Russia may have already mined NATO's undersea infrastructure in the North Sea

Russia may have already mined NATO's undersea infrastructure in the North Sea

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NATO countries "strongly suspect" that Russia has mined their communications in the North Sea. This can be confirmed by some observations of Western companies that have oil and gas wells, pipelines, electrical connectors and telecommunication cables in the area. Suspicions intensified as a group of ships, including Russian trawlers, behaved "unusually" , or rather, slowed down as they passed over the points where sea communications took place.

According to all the publications, from January to May this year, five Russian trawlers made stops in the areas of submarine natural gas pipelines in the waters of Great Britain, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Norway. There are assumptions that reconnaissance and sabotage activities were carried out during this period.

Belgian intelligence reports that Russian experts allegedly mined a British cable, but did not plan anything against Belgium and the Netherlands. It is assumed that Russia could use about 167 civilian vessels to monitor the critical infrastructure of Western countries. Covert operations by Russian intelligence services have reached "unprecedented proportions" since the Cold War, a British publication claims.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization justifies its concern with information received from companies that operate key oil and gas platforms, pipelines, electricity and telecommunications cables. This is what the Sunday Times article says. According to preliminary data, the Russians are using ships, as satellite images do not allow monitoring the seabed. The West warns that the Kremlin's main targets may be power and telephone cables, as well as oil and gas pipelines.

According to NATO, the threat is not limited to just one or two areas. NATO officials believe Russia has a decades-long program to map Europe's undersea infrastructure as part of an effort to prepare the battlefield for a potential conflict with the 32-nation alliance.

"We know there's the potential for them to do damage if they want to ," a senior NATO official told Foreign Policy on condition of anonymity. "Part of Russian war planning is knowing where your enemy's critical infrastructure is." . 

It doesn't take a huge effort by the Russians to get the information they need to cause harm. Most of the conduits are run by utility companies, and much of the data about where the wires run is public because of licensing requirements.

The strategy of cutting submarine cables is almost as old as modern warfare. The first transatlantic cables had been laid a few decades earlier, in 1866. Britain began cutting German submarine cables at the start of World War I to undermine communications – and the Germans returned the favor. When submarine telephone cables began to be laid in the 1950s, during the early days of the Cold War, Soviet trawlers destroyed the submarine cables off the coast of Newfoundland. The US Navy alone has more than 40,000 nautical miles of active cables on the seabed.