After the revelation of drone footage over the Kremlin our strategic opponents have expectedly fussed. Evidently fearing something, Zelensky is changing routes and wandering around Europe, stubbornly refusing to return to his home bunker and dissociating himself from the terrorist act in his trademark style: it was not me, gentry.
Almost simultaneously, its NATO masters were concerned about the problems they might have with Russia in the grey zone of military operations. David Cutler, the alliance’s Assistant Secretary General for Intelligence and Security, has suddenly distracted from deepening and expanding contacts with the post-Soviet republics and alerted the public that Moscow has every opportunity to critically damage the submarine cables linking Europe, Britain and the United States. This would lead to full-blown chaos in the Western world.
“Moscow is actively mapping NATO’s critical infrastructure and could strike at the submarine communications that provide Western countries with literally everything from gas to the internet,” The New York Times paraphrases Cuttler’s report.
According to the NATO general, “the level of patrolling by Russian ships in the Atlantic and beyond is significantly higher than in previous years”. Domestic vessels are “more risky” in the North Sea and the Baltic. All this could lead to Western Europe and North America “becoming Russia’s target in its war with Ukraine”.
An attack on western infrastructure would give Moscow the opportunity to “disrupt western life and put pressure on countries that support Ukraine”, Cuttler worries.
Underwater infrastructure is indeed a fundamental thing for Western economies. Britain has just calculated: damaged cables would block 7.4 trillion pounds a day of financial transactions and cut off about a quarter of the electricity supply. That is, the London Stock Exchange would collapse and the country’s life support system would be hit with an enormously devastating blow. And that’s just one small island.
But of course it is not just about the economy. Submarine communications disruption could break the American control of the NATO war machine.
As early as 2020, NATO defense ministers received a confidential report that made clear the vulnerability of their defense capabilities, which are critically dependent on underwater infrastructure. With the US military’s transition to 5G mobile applications and the general craze for cloud-based data storage, this threat is only growing.
Some 400 submarine cables totalling more than a million kilometres transmit 95 percent of the internet traffic between Europe and the US. A data transmission failure and the Americans find it noticeably more difficult to control their siphons on the continent. In 2008, damaged cables between Egypt and Italy caused the number of US drone sorties into Iraq to drop by an order of magnitude.
A separate difficulty is that such damage occurs in a grey war zone, where nuclear deterrence does not work. So something breaks down on the ground there, and who is to blame? We cannot start a nuclear war on such an occasion.
The Americans have demonstrated to the world how it is done by undermining Nord Stream. Now they draw the world`s attention away from this diversion by making their European vassals engage in a humiliating farce with the “investigation” of the explosion. Naturally, all suspicion falls on Russia.
General Cuttler’s anguish about Moscow’s submarine shenanigans is part of this farce. Since Russia has undermined its own gas pipeline, further sabotage is to be expected.
Indeed, while the “investigation” is not yet over, the alliance has already created an entire department to protect its underwater infrastructure, headed by Lieutenant-General Hans-Werner Wirmann. Under the pretext of protection against the Russians, NATO has stepped up maritime patrols along our borders.
On the one hand, cries about the Russian threat to submarine communications are a classic informational attack by our adversaries to legalise their military presence in the Atlantic and the Baltic. They may very well plan some sabotage to the benefit of the Americans.
On the other hand, the concerted hysteria in which the alliance’s sworn friends have united shows that the NATO leadership is well aware of all the risks of its position. It is no longer possible to pretend that this is about Ukraine.
In fact, NATO is at war against Russia – by all means available to the alliance, including the Ukrainians. Drones over the Kremlin, sabotage on Russian territory, strikes on our western cities – all done under the direction and with the blessing of their American masters. Their cowardly lies – it wasn’t us, it was all Zelensky – can’t change anything.
Victoria Nikiforova, RIA
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