A gigantic whirlpool wreaks havoc in the Baltic Sea off the Danish island of Bornholm. It is a consequence of explosions that occurred in the early hours of September 26 and have caused several leaks in the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines, used to transport gas from Russia to Europe. The cause is "clear sabotage," said Jake Sullivan, US national security adviser. It is a "deliberate, reckless and irresponsible" act, declared NATO. A European official says Russia is the suspected suspect. How does submarine sabotage work?
In recent years, Western officials have grown increasingly concerned about the vulnerability of submarine cables, which are estimated to carry 95% of the world's international digital data. "We are now seeing Russian underwater activity in the vicinity of undersea cables that I don't think we've ever seen," NATO's commander of submarine forces warned in 2017; adding: "Russia is clearly interested ... in NATO's underwater infrastructure." Last January, the head of the British armed forces noted a "dramatic increase in Russian submarine and underwater activity" in relation to the two decades earlier, with a particular threat to cables.
Russia has various means of attacking underwater infrastructure. One of the threats comes from the Main Directorate for Deep Sea Research, known by its Russian acronym GUGI, which is independent of the Navy and reports directly to the Defense Ministry. The GUGI has a number of specialized spy ships and submarines capable of working at extreme depths. They are capable of deploying divers (known as hydronauts), mini-submarines, or underwater drones. In 2019, a fire aboard the Loshárik, one of the GUGI mini-submarines, killed 14 Russians in the Barents Sea; the fact that they were all officers is indicative of the specialized nature of the organization's work.
Now, it's unlikely that GUGI was to blame in this case, says Bryan Clark, a naval expert at the Hudson Institute, a Washington think tank. Its submarines are based in the Arctic and focus on the North Atlantic, the Norwegian Sea and the Barents Sea. To deploy divers, drones or torpedoes they would have to cross the North Sea and enter the Baltic, whose narrow entrance is well suited for NATO acoustic surveillance. And the large surface mother ships would also have been detected.
For Russia, it is easier to deploy autonomous or remotely operated unmanned drones from Kaliningrad, the Russian exclave that is home to the Russian Navy's Baltic Fleet and is just 300 kilometers from the area where the pipelines were damaged. In 2018, Russia is believed to be developing 17 different underwater drone projects. A surface ship could deploy a drone from a distance, capable of detonating a torpedo warhead against a target. Another method of attack would be to deposit mines that can be remotely activated weeks or months after they are placed.
In practice, pipelines and cables are different targets, explains Clark. Cables can be poorly located, hidden by silt, or move with currents. Sometimes they are accidentally cut or damaged by longline vessels. In January, the cutting of a vital cable to the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard sparked rumors of Russian involvement; however, the Norwegian police ended up concluding that it had been an accident.
Oil pipelines, on the other hand, are easy to find, although they are usually partially buried or protected by concrete, so it takes a large explosive charge to damage them. The Nord Stream 1, for example, has a concrete lining up to 11 centimeters thick. According to the Danish authorities, each explosion caused a seismic episode equivalent to 500 kilos of TNT. This is a power similar to that of a car pump, although it must be taken into account that the pressure of the gas inside the gas pipeline would have contributed to this effect.
What is not clear is why Russia would have targeted gas pipelines that it largely owns. Nord Stream 2, completed in September 2021, was suspended by Germany in February, shortly before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Nord Stream 1 was shut down on August 31 by Gazprom, the Russian state-owned company that has a majority stake in the pipelines. The explosions have come at a time of Russian escalation in the war. As announced by the Kremlin the day before, President Vladimir Putin yesterday signed the annexation treaties for four Ukrainian provinces; it is the largest land conquest in Europe since World War II (although Putin's forces control only part of the area).
Niklas Granholm, of the Swedish Defense Research Agency (FOI), points out that the day after the explosions, on September 27, the last section of a gas pipeline that runs between Norway and Poland through Denmark was completed and that its objective is to reduce Europe's dependence on Russian gas. The attack on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines could be a “look what we can do” warning aimed at dissuading the European Union from imposing new sanctions, says Granholm. “Anyway, it is very difficult to enter into the logic of Russian decision-making.”
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Translation: Juan Gabriel López Guix
