UNDERSEA power cables could “quite easily” be sabotaged by Russia to plunge the UK into darkness, a leading military intelligence expert has warned.
Philip Ingram MBE was responding to reports that Russian spy ships have been surveying wind farms and other infrastructure around the UK’s coastline in preparation for sabotage operations.
He told GB News: “The Russians have had spy trawlers ever since the year dot and they’ve been going round coastlines sucking up all the communications and bringing that into their intelligence game and surveying the sea floors and, of course, critical national infrastructure is one of their potential targets.
“So, they are keeping their planning options open by sending these spy ships around to look at different countries’ critical national infrastructure.”
Asked by Tom Harwood if the Russians could cut off the UK, he said: “Oh, they could quite easily, yeah…
“The Russians will be keeping on top of anything and everything that they can if they need to try and influence things in the future that it causes real difficulties and energy is something that they have weaponised in the war with Ukraine. It’s something that they will be planning to do.
“The Secretary of Defence has announced the purchase of two new ships to go round and re-survey everything and just keep it checked.
“And of course, that is a task that the Royal Navy will be doing today. They’re just getting additional assets to do it.”
Mr Ingram added: “We’ve got a big coastline and it’s not just us that they’re looking at. This spy ship has come out of the Baltic sea, it’s been looking at all of the different Baltic countries, so it’s looking NATO-wide rather than just UK-specific.
“We are one of the strongest supporters of Ukraine and from an anti-Russian perspective, they don’t like that at all.
“But there’s another piece to this. They want to keep threatening London because they want to try and continue what they believe is a split between the United Kingdom and the EU caused through Brexit and they feel that by continuously attacking London, in the words that they’re putting out and suggesting they’re going to do nasty things to London, it will make the rest of the EU distance themselves even more.
“They’re very subtle in what they’re trying to do.”
