.
The small submarines can be secretly launched from spy ships,
such as the Yantar, which has been seen prowling the English Channel. The main concern is the potential ability of unmanned submarines to cut undersea cables; they can also, in some cases, connect to the cables to intercept data.
Russia’s actions are hybrid warfare, meaning hostile action that falls short of direct, lethal attacks.
Britain and NATO are concerned that Russia’s surveillance of undersea infrastructure is designed to give Moscow an advantage in the event of actual hostilities. In the worst-case scenario, Russia would likely seek to disrupt or disrupt British data transmissions as widely as possible by activating devices previously placed on the cables.
Healey also suggested that Putin was trying to capitalize on the world’s current focus on the Middle East, adding that Russia was the main threat to British security.
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