According to a documentary shown on Nordic public television on Wednesday, Russia is believed to be planning to undermine the energy infrastructure in Northern Europe through an espionage program in the North Sea.
The Kremlin on Wednesday dismissed the media claims as a “mistake” and “without basis”, reiterating its appeal for “a transparent and impartial international inquiry” into the sabotage of the Baltic Sea Nord Stream gas pipelines in September 2022.
Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson meanwhile deemed the documentary’s claims “serious”.
“This just goes to show that we have a very risky situation in our immediate vicinity,” he told reporters at a navy base in southern Sweden.
Public television stations in four countries—NRK in Norway, DR in Denmark, SVT in Sweden, and YLE in Finland—conducted a combined investigation and found evidence that Moscow is allegedly utilizing a large number of military and civilian vessels to gather data on communication cables and wind farms.
The Nordic countries’ intelligence officials were cited in the study. According to DR, the Main Directorate of Deep-Sea Research, a top-secret division of the Russian navy, is known by the acronym GUGI, which stands for the Russian spy program.
The group operates out of a facility in the Barents Sea, on the Kola peninsula in the Arctic, and is accountable to Russia’s defense minister.
