Even as Russia appears to be on the losing side of its Ukraine assault, Moscow is doubling down, reportedly sending “ghost” spy vessels to the North Sea in preparation for sabotage missions in case an all-out war against NATO breaks out. 

While the Russian vessels are disguised as fishing boats or ships on scientific missions, their real task is to explore ways to harm European undersea infrastructure, four public broadcasters — DR of Denmark, NRK of Norway, SVT of Sweden, and Finland’s Yle — reported in a joint production.

The “ghost” trawlers and ships often disconnect their transmitters to keep their locations secret, the broadcasters report. While the vessels mostly sail in international waters, dozens of them have been observed for years close to Scandinavian shores or even docked in countries like Sweden.  

Among the targets surveyed by the Russian vessels, according to the report, were undersea communication, power, and internet cables, as well as North Sea-based wind farms. Damaging cables could sabotage European communication services. Scandinavia, the Baltics, and Britain increasingly rely on wind-based energy sources. 

Moscow is vehemently denying the broadcasters’ reporting as “baseless.” Westerners “prefer to once again accuse Russia without basis,” the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said Wednesday. Instead, he added, they should be agreeing to an “impartial international inquiry” into last September’s sabotage of the Russian-backed NordStream pipeline.

Moscow has accused Ukraine of being behind the explosion, while Kyiv is pointing at Russia. One journalist, Seymore Hersh, wrote that America was responsible for the sabotage. Western intelligence and press outlets are undecided, as various theories pop up periodically. On Tuesday, the Danish government released 112 photographs of Russian vessels sailing off its coast days before the NordStream pipeline exploded. 

Before the Russian North Sea activity was exposed, American officials warned of Russian espionage and sabotage preparations off American shores. In 2015, the Pentagon raised concerns that Russian vessels were attempting to damage undersea cables. More recently, Russian naval intelligence was observed off the coasts of South Carolina and Florida. Earlier this year such activity was seen near Hawaii.  

Wednesday’s reporting on Russia’s sabotage preparation in the North Sea is included in a documentary produced by the four broadcasters that just aired. The extensive report is based on conversations with government and intelligence officials in Scandinavia, Britain, and elsewhere, as well as independent investigation and observations of heightened activity of Russian vessels in the North Sea.

The documentary is “serious,” Sweden’s prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, told reporters at a navy base in southern Sweden. It “just goes to show that we have a very risky situation in our immediate vicinity.” 

A Russian ship described as an oceanographic research vessel, the Admiral Vladimirsky, was observed hovering near wind farms off the English and Danish shores. When a crew of Danish reporters approached the Vladimirsky, masked men brandishing guns appeared on deck. “They came up and showed us they were armed, so we backed off from the scene,” an RT reporter, Niels Fastrup, told the BBC.

Fishing boats were observed acting in an odd manner, Mr. Fastrup said. They were “crossing the same cable like 140 times, so in a way that is not in conformity of the way you’d say if you were fishing.”

He quoted intelligence sources telling RT that “in the event of an escalation in the current conflict, or in a future conflict between Russia and NATO, part of Russia’s war plans would be to sabotage infrastructure, say, in the North Sea.”

Seabed infrastructure is unprotected and therefore vulnerable. Internet and power cables, wind farms, and other installations could be cut fairly easily, creating havoc across Europe.

Russian oceanographic vessel activities have concerned American and NATO officials for a long time, the Russia program deputy director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, John Hardie, tells the Sun. Moscow military planners, he adds, have developed a naval concept known in military parlance as “strategic operation for the destruction of critically important targets,” or Sodcit. 

The strategy includes purchasing of Western-made equipment for underwater surveillance and sabotage. In 2018 Washington sanctioned a Russian firm specializing in underwater technologies, Divetechnoservices, for providing the Russian military and the intelligence service, the FSB, with equipment and diving systems — including Canadian mini-submarines that Russia could use to tap or disable vital undersea communications cables. 

President Putin “has long believed that the U.S. and NATO are trying to foment unrest in Russia and that they would like to see him overthrown,” Mr. Hardie says. “While the war is going on in Ukraine, he uses aggressive tactics to be prepared for whatever might happen next.”  

As yet, the Russian military has significantly underperformed in the war launched by Mr. Putin against Ukraine. While Russia is no match for NATO, America and our allies must consider the havoc Russian sabotage could wreak on its vulnerable systems.