“Many defense ministers in NATO and the European Union and experts have warned about suspicious Russian operations against submarine fiber optic cables,” Bart Groothuis told Formiche.net, Dutch MEP, member of the Macronian group Renew Europe and rapporteur of the proposal to revise the European NIS directive on the security of networks and information systems. “The fear is that they may put themselves in a position to sabotage them. And Russia has already made two tests to disconnect from the internet ”, she added with reference to the attempts by the Moscow government to test the technology for a“ sovereign internet ”. It should be noted that Groothuis was head of the cyber security bureau of the Dutch Ministry of Defense before becoming an MEP.
In the “war of the seabed”, with the West fearing cut or intercepted cables, Russia can deploy the Main Directorate of submarine research, also known by the Russian acronym Gugi or as Military Unit 40056. It deals with research, we learn from the denomination, but perhaps also something more. Suffice it to say that it operates an important naval base called Olenya Guba (i.e. Deer Bay) near the famous Kola Peninsula in the Russian Arctic. It is the main submarine base of operations for the 29th Separate Submarine Brigade of the Northern Fleet, a unit that has a number of special mission submarines (so-called “spy submarines”) on behalf of the Gugi.
Among the means available to the Directorate there is also the Yantar, which Moscow officially defines as an oceanographic vessel but which has often been traced near submarine cables and backbones of networks (a few weeks ago it was in the English Channel, now as we write yes located between Jutland and Norway). It is an example of one of the two main tools (this is surface) with which Russia can directly threaten cables, as a recent analysis by the US think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies explains. The other is represented by submarines. Like the Losharik and the Poseidon.
Two years ago the Kremlin was having a hard time dealing with a fire that broke out on board the first, one of the Olenya Guba-based boats. The unit is nuclear powered and used for special operations never defined, equipped with mechanical arms capable of acting on the seabed – this is the little that is known, most of the features are highly confidential. In that July 2019 accident on the Losharik, 14 sailors died.
But the Russian government doesn’t just care about those at the time (although the image evoked the specter of the Kursk and was bad publicity for the Kremlin). Moscow’s attention was probably related to the activities that submarine was carrying out on the western quadrant of the Barents Sea when the fire broke out. Along those sea beds passes the Svalbard Undersea Cable System, a 2,714-kilometer submarine cable that connects Breivka, in Norway, to Longyearbyen, in Greenland. That is, it cuts part of the Arctic region which is an increasingly strong strategic interest of Moscow. Among the mysteries that surround these boats, there is the possibility that they are used in missions by the GRU, military intelligence, also to act on submarine cables for espionage and sabotage.
Indeed, for several years now, NATO has had the spotlight on Russian submarine activities. There is no evidence of operations against the West but there is no doubt that Moscow has placed a lot, and more and more, on this type of hybrid warfare capability that threatens a submarine cable system that is estimated at 1.3 million globally. kilometres. NATO recently established a command in Norfolk, Virginia, the Alliance’s first headquarters dedicated specifically to the Atlantic Ocean region. It is a completion of the command of Ulm, in the German region of Baden-Wurttemberg.
Now, with the Nis 2 directive appearing to take shape, the European Union also appears determined to forge a shield to defend submarine cables. And it is not a case. 97% of communications between the United States and Europe, in fact, pass through this infrastructure.
(In the photo taken from VesselFinder the Yantar)
