Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday based on official sources, that Russian intelligence instructed the Chinese ship to break cables in the Baltic Sea.
According to the newspaper, however, in some cases the authorities have not publicly wanted to accuse Russia of hybrid activities in order to avoid panic among citizens.
Citizens’ appeal to Russia panic is an unfortunate excuse to try to hide the fact that NATO and the EU have so far been powerless to respond to Russia’s hybrid attacks.
Difficult to answer
Russia and other actors carry out hybrid attacks on Europe precisely because it is difficult to respond to them.
The situation is serious, because if NATO and its member countries are unable to respond to hybrid attacks, it will attract the other side to continue them.
Practical challenges, for example with regard to critical undersea infrastructure, are illustrated by the fact that millions of kilometers of cable and pipe network runs on the seabed, which is impossible to comprehensively monitor.
At the same time, it must be admitted that Europeans’ awakening to hybrid warfare has been slow.
A good example of this is the breach of the Balticconnector gas pipeline a year ago, when the Chinese ship Newnew Polar Bear ran aground and the investigation was delayed because the interpretation of international maritime law was by the Minister of Defense Antti Häkkänen (kok) according to “too pure”.
New interpretations of maritime law now mean that it can no longer happen that a ship escapes from the waters of NATO countries if it has damaged the critical infrastructure of some countries.
That is why the Chinese ship Yi Peng 3, suspected of cable crime between Finland and Lithuania and between Finland and Lithuania and Germany and Sweden, is still standing in the Kattegat Strait and is guarded by police ships and NATO warships.
A challenging investigation
It is known from previous hybrid attacks that finding out the perpetrator is challenging, as well as punishing the perpetrator.
Western democracies that follow the rule of law cannot respond with similar illegal hybrid attacks.
For the time being, the best way to protect an open society is to be prepared and not rely on a single cable or pipe.
However, the WSJ’s news is positive that Western intelligence seems to be working.
In recent years, NATO has strengthened the sharing of intelligence information and established a unit to protect underwater critical infrastructure, as well as increased patrolling in the Baltic Sea.
The NATO statement also noted that hybrid operations against allies could reach the level of an armed attack and prompt the North Atlantic Council to invoke Article 5 of collective defence.
However, it requires the approval of all 32 member states and so far seems like a rather distant countermeasure.
It is known that Russia wants to create instability in society with hybrid attacks, so that, for example, support for Ukraine begins to falter, and NATO does not want that.
A possible panic among the citizens is best avoided by openly informing the citizens about the actions of Russia and China.