Russian submarines and warships are moored at the St. Petersburg Marine Station closed to receive cruise ships due to the coronavirus pandemic, during the International Maritime Defense show in St. Petersburg, Russia, Friday, June 25, 2021.
AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky
Russia’s military is more active in the Atlantic than in previous years, Western militaries say.
NATO’s intelligence chief warns that this could lead to the targeting of undersea infrastructure.
Officials have warned for years about an increasing threat against undersea pipelines and cables.
Russian forces have been more active in the Atlantic Ocean than in previous years, NATO’s intelligence chief warned Wednesday as he highlighted fears of possible undersea cable sabotage.
“There are heightened concerns that Russia may target undersea cables and other critical infrastructure in an effort to disrupt Western life to gain leverage against those nations that are providing security to Ukraine,” David Cattler, NATO’s assistant secretary general for intelligence and security, told reporters on Wednesday.
“The Russians are more active than we have seen them in years in this domain,” he said of Moscow’s active patrolling of the Atlantic, according to Reuters.
Cattler’s remarks echo recent testimony by Gen. Christopher Cavoli, the head of US European Command. Cavoli said Russia’s undersea force has not been negatively impacted by Moscow’s war in Ukraine, adding that the “Russians are more active than we’ve seen them in years, and their patrols into the Atlantic and throughout the Atlantic are at a high level most of the time, at a higher level than we’ve seen in years.”
Cavoli is not the only member of the US military leadership to issue caution over Russian ship activity. Gen. Glen VanHerck, the head of US Northern Command, told lawmakers in March that Russian submarine activity has increased off the US coasts, and it may be only a year or two before this becomes a “persistent threat.”
In this Saturday, July 29, 2017 file aerial photo, the Russian nuclear-powered cruiser Pyotr Veliky (Peter the Great) and the Russian nuclear submarine Dmitry Donskoy moored near Kronstadt, a seaport town 30 km (19 miles) west of St. Petersburg, Russia.
AP Photo/Elena Ignatyeva, File
The possibility that a foreign adversary might target undersea cables and other critical infrastructure has long worried officials in NATO countries. A top UK defense official said in 2015 that the threat to cables and pipelines is “a new risk to our way of life.” Two years later, then-British parliament member Rishi Sunak described undersea cables as “indispensable yet insecure.”
Russia is understood to have such interference capabilities because it operates submarines with special-mission capabilities, such as small submersibles that can play around with undersea infrastructure. Worried about this threat to infrastructure, the US government has targeted Russian firms and individuals with sanctions to try and curb Moscow’s undersea operations.
Russia’s undersea capabilities have led some officials to suggest that Moscow may have been behind the mysterious sabotage to the Nord Stream pipelines in September 2022. Investigators have confirmed that the clandestine attacks were deliberate, but it’s still unclear who is responsible.
Cattler’s comments on Wednesday, however, appear to suggest that Russia could target undersea cables and infrastructure as a specific means of punishing the dozens of countries that are providing billions of dollars in military assistance to Ukraine and improving its position accordingly.
The US alone has provided over $35.4 billion in security assistance since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, according to a Department of Defense fact sheet. This lethal hardware includes mountains of air-defense systems, infantry fighting vehicles, rockets and missiles, precision munitions, ammunition, drones, and small arms.