Europe awakens to the threat of sabotage by Russian agents

Assaults on essential infrastructure from France to Denmark bear the hallmark of Russian operatives, specialists say.

Western officers are cautious of what they are saying is a rising menace to key infrastructure from Russia [File: Markus Schreiber/AP Photo]

Suspicion has fallen on Russia over a sequence of confirmed or obvious acts of sabotage and espionage that passed off late final 12 months in Western Europe, specialists say, with European international locations more and more taking measures in response.

The acts got here after two occasions that harm Russian pursuits. In September, explosions within the Baltic Sea put Russia’s Nord Stream fuel pipelines to Germany out of use. The Kremlin blamed the sabotage on the UK, with out proof. Ukraine and Poland blamed Russia but in addition offered no proof.

Then, on October 7, the Kerch Strait Bridge was bombed, interrupting Moscow’s skill to produce Russian-annexed Crimea, an assault Russia blamed on Ukraine’s navy intelligence.

It might have been a coincidence, however the day after the Kerch bridge bombing, trains throughout northern Germany floor to a halt after cables that enabled prepare drivers to speak had been sabotaged.

“It's clear that this was a focused and malicious motion,” minister for transport Volker Wissing advised a information convention, with out figuring out who could be accountable.

Two days later, the Danish island of Bornholm was plunged into darkness after the undersea cable that provides it with electrical energy from Sweden was severed.

On October 19, web cables had been severed within the south of France at three areas concurrently. Cloud safety firm Zscaler mentioned the cable cuts, which severed digital highways linking Marseille with Lyon, Barcelona and Milan, had “impacted main cables with connectivity to Asia, Europe, US and doubtlessly different elements of the world”.

Web service supplier Free posted pictures of knowledge cables severed inside their buried concrete housings, calling the occasion “an act of vandalism”. France had suffered an analogous assault in April.

Throughout the identical month, Norway’s home safety authorities mentioned they had been investigating suspicious cases of drones being flown close to airfields and vitality infrastructure, and in December Lithuania reported a rise in unauthorised drone flights over navy websites.

“In one of many navy amenities, extra violations had been recorded in a single month this 12 months than in the entire of final 12 months,” mentioned the armed forces.

Unit 29155

Suspicion for these actions is specializing in Unit 29155, a department of the Normal Workers of the Russian Armed Forces consisting of deep-cover intelligence operatives who function overseas.

“By all obtainable accounts, Unit 29155 has been in existence since at the very least 2009. It consists of a small variety of personnel, presumably round 200, with a further 20-40 operations officers,” mentioned Joseph Fitsanakis, professor of intelligence and safety research at Coastal Carolina College.

Fitsanakis advised Al Jazeera that the unit has its origins in networks of Soviet brokers who “had been at occasions tasked with growing and sustaining plans for large-scale sabotage, behind enemy traces, which might change into operational throughout a traditional conflict between the USSR and the West. They included acts of sabotage towards vitality networks, public utilities, civilian or navy harbours, telecommunications techniques.”

Debriefed Russian defectors have mentioned President Vladimir Putin, himself a former KGB agent, revived sabotage networks within the early 2000s, creating Unit 29155.

“Given its mission, and the sturdy document of its actions within the lead-up to the Ukrainian conflict, there isn't a doubt that Unit 29155 is closely concerned in Russian hybrid operations at the moment,” mentioned Fitsanakis. “A number of cases of sabotage focusing on Western utility and transportation networks in Poland, Scandinavia, France and Germany bear the hallmarks of Unit 29155 operations,” he mentioned.

In truth, he mentioned, “it could be totally shocking if Unit 29155 had not been activated throughout the [2014] Russian invasion of Crimea, in addition to within the lead-up to the latest conflict”.

Arthur PB Laudrain, a doctoral researcher on the College of Oxford and analyst on the Hague Centre for Strategic Research, advised Al Jazeera that whereas it's troublesome to show Russian involvement, the professionalism of the sabotage in France strongly suggests the involvement of a state actor.

“Within the April assault, you needed to attain a number of entry factors alongside rail traces or highways. The perpetrators knew what they had been doing to maximise injury and so they minimize not simply particular factors however eliminated sections of the cable, which makes them harder to restore,” Laudrain mentioned.

The incidents in Western Europe have underlined the vulnerability of key digital communications and vitality infrastructure to assaults, and the potential for critical financial disruption in international locations serving to Ukraine’s conflict effort.

“Moscow has made a degree of focusing on the bodily components of the web – from server farms to firm staff making knowledge safety and content material moderation choices – to exert management over the web at house and in surrounding [regions] over the previous couple of many years,” mentioned Justin Sherman, the founding father of advisory agency International Cyber Methods and nonresident fellow on the Atlantic Council.

“Internationally, previously few years, NATO and different teams have raised issues about heightened Russian navy exercise close to undersea cables, too,” he advised Al Jazeera.

Europe responds

A 12 months in the past, the UK’s chief of defence employees, Tony Radakin, warned of heightened Russian submarine exercise close to knowledge cables.

In the meantime, Alexander Downer, a former Australian overseas minister, writing in The Spectator in October, mentioned 95 % of the world’s web visitors passes by means of simply 200 undersea fibre optic cable techniques.

“There are estimated to be as few as 10 world chokepoints the place these cables converge or come ashore. When you wished to chop off Britain from the world, it could not be very troublesome to sabotage these chokepoints,” he wrote.

Europe has slowly begun to answer the threats.

In 2020, NATO established two new instructions, at Ulf in Germany and Norfolk within the UK, to observe submarine exercise within the North and Baltic Seas.

Final October, France mentioned it was shopping for a fleet of unmanned underwater autos to higher defend undersea cables.

On November 22, Swedish police arrested suspected Unit 29155 operatives Elena Kulkova and Sergey Skvortsov in Stockholm and charged them with espionage. The Russian couple had been dwelling in Sweden since 1997 and had been beneath surveillance for years.

Bellingcat discovered that Skvortsov and Kulkova’s registered Moscow handle was additionally house to quite a few intelligence brokers. Amongst them had been Normal Andrey Averyanov, head of Unit 29155, and Main-Normal Denis Sergeev, the Unit 29155 agent believed to have masterminded the poisonings of former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter within the English metropolis of Salisbury. Skvortsov was the chief director of an organization owned by a self-confessed navy intelligence operative, Vladimir Kulemekov.

In Norway, in the meantime, Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre mentioned he was elevating the armed forces’ state of readiness.

“We're in essentially the most critical state of affairs with safety coverage in current many years … rising tensions imply we're extra weak to each threats and intelligence and affect. This requires all NATO international locations to be extra vigilant,” he mentioned in October.

However some observers are sceptical of the extent to which any nation can fully safeguard civilian infrastructure.

Mike Myrianthis, a Greek oil business veteran, believes that whoever bombed the Nord Stream 2 pipeline opened a can of worms.

“The Nord Stream sabotage destroyed the Russian-German vitality relationship,” he advised Al Jazeera.

“Strikes on infrastructure have change into one thing of a style, and set a harmful precedent.”