Russia Is Testing NATO Below the Waterline
A covert Russian operation near Svalbard exposed a deeper problem for the Alliance: critical infrastructure can be attacked before NATO can determine whether an armed attack has even taken place.
This spring, Britain, Norway and the United States confronted a Russian undersea operation near Svalbard that Western officials believe was designed to test a method of sabotaging critical subsea cables.
According to Reuters, Russia’s Main Directorate for Deep-Sea Research, known as GUGI, used deep-sea submersibles to simulate the deployment of technology capable of disabling undersea cables while making attribution difficult. Allied forces tracked and confronted the Russian vessels, preventing them from completing the exercise. No cables were damaged.
The most sensitive details remain intelligence assessments rather than publicly demonstrated facts. Russia has not acknowledged the operation, and its Defence Ministry did not respond to Reuters’ request for comment.
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