Britain on Thursday said that it had tracked and deterred three Russian submarines on an alleged month-long “covert operation” in waters in the North Atlantic near vital undersea cables and pipelines.
Disclosing details of the joint mission with Norway and other unspecified allies, British Secretary of Defence John Healey said there was no evidence the Russian vessels had damaged the subsea infrastructure.
Healey said that he was revealing the operation, which involved British warships and military aircraft, to “call out this Russian activity” and send Russian President Vladimir Putin a message.
Photo: AFP
“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,” he told a Downing Street news conference.
Healey said he had deployed Britain’s armed forces “to track and to deter any malign activity by these vessels,” adding that Putin’s purpose was “secret operations that remain undetected over our critical infrastructure.”
“We’ve exposed those covert operations. We’ve made clear to him and his submarines that we’ve watched them every step of the way,” he said.
Britain and its allies tracked an Akula-class Russian nuclear-powered attack submarine and two specialist submarines from Russia’s Main Directorate of Deep Sea Research (GUGI), the British Ministry of Defence said.
GUGI is among Russia’s most secret facilities, responsible for sub-surface ocean monitoring and atomic-powered, deep-water mini spy subs, experts said.
Alongside details and photographs of the tracking mission, the ministry published a declassified image of the GUGI vessels docked at Russia’s Barents Sea naval base Olenya.
The Russian attack sub was “a likely decoy to distract” from the two specialist vessels, which are “designed to survey underwater infrastructure during peacetime and sabotage it in conflict,” Healey told reporters.
They “spent time over critical infrastructure relevant to us and our allies in the north Atlantic,” he said, with British warships dropping sonar buoys “to demonstrate to them that we were monitoring.”
“We wanted to ensure that we could warn them that their covert operation had been exposed and reduce the risk that they may attempt any action that could damage our pipelines or our cables,” he said. “I’m confident we have no evidence that there has been any damage.”
The mission involving about 500 British personnel saw aircraft fly more than 450 hours while a navy frigate covered several thousand nautical miles, Healey said.
He added that London’s stance was “making Russia reroute its shadow ships ... or escort its shadow ships with its own warships,” and thereby “making it harder for Putin to pursue his illegal oil revenues.”
“We aim, with others, to put more pressure in the coming weeks and months on that activity,” he said.
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