UK looks to shore up safety of undersea pipelines amid Russia threat

LONDON — The U.K. is reviewing how it defends key infrastructure like undersea gas pipelines and data cables, amid growing fears of sabotage by Vladimir Putin's Russia.

Protecting “critical undersea infrastructure” will be covered by the government’s Strategic Defence Review (SDR), which is due to be completed in weeks, a Ministry of Defence spokesperson told POLITICO.

Experts said damage to undersea pipes and cables could disrupt energy supply and communications systems. One senior MP warned that any such damage could pose “a serious threat” to U.K. security.

Around 40 percent of the U.K.’s gas supply — vital for heating homes and keeping the lights on — is imported from Norway. Much of that gas goes through the single, 700-mile Langeled pipeline.

“On the energy side of things is where I think there is a real fragility,” said Sidharth Kaushal, a senior research fellow in sea power at the Royal United Services Institute, a defense think tank.

Fears in Whitehall have been heightened by a spate of apparent sabotage incidents in the Baltic Sea in the past two years, affecting cable and pipeline links between EU countries. Germany’s Nord Stream gas pipelines were also sabotaged in September 2022. 

Authorities have not conclusively shown Russia was behind any of the incidents, but Moscow has considerable resources it can deploy on sabotage missions, Kaushal said.  

Tan Dhesi, a Labour MP and chair of parliament’s Defense Committee, said: “Damage to our critical infrastructure, especially any systematic, deliberate targeting of underwater cables, poses a serious threat to the U.K.’s national security and economic prosperity.”

In January, ministers took the rare step of publicly naming a Russian vessel, the Yantar, as a spy ship operating in the North Sea, where it was mapping the U.K.’s critical underwater infrastructure.

“We are committed to maintaining and enhancing the security and resilience of critical undersea infrastructure,” Defense Minister Luke Pollard told MPs last week. “Just as the defense secretary called out the activities of the Russian spy ship Yantar hovering over our undersea cables, let those who threaten the U.K. or our allies be in no doubt that we will defend our undersea infrastructure.”

The SDR, ordered by Prime Minister Keir Starmer shortly after taking office, is being led by former NATO Secretary-General George Robertson, and will look at a range of threats. Pollard told Dhesi’s committee last week that Robertson’s work should be complete by the spring.

Starmer announced in February that defense spending would increase to 2.5 percent of GDP by 2027, rising to 3 percent beyond 2029.

However, Kaushal warned that options for repelling the threat of Russian sabotage in international waters might be limited. It is impossible constantly to monitor thousands of miles of pipeline or cable, and the Royal Navy would be legally constrained in what it could do to stop a Russian vessel in international waters during peacetime, Kaushal said.

Since the Nord Stream attacks, NATO navies have increased patrols around critical subsea infrastructure, in an effort to deter would-be saboteurs. But Kaushal said that adding more vessels to these efforts was unlikely to change the security picture.

The U.K. should instead concentrate its efforts on threats to infrastructure that could cause the most disruption, he argued.

“When it comes to [sabotage of] undersea cables, this is a slightly overblown threat, at least as far as it pertains to civilian cables. Military cables are a much smaller subset, and them being severed would have really significant ramifications,” Kaushal said.

“Or focus more heavily on gas — because that is an area where the grid really is dependent on a few points like [the] Langeled [pipeline].”