Submarines normally operate in secret, lurking in the deep. So when the British defence secretary, John Healey, authorised a Royal Navy Astute-class attack sub to surface close to the Russian “spy ship” Yantar south of Cornwall in November, it was unusual enough.
What was even more notable, however, was that the minister went on to tell the House of Commons on Wednesday what he had done. It was, Healey said, conducted “strictly as a deterrent measure”, as was his decision to accuse the Kremlin of spying on the location of undersea communication and utility cables that connect Britain to the world.
Scouring the seabed for infrastructure is nothing new – and their depth and distance makes cables hard to protect. At the beginning of the first world war, Britain cut several German wireless cables, forcing Berlin to route its communications over connections London could easily intercept. More recently, in June 2018 the Yantar was tracked by the British destroyer HMS Diamond as it passed through the Channel.
What is different today is the deteriorating security environment between the west and Russia and China – and a spate of incidents in the Baltic sea that have forced a hasty military reassessment and a new security effort across northern Europe.
Cutting and damaging subsea connections, particularly fibreoptic internet cables that are sometimes not much thicker than a garden hose, is relatively simple – and easy to obscure and conceal. By loitering in British waters, as the Yantar did in November, it demonstrates that Moscow is eager to amplify the threat.
On Christmas Day, the Eagle S, an oil tanker registered in the Pacific Cook Islands, dragged its anchor for about 60 miles on the Baltic, eventually damaging a power cable and four data cables running between Finland and Estonia. Though the tanker has been seized by Finland, it is unclear whether the incident was deliberate, or accidental.
In November two internet cables – one connecting Sweden to Lithuania, the other from Finland to Germany – stopped working with a day of each other. They were damaged at a point where they intersect, an area of only 10 sq m, and suspicions were pointed at damage caused by a Chinese ship, the Yi Peng 3, which had set sail from the Russian Baltic port of Ust-Luga.
Chinese authorities are leading an investigation into the incident, while Sweden complained its prosecutors were not allowed to board the vessel and investigate while the vessel remained in the Baltic for a month. The Yi Peng 3 has since sailed west, and the incident continues to be under investigation, amid suspicions – denied by Moscow – that Russia was behind the incident, believed to be sabotage.
In early January, the UK announced operation Nordic Warden, in conjunction with the Nordic and Baltic states. It will monitor suspicious merchant ships in 22 parts of the Channel, the Kattegat between Denmark and Sweden, and the North and Baltic seas, and use artificial intelligence to identify target vessels, coordinating between participating countries if suspicious activity is detected.
If the activity of the Yantar is anything to go by, Russia has not so far been entirely put off. Earlier this week the ship, officially a research vessel, passed through the Channel from west to east over a two-day period, prompting Healey to go public and reveal details of the November incident. This time, though, the Yantar did not loiter in British waters.
For the moment it is a game of political messaging. Similar submarine diplomacy took place last summer, when the US surfaced the USS Tennessee, a rarely seen Ohio-class nuclear ballistic missile submarine, in the Norwegian sea in June. That was a response to Russia sending the nuclear-powered cruise missile submarine Kazan to Cuba.
Jonathan Bentham, an analyst with the International Institute for Strategic Studies thinktank, describes the surfacing of the HMS Astute in November as “a bit of a flex” – part of an effort to get the Royal Navy to be more assertive (coming, notably, a few days after Donald Trump took office). “Militaries don’t usually comment on submarine operations, so the fact that [Healey] did signals an increase in rhetoric [between London and Moscow],” Bentham says.
What is less clear is whether it will be effective, given that Russia wants to impose costs on the west for supporting Ukraine. The test will come in the Baltic, or elsewhere at sea, in the coming weeks – and whether another vulnerable cable or pipeline is damaged in murky circumstances. “I don’t think we are close to war with Russia, but the lines are becoming blurred,” Bentham says. “It is a precarious situation.”
