Belgium announced on Tuesday that it is investigating the presence of a Russian “spy ship” that was spotted in November in the North Sea in areas where wind farms are located.
“Let’s not be naive,” Belgian North Sea Minister Vincent Van Quickenborne said on Tuesday. The latter announced the launch of an investigation into the presence of a Russian “spy ship” in the North Sea, which had been spotted last November.
“We don’t know the exact motives of this Russian ship, but let’s not be naive. Especially when it behaves suspiciously near our wind farms, subsea gas pipelines and data cables and other critical infrastructure,” the minister said in a statement.
Vincent Van Quickenborne claimed the Russian ship’s behavior was “suspicious” because “it sailed without AIS (Automatic Identification System), a mandatory security system that allows the identity of ships to be determined automatically”. According to the Belgian minister, an investigation was therefore launched by the Carrefour d’information maritime.
The same ship was spotted in Dutch waters on Monday
According to him, “the passage of this ship undoubtedly belongs to the broader context of the war in Ukraine.” In addition, according to the Dutch military intelligence service (MIVD), the same ship had already been sighted in Dutch waters on Monday.
The hypothesis would therefore be that the Russian ship is trying to map the sensitive and essential infrastructures of European countries. “Our intelligence and security services are closely monitoring this scenario,” Mr Van Quickenborne said, according to Belgian daily Le Soir.
On January 11, NATO and the European Union announced the creation of a joint working group to strengthen protection of their vital infrastructure in Europe against threats from Russia, particularly after the sabotage of the Nord Stream subsea gas pipelines last September. Russia still blames the West for the gas pipeline explosions.