Putin's undersea threat to Britain: UK is 'woefully' short of ways to stop cable attacks that could spark chaos, experts warn after Moscow's 'secret weapon' sabotage plot is foiled

Britain is ‘woefully’ short of the capabilities needed to protect its undersea cables from a potential Russian attack, experts have warned, amid fears Moscow will deploy a ‘secret weapon’ to sabotage vital infrastructure.It comes as Nato allies caught Russian submarines training to unleash a secret weapon designed to disable critical undersea cables without leaving any fingerprints.The clandestine Russian operation, described by two Western officials, was carried out by Moscow's GUGI undersea warfare directorate, which used deep-sea submersibles to simulate the deployment of the sophisticated technology.A joint operation involving Britain, Norway and the US tracked and confronted the Russian vessels at sea, the two officials said.The vessels were prevented from completing their exercise and eventually left the area.Security expert and journalist Philip Ingram has said the UK's military capability is 'woefully short to help protect the critical undersea cables that are going through UK waters'.'The UK doesn't have enough power to stop a determined Russian attack,' he added.'The one thing that the Russians have maintained a very, very strong military capability with is their submarine service and the fleet that they put out into the North Atlantic. Russian spy ship Yantar has remotely piloted underwater mini-submarines'We should never underestimate their capabilities. They are probably the most professional and highly capable element of the Russian armed forces, unlike what we're seeing inside Ukraine.'Keir Giles, an associate fellow at Chatham House, has also warned that Europe and the UK must prepare for a Russian offensive, claiming the continent is not doing enough.'There’s a wide range of ways in which Russia could interfere with daily life in the UK, and any interference with subsea cables should just be seen as an item on the menu for Russia rather than a standalone campaign.'We have a disturbing trend where Russia appears not to have been deterred from carrying out these activities by any of the actions that European states have taken, and so is willing to probe further, push further, do more and more dangerous and provocative things.'So, unless a stop is put to that trend, it seems more or less inevitable that eventually there will be civilian casualties as a result.'Russia has been waging a shadow war against Europe for some time now. Ingram warned that these types of attacks are likely to become increasingly common, building on tactics Russia has already used. These include assassinations and the use of nerve agents such as Novichok, as well as radiological weapons such as Polonium-210 on the streets of London.He also pointed to suspected sabotage in warehouses in London and the use of explosives on drones at Leipzig Airport, alongside unexplained drone activity near Ireland, over US Air Force bases in the UK and above critical infrastructure and military sites across Germany, Denmark, Sweden and other European countries.There have also been direct threats against the CEOs of arms companies in Scandinavia and Germany, as well as threats against British companies helping to supply Ukraine, while cyber attacks have become another increasingly prominent tool in Russia's arsenal.Ingram said that Europe can expect to see a growing wave of these shadow war attacks because ‘the West, NATO, Europe, the United Kingdom and the United States haven’t responded robustly to the Russians.’ 'I think we need to be more aggressive in the way we're dealing with Russia.'We need to be imposing even greater sanctions against what Russia's doing. We should be increasing our support to Ukraine because the only way to properly stop Putin is to topple Putin.'Giles stressed that protecting Europe from a further Russian shadow war will require greater solidarity between Nato and the EU. 'Different European countries have different levels of tolerance for being used as a punchbag by Russia, and some of them, I’m sure, have developed plans for how they could respond—not necessarily with retaliation, mirror-imaging the nonsense that Russia creates, but means of inflicting costs and consequences on Russia as a demonstration that it has to stop. 'However, none of them can do so in isolation. So, what’s required is the overall solidarity of the alliances that protect Europe, primarily NATO, but also the EU.'According to Ingram, a successful Russian attack on Britain's undersea cables would not only cripple the UK, but could have consequences for the entire world. 'It would affect the internet traffic that connects Europe to the United States and the rest of the world.'The impact that there'd be on the likes of the City of London, on the stock exchange in Frankfurt, in Paris, on the Dow Jones and everything else in the United States would be phenomenal.'It would cost us billions of pounds in lost transactions and would take a lot of time to recover from.'Britain and Norway disclosed in April they had uncovered a covert Russian operation in Arctic waters. But the discovery of the new weapon, the location of the operation and the US involvement have not been reported.The deep-sea face-off comes at a time when some Western intelligence officials fear the Kremlin is ramping up sabotage operations in Europe and preparing for a conflict with Nato.US intelligence analysts are increasingly concerned Russia may test Nato's mutual defence pact, known as Article 5. If it does, destroying subsea cables could be a critical part of that effort, the Western officials said.Cables no thicker than a garden hose, lying on the seabed or buried just below, are critical to global internet connectivity and financial transactions. Their economic and strategic importance has made them targets in past conflicts, including in the First and Second World Wars, when they were critical to delivering orders by telegraph or telephone. Two 1,400km (249 miles) subsea fiber-optic cables linking Svalbard to mainland Norway lie as deep as 2,700m below the sea's surface. They carry vast amounts of satellite data downloaded at the SvalSat satellite ground station, the world's largest and part of Nasa's Near Space Network.Some Western officials argue that Moscow's targeting of European states has increased in recent months as the front line in Ukraine has become largely static.Countries including Poland, Lithuania and Romania have confirmed various violations. Most recently, an attempted drone attack on the Leipzig/Halle Airport in August triggered a series of responses from Germany, including the closure of a Russian consulate in Bonn and a cultural centre in Berlin. Ingram says the only way to topple President Vladimir Putin is increasing support to Ukraine The EstLink 2 power cable between Estonia and Finland In August, CIA Director John Ratcliffe visited intelligence counterparts in Moscow, in part to warn Russia against escalating sabotage operations in Europe, said two people familiar with the matter. Ingram says that the UK has a number of programmes monitoring the cables – some of which are highly classified.'We've got our overt naval capabilities, not just from the UK, but you've got the United States getting involved and other European nations helping as well, both through the use of submarines and through the use of surface vessels.'The UK has just procured two new former oil rig and ships to rig them out to use them for helping to protect our cables as well.'Although it remains unclear what Russia could use to target the cables, experts have speculated about the weapons and technology that could be deployed. 'There's a lot of speculation that the Russians have been using their spy ship, Yantar, which has remotely piloted underwater mini-submarines that can go down and interfere with undersea pipelines and undersea cables.' Ingram said.'"Interfere" means you could potentially tap into them, but also potentially mine them so they could destroy them. It's possibly something like that.'