"NATO officials have "strong suspicions" that Russia may have mined critical EU submarine infrastructure in the North Sea, the British newspaper The Times reported.
According to the publication, such fears are based on data obtained from companies managing key oil and gas rigs, pipelines, electricity and telecommunications cables.
Electricity and telephone cables, as well as oil and gas pipelines, were key targets for Russian intelligence services, especially after the start of Russia's full-scale military invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the article states.
According to the Belgian security services, no evidence of cable mining in Belgian or Dutch territorial waters in the North Sea was found. However, at the beginning of the war in Ukraine, explosives were found on one of the British cables.
A study by Belgian newspaper De Tijd, which used information from ship logs, found that more than 160 non-military Russian vessels had engaged in 945 suspicious activities over the past decade. At least 749 of the 945 suspicious maneuvers were carried out within one kilometer of pipelines in the North Sea, The Times material indicated. Another 72 suspicious actions were made in the area where electricity cables are located, and the remaining 124 - in areas where telecommunications cables are laid.
"Russian knowledge of where cables and pipelines run is crucial if the Russians want to sabotage energy communications systems, tap into or manipulate communications cables, British journalists emphasize.
In general, the scale of operations of Russian security services abroad has reached a level "not seen since the Cold War," the publication says. Observers believe that Moscow "has had to rely increasingly on foreign nationals and, in particular, representatives of the criminal world" to rebuild its network of agents after the expulsion of hundreds of Russian spies working in Western countries under the guise of diplomats."
