The UK has accused Russia of running a covert submarine operation over undersea cables and pipelines north of the country, according to Defence Secretary John Healey. He said three Russian submarines conducted the activity in waters north of the UK, and the UK deployed a warship and aircraft to deter the operation.

Russian Activity and UK Response

Healey addressed Russian President Vladimir Putin directly, saying, ‘We see you. 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.’ The Russian embassy in London denied Healey’s claims, according to Tass, Russia’s state news agency.

The UK is dependent on its undersea cables and pipelines for data and energy — there are around 60 undersea cables coming ashore at several points along the UK coastline, particularly around East Anglia and South West England. More than 90% of the UK’s day-to-day internet traffic travels via these undersea cables.

Submarine Tactics and Monitoring

Healey told a Downing Street press conference that Russia had sent an Akula class submarine as a diversionary tactic while two of its GUGI spy submarines carried out the surveillance of these cables. He said the attack submarine soon left UK waters and went back to Russia after it was monitored, while the two GUGI vessels remained.

The Royal Navy deployed frigate HMS St Albans, fuel tanker RFA Tidespring, and anti-submarine Merlin helicopters to track all three of the Russian submarines — other nations were involved in tracking the Russian activity, though Healey mentioned only Norway by name.

Healey said, ‘Our armed forces left [Russia] in no doubt that they were being monitored, that their movements were not covert, as President Putin planned, and that their attempted secret operation had been exposed.’ He added that the UK ‘watched them, we were able to track them, we dropped sonar buoys to demonstrate to them that we were monitoring every hour of their operation.’

GUGI Submarines and Their Threat

GUGI is not yet as familiar to most people as the KGB or FSB, but it poses a formidable and dangerous challenge to Western nations, but the acronym stands for the Russian words for Main Directorate for Deep Sea Research. Although it is a part of the Russian navy, it is so secretive that it reports directly to the defence minister and the president.

GUGI specialises in underwater surveillance, sabotage, and reconnaissance — no other nation on Earth, except for the United States, has the same capacity to operate military equipment at extreme depths. This equipment includes the kind of miniature, uncrewed submarines that Russia is believed to have deployed over Britain’s data cables in the North Atlantic.

These ‘mini-subs’ can be launched covertly, at night, from spy vessels like the Yantar, seen previously loitering around the English Channel; they have the ability to cut cables or in some cases, it’s feared, interdict them to allow Russia to monitor the data passing through them.

All this comes under the heading of hybrid warfare: hostile acts that stop short of an attributable, lethal attack. Britain and NATO’s concern is that all Russian covert surveillance of Western undersea cables and pipelines is aimed at giving Moscow a standing start should hostilities ever break out.

Were that to happen, the expectation is that Russia would attempt to sever or disrupt as much of Britain’s data as possible, activating devices it may have pre-positioned in the run-up to war.

Healey also claimed Putin had sought to capitalise on the world being ‘distracted’ by war in the Middle East and that it was Russia that posed the ‘primary threat to UK security.’

He said Moscow still ‘poses a threat’ but expressed confidence the UK could track and monitor future activity while continuing to expose ‘any covert operations that Putin wants to mount that may threaten our vital interests.’