Suspected to have secret troops from Russia

Our modern civilization relies on pipelines that line the ocean floors of the world's oceans. Now, an unknown Russian entity is targeting Baltic infrastructure.

Jacob Hartung/t-online

Fiber optic cables buried deep beneath the water connect us to people on the other side of the world. If they were damaged, the entire continent's internet could be brought down.

Russian ships and submarines have been repeatedly spotted cruising near transatlantic and undersea cables in the Baltic Sea for several years. However, insiders warn that now a secret Russian unit may be about to take action against the cables.

what happened?

Several countries reported failures on several critical cables on Sunday and Monday. An undersea cable between Germany and Finland was severed, as was another between Lithuania and Sweden.

On the one hand, the C-Lion1 submarine internet cable between the northern German city of Rostock and Finland was affected. The outage was detected just after 4 a.m. on Monday, according to Cinia, a Finnish state-owned company that builds fiber optic networks and provides telecommunications services.

Authorities are investigating the incident.Screenshot: x.com

Then on Monday night, Lithuanian media reported that undersea internet cables between Lithuania and Sweden had been severed. Andrius Šemeškevičius, chief technology officer (CTO) of Lithuanian telecom operator Telia, said the cable was cut at around 10am on Sunday.

After the blackout, Lithuania stepped up monitoring of its waters. The Lithuanian navy said the NATO country wanted to study further measures with its allies.

wanted suspect German Foreign Minister Annalena Berbock Don't turn it off on Monday night. They explained in a statement Finnish Foreign Minister Elena Valtonen However, both countries are “concerned” about the severed cables. The foreign minister also warned of “hybrid warfare by malign actors” but did not elaborate on those actors.

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius was even clearer on Tuesday:

Are there any warnings currently?

and.

Recently, the United States has detected an increase in Russian military activity near critical undersea cables. Two U.S. officials told CNN that Russia was preparing to carry out sabotage operations that would paralyze vital parts of the global communications infrastructure. They are concerned about major naval activity and fear Russia could launch an attack soon.

NATO is also increasingly concerned about this threat. A NATO official told Business Insider that the Western alliance is currently stepping up measures to protect cables because “threats to underwater infrastructure, including oil and gas pipelines and data cables, have increased since Russia launched its war in Ukraine.” Increase”. .

What do you need to know about submarine cables?

submarine information highway

Underwater cables are an important part of human civilization in the 21st century. They carry everything from communications to streaming and financial data. They can also transmit much larger amounts of data than the most powerful communications satellites. Last but not least, signals transmitted through the ocean floor are much faster than signals transmitted to space via radio.

But like satellites, these cables are difficult to modify, repair or extend. This is why Russia's sabotage operations are so threatening, because it will take a long time to create a replacement.

humanity's greatest moment

The first transatlantic deep-sea cable between Ireland and North America came into operation in August 1858. However, this “humanity's greatest moment,” as the writer Stefan Zweig celebrated in his book of the same name, failed. The Queen's first congratulatory message to the President of the United States took 16 hours. After just one month, the cable failed – the jacket may have been damaged during installation.

Underwater data transmission technology continued to develop until the first fiber optic cables were laid in the 1980s. By the mid-1990s, the previously used copper cables had been completely replaced due to the high capacity requirements of the Internet.

An incident more than a decade ago demonstrated the seriousness of cable failures: On February 28, 2012, a ship in the port of Mombasa severed an undersea cable with an anchor, paralyzing much of East Africa's internet connectivity.

Why is Russia a huge threat?

“Deep Sea Research”

The U.S. government says the current threat to critical infrastructure comes from a special entity. U.S. officials told CNN, “Russia's undersea destruction force is GUGI, a top-secret force that operates surface ships, submarines and naval drones.”

The full name of the bureau is “Deep Sea Research Headquarters”. The unit is part of the Russian Defense Ministry, but its operations are kept strictly confidential and does not appear in the official structure of the ministry's website.

GUGI was established in 1963 and was already an elite force during the Soviet period. Candidates for membership must be an officer and have at least five years of submarine service experience. Today, members working at Extreme Depth earn an annual salary of up to 600,000 rubles, or about 5,800 euros per month, Business Insider reports.

Nuclear submarines and spy ships

The Deep Sea Research Headquarters maintains a fleet of combat ships, submarines and midget submarines that conduct reconnaissance and sabotage activities on the seafloor. The spy ship Jantar, which serves as the mothership of two mini-submarines, is particularly busy. It was discovered off North America in 2015, off the coast of Syria in 2016 and off Ireland in 2021, always close to undersea cables.

Admiral Vladimir Grishechkin

The submarine “Belgorod” is also part of the GUGI fleet. “This submarine is designed to be a 'mother ship' for other small submarines and, most importantly, can carry Russia's new retaliatory weapon: the nuclear-powered torpedo Poseidon, which can destroy entire cities,” ecstatically said. Vladimir Grishechkin In a 2021 speech.

The 59-year-old is the head of underwater espionage. Grishechkin rose from the position of engineer in a navigation group to commander-in-chief of a large nuclear submarine. He continued to rise through the ranks of the Russian military until 2018, when Vladimir Putin awarded him the rank of lieutenant general. In 2021, he became the head of GUGI after the death of his predecessor.

After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Deep Sea Research Headquarters did not lose any importance. Instead, a U.S. official told CNN that the Russian leadership takes GUGI very seriously. He said the United States would take threats to undersea infrastructure very seriously and would view the destruction of cables as a major escalation of Russian aggression.

Exactly what Deep Sea Research Headquarters is currently doing in the world's oceans is unclear. However, if GUGI did cut the underwater cable running there, we might only notice it when it's too late and the stream is no longer running.

source

(t-online/dsc)

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