Interesting article my friend in the Netherlands sent me
I have translated it into English.
DR
NOS News•Yesterday, 12:22•Amendedyesterday, 13:52
New evidence of Russian sabotage on the seabed
Journalists from the Danish, Norwegian, Swedish and Finnish public broadcasters have found new indications in a joint research project that Russia is developing plans to sabotage Western gas pipelines, electricity and internet cables on the seabed.
The journalists followed the movements of Russian ships in the North Sea and Baltic Sea, spoke with experts and security services and made use of intercepted radio traffic. The result of their research can be seen in a documentary series that will be broadcast tonight.
The research confirms
reports that Russia plans to sabotage crucial infrastructure of NATO countries at sea if it comes to war with the West.
Admiral Vladimirsky
In November , for example, a team from the
Danish broadcaster DR tracked down a Russian ship in the strait between Denmark and Sweden that was probably busy mapping the infrastructure on the seabed there.
The Admiral Vladimirsky is a marine research vessel, but would also be used to collect intelligence on gas pipelines, wind farms and electricity and internet cables. It had turned off its AIS transponder so that its location and other data were not visible to others.
The Danes managed to find out the location by intercepting information that the ship sent to a Russian naval base. The broadcaster sent a journalist and cameraman to the Vladimirsky in a fast boat. When he arrived at the ship, masked men appeared on deck and a heavily armed soldier in a bulletproof vest.
DRThe heavily armed soldier aboard the Admiral Vladimirsky
A journalist from the Norwegian broadcaster NRK discovered a connection between the destruction of an internet cable between Spitsbergen and the Norwegian mainland due to the movements of a Russian fishing boat. They were strange. "The transponder signals show that the Melkart-5 passed over the cable more than 130 times. More than 130 times, there and back."
That cannot be a coincidence, said a Norwegian shipowner. "This is totally illogical for a fishing vessel. Even if there is an insane amount of fish. I'm not a fisherman, but this is not a normal activity."
NATO exercise
The Finnish broadcaster
Yle writes that the Russian fishing vessel Taurus also attracted the attention of the journalists. It called at a Norwegian port 51 times in the past ten years, only 34 times with fish on board.
In the fall of 2018, it was spotted west of Norway where a major NATO exercise was just underway. In December last year it was on its way to the Barents Sea, almost a month before the start of the fishing season.
According to the broadcasters, over the past ten years, the movements of more than fifty Russian ships should be considered suspicious.
Paralyze society
"In the event of a conflict with the West, Russia knows where to strike to paralyze Danish society," the counterintelligence chief of the Danish intelligence agency PET told DR. According to the head of Norwegian intelligence, the Kremlin attaches great importance to the operation and it is being directed directly from Moscow.
The information that Russians collect is stored centrally, according to the DR. To be able to do this, a special software program called GUGI has been developed for Russian naval, fishing and merchant vessels.
That would mean that all Russian ships could be deployed for underwater warfare. According to an expert from the Norwegian Defense Academy, it is very easy for a non-naval vessel to jettison a sea mine at a designated location.
The Russian ambassador to Norway, in response to questions from the broadcasters, stated in writing that Russia complies with international law.
Frank Bekkers, Hague Center for Strategic Studies:
"In a sense, this is old news. But it concerns espionage of Russian ships in the North Sea and that is important. The intention is that in about ten years almost 70 percent of the electricity we use in the Netherlands will come from offshore wind farms The Russians are mapping out that entire infrastructure at sea and they may be doing that in order to carry out sabotage actions one day, which is why this news is so important.
It is not just a theoretical possibility, we already see all kinds of incidents happening and it is possible that these incidents are actually an exercise in tackling things on a larger scale. So see if it can go unseen and what the consequences are. It could just be that this is a harbinger of something bigger.
In fact, everyone was shaken up by the Nord Stream explosions anyway, if they weren't already. Everyone sees that this is a real threat. The problem is: what exactly do you do about it? The Dutch part of the North Sea is almost 1.5 times the size of the land area of the Netherlands. That is a huge area. How do you monitor that? Many countries struggle with this problem. They see the urgency of the threat, but there is not yet an easy solution for it."
The message on the Danish broadcaster's site also refers to a press conference of the Dutch intelligence services AIVD and MIVD. They announced
in February that a Russian ship tried to collect information about wind farms in the North Sea last year.
MIVD director Swillens then said that the Russians also want to map internet cables and gas pipelines. According to the services, there were "preparatory acts for disruption and sabotage". In this case, too, it was Admiral Vladimirsky, a source told the DR.
On the broadcaster's site, no connection is made with the attacks on gas pipelines Nord Stream 1 and 2 in the Baltic Sea last year. Who was behind it is still
unknown .