LONDON — The U.K. and Norway signed a security partnership to prevent attacks against undersea infrastructure including gas pipeline and cables.
Under the agreement, announced Thursday by the defense ministers of both countries, Britain and Norway are promising to exchange intelligence, counter mine threats and improve their ability to detect submarines from hostile nations.
U.K. Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said Thursday that Russia has “the intent and capability” to sabotage critical Western infrastructure, but he refused to blame Moscow for last year’s attacks on the Nord Stream gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea. Swedish investigators said last month that a state actor was most likely responsible for the blasts, but that the incident remained “difficult to investigate.”
“What we know is the Russians have a work program, they have a specific naval program designed to both look at and potentially sabotage or attack critical national infrastructure belonging to its adversaries,” Wallace said at a joint press conference with his Norwegian counterpart Bjørn Arild Gram.
Russia “has a number of submarines and other pieces of equipment and spy ships and everything else specifically designed for that purpose,” Wallace added.
Britain will send its first patrolling ship, the RFA Proteus, to the North Sea in July, with the goal of protecting wind farms, cables and gas pipelines in Norwegian and British waters, Wallace said.
Gram said the “sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines last year is a concrete reminder of what is at stake.”
Wallace also declined to say whether the U.K. has seen any evidence to support media reports South Africa has supplied weapons to Russia for use in its war in Ukraine. But he confirmed that the Ukrainian army has already used some of the long-range Storm Shadow missiles recently donated by Britain to Ukraine.
