The allegations were aired in a report entitled Shadow War, broadcast by DR in Denmark, NRK in Norway, SVT in Sweden and YLE in Finland on Wednesday, Poland’s dziennik.pl website reported.
The Nordic broadcasters said they had analysed intercepted Russian communications that indicate so-called “ghost ships” sailing in Danish, Swedish, Norwegian and Finnish waters, with transmitters turned off so as not to reveal their locations, according to dziennik.pl.
On the basis of this data, the authors of the investigation had identified 50 vessels that may have conducted intelligence-gathering missions for Russia over the past decade, for instance by mapping critical infrastructure in the Baltic and North Seas, dziennik.pl said.
‘Mapping sites for possible sabotage’
Ase Gilje Ostensen, an expert in hybrid threats at the Norwegian Defence Academy, said, as quoted by dziennik.pl: "The ships may carry out concrete missions, for instance laying sea mines and mapping pipelines, communication cables and other important targets for possible sabotage."
The report highlighted the activity of the Russian ship Admiral Vladimirsky. Its official role is as an Expeditionary Oceanographic Ship, or underwater research vessel, but the report by the Nordic public broadcasters alleged it was in fact a Russian spy ship, British broadcaster BBC reported.
According to the Nordic journalists, over the course of a month in late 2022, the Admiral Vladmirsky moved around the Baltic Sea, as well as Denmark’s Great Belt strait, the Kattegat strait between Denmark and Sweden, and the North Sea.
The ship sailed in the vicinity of “existing offshore wind farms, as well as planned investments,” loitering in such areas “for several days at a time,” the journalists said, according to dziennik.pl.
The Admiral Vladmirsky did not disclose its locations, but because it would send messages to a Russian naval base, the Nordic broadcasters were able to locate the vessel between the Sjællands Odde peninsula on Denmark’s Zealand island, and the port of Grenaa on the country’s Jutland peninsula, in November, dziennik.pl reported.
When a reporter approached the ship on a small boat, he was confronted by a masked individual carrying what appeared to be a military assault rifle, the BBC reported.
'Preparations for great war with NATO'
According to intelligence officers and experts quoted in the report, the Admiral Vladimirsky’s mission in Danish waters was to “prepare sabotage that would allow Russia to paralyse the supply of energy to northwestern Europe, among other outcomes,” dziennik.pl reported.
“That’s the role of research vessels as part of preparations for [Russia’s] great war with NATO,” the website quoted a source in the Western intelligence community as saying.
Meanwhile, defence analyst H. I. Sutton said that the Admiral Vladimirsky "likely mapped underwater energy cables” near offshore wind warms.
This view was echoed by Jens Wenzel Kristoffersen, a military analyst from the University of Copenhagen, who said the Russian ship’s mission was to determine “how best to strike offshore wind farms,” dziennik.pl reported.
According to the Norwegian broadcaster NRK, Russia also uses vessels disguised as fishing trawlers to map critical infrastructure in the North Sea and the Barents Sea, such as oil and gas fields, as well as sites of military exercises or areas used by American submarines, dziennik.pl reported.
Wednesday is day 420 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
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Source: dziennik.pl, BBC, The Kyiv Independent