A week of military action by Britain and Norway to prevent Russian spy submarines around the undersea cables in the North Atlantic deterred their operation, the U.K. defence chief said Thursday, accusing Moscow of attempting to distract from the Iran war to increase its bad acts against Europe.
Defence Secretary John Healey added a Royal Navy frigate, aircraft and hundreds of people were engaged in the pursuit of a Russian attack sub, two spy submarines in action in the North of the U.K., and had intercepted the spy ships before they could conduct their “noxious” operations against the underwater infrastructure.
He said, “the Russian vessels eventually left after the operation that lasted more than a month. They are not broken or damaged in any cables or pipes.”
The U.K. said other allies were also involved in the operation, but didn’t name them.
Countries in NATO have been raising alarms on numerous occasions that Russia can sabotage underwater cables on which world communications rely with its fleet of spy ships. Russia has refuted these allegations.
Healey said his message to Russian President Vladimir Putin was “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.”
In a statement, Norwegian Defence Minister Tore Sandvik said that in recent weeks, Russia had been in and around Norwegian and British sea space, conducting operations.
Norway and the U.K. alleged that the exercise was planned by the Main Directorate of Deep Sea Research of the Russian armed forces or GUGI. The exercise is a reminder that Russia is even training how to map and sabotage major Western infrastructure at depths in the ocean, the Defence Ministry of Norway said.
“The subs, which are to be used in peacetime to survey underwater infrastructure and sabotage it during conflict, are designed to do that,” said Healey.
Britain announced in November that it was willing to respond to any encroachment on its waters after the spy ship Yantar was spotted on the fringes of U.K. waters off Scotland.
Healey explained that the submarine action was in the exclusive economic zone of the U.K., 200 nautical miles (370 kilometres, 230 miles) offshore, but not in its more limited territorial waters.
British officials have tried to keep Russia in the international spotlight even as the world’s attention is focused on the conflict in the Middle East. They have also highlighted the similarity between the conflicts in the region and in Ukraine, indicating that Russia has provided Iran with drone components and other assistance.
The U.S.-Israeli war against Iran has revealed the declining condition of the British military, which has been diminishing over the decades. U.S. President Donald Trump has derided the Royal Navy, which has sent one destroyer to the eastern Mediterranean to help defend Cyprus.
Healey told a news conference that “Putin would want us to be distracted by the Middle East,” but Russia is the main threat to the U.K. and its allies.
“We will never take our eyes off Putin,” he said.
Later in March, the U.K. announced that its military forces were on standby to intercept Russian vessels that were believed to belong to its so-called shadow fleet of vessels transporting oil in contravention of international sanctions against Moscow because of its invasion of Ukraine. Before Britain had assisted France and the U.S. in inspecting ships prior to them being boarded.
Katja Bego, a senior research fellow at international affairs think tank Chatham House, said “calling out” Russian operations as Healey had done could be an effective deterrent.
“But there are also urgent consultations to be undertaken on the part of the European nations, as to what they can do to make Russia pay a much greater price at the hands of these ever-growing impudent invasions.”
