LONDON: Britain said on Thursday it had tracked and deterred three Russian submarines on an alleged month-long “covert operation” in UK waters in the North Atlantic near vital undersea cables and pipelines.
Disclosing details of the joint mission with Norway and other unspecified allies, British Defence Secretary John Healey said there was no evidence the Russian vessels had damaged the subsea infrastructure. The UK minister said 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.
“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 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.”
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 UK´s Ministry of Defence (MoD) said.
GUGI is among Russia´s most secret facilities, responsible for sub-surface ocean monitoring and atomic-powered, deep-water mini spy subs, according to defence experts.
Alongside details and photos of the tracking mission, the MoD 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.
