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NATO says Russian warships have mapped key underwater infrastructure within the Western navy alliance’s maritime territories.
NATO has established a brand new heart that focuses on the safety of undersea pipelines and knowledge cables An apparent attack on Nord Stream gas pipelines And as issues develop that Russia has mapped key Western underwater infrastructure round Europe.
Protection ministers of NATO members at a gathering in Brussels authorized plans for NATO “essential underwater infrastructure safety” to guard naval bases, NATO Secretary Common Jens Stoltenberg mentioned on Friday.
The middle can be primarily based at NATO’s naval headquarters in Northwood close to London and can, amongst different issues, be liable for creating a brand new surveillance system to watch components of the Atlantic in addition to the North Sea, Baltic Sea, Mediterranean areas. Will monitor. Sea and Black Sea.
Efforts to guard infrastructure within the West’s fragile waters are available response to alleged sabotage. Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipelines in September. It isn’t clear who was behind the destruction of the pipelines.
“The risk is evolving,” mentioned Hans-Werner Wermann, a former German three-star common, explaining that NATO was motivated to behave on info that Russian planes had mapped essential infrastructure in NATO alliance territory. he
“Russian ships have actively mapped our essential sea infrastructure. There are critical issues that Russia might goal undersea cables and different essential infrastructure in an try to destroy Western life,” he mentioned in Brussels. instructed reporters at NATO headquarters.
Wiermann mentioned the brand new NATO heart will carry collectively NATO members, allies and the personal sector to assist “enhance the sharing of details about altering threats and threats.”
About 8,000 kilometers (5,000 miles) of oil and fuel pipelines cross the North Sea alone, and it’s unattainable to repeatedly monitor different underwater knowledge methods, networks and grids.
“There isn’t a method we are able to have a NATO presence with that hundreds of kilometers of underground infrastructure,” Stoltenberg instructed reporters after chairing the assembly.
“However we are able to get higher at gathering intelligence, sharing info, connecting the dots, as a result of there’s additionally a number of info within the personal sector” about ship actions and maritime surveillance, he mentioned.
Moderately than attempting to see all of it, the brand new heart and NATO allies will give attention to higher-risk areas, equivalent to pipelines in shallow waters which might be simply accessible. Potential harm to knowledge cables will be extra simply mitigated by merely dropping in additional cables.
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