The broadcasters followed the radio traffic and the shipping routes of the Russian ships for a year. And that revealed suspicious sailing patterns, particularly around offshore wind farms, around gas pipelines and around submarine power and data cables.
According to the investigation, the Russian ships are constantly moving in both seas. The illegal espionage actions may be carried out in combination with legal activities, such as fishing. That is what Nils Andreas Stensønes, head of the Norwegian intelligence service, told Norwegian broadcaster NRK.
In this way, the critical infrastructure at the bottom of the sea is mapped. That could be interesting for Moscow, because it could, for example, cut off electricity to nearby countries, the broadcasters say.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov immediately responded in the negative. According to him, European countries “again prefer to blame everything on Russia”. That’s what he told AP during an online meeting with reporters.
Swedish Prime Minister: ‘Risky situation in the environment’
“They’d better focus on the terror attack on the Nord Stream pipelines,” Peskov said, referring to the explosions in the Baltic Sea pipelines last year. Who did this is still unknown.
Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson is not surprised by the revelations. “But this is serious. It underlines that we have a very risky situation in our immediate environment,” he told the Swedish news agency TT .
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