Russia: we have right to cut US, EU internet cables

Dmitri Medvedev says there are no constraints to prevent Moscow from destroying seafloor cables crucial for internet and global communications.

Russia has accused the west of complicity in the attack on the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. Picture: Danish Defence/AFP.

Russia could destroy underwater cables that are vital for internet and global communications in Europe and America, one of President Putin’s closest allies has said.

Dmitry Medvedev, the former Russian president, said Moscow had the “moral” right to target its enemies’ communications infrastructure because of what he claimed was western collusion in the blasts that ruptured the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines last year.

“If we proceed from the proven complicity of western countries in blowing up the Nord streams, then we have no constraints - even moral - left to prevent us from destroying the ocean floor cable communications of our enemies,” said Medvedev, who has been the deputy head of Russia’s security council since stepping down as prime minister in 2020.

Eight months after the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines there is still no “smoking gun” to prove who was behind the unprecedented attack on European energy infrastructure.

US media reports claimed that the CIA learnt of a Ukrainian plot to blow up the pipelines and warned Kyiv against doing so. Ukraine has denied any involvement. The Kremlin-built pipelines ran from Russia through the Baltic Sea to Germany. Their destruction crippled energy supplies to Europe and deprived Moscow of billions of dollars in potential revenue.

Medvedev’s threats come after David Cattler, the head of Nato military intelligence, confirmed last month that there were growing fears that the Kremlin could seek to sabotage undersea cables to punish the West for supplying Kyiv with weapons to fight Putin’s invading forces.

Cattler said: “There are heightened concerns that Russia may target undersea cables and other critical infrastructure in an effort to disrupt western life, to gain leverage against those nations that are providing security to Ukraine.”

He said Russia was mapping allied critical infrastructure as part of an underwater reconnaissance programme run by part of its defence ministry. Russian naval ships have stepped up patrols throughout the Atlantic in recent years and also increased their activities in the North and Baltic seas, he said.

Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, the head of the British armed forces, told The Times in January that any attack on undersea cables that transmit internet data could be regarded as “an act of war”.

The former head of the navy also said: “Russia has grown the capability to put at threat those undersea cables” and that there had been a “phenomenal” increase in Russian submarine and underwater activity since Putin came to power in 2000.

The Kremlin has said that Britain or America orchestrated the Nord stream blasts, an allegation that both countries have denied. Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesman, said: “Only a country or group of countries could have been behind this terrorist attack.”

Medvedev, who was once seen as a relative liberal, has been one of Moscow’s biggest hawks during the war. He served as president from 2008-12 when Putin was barred from a third term and instead became prime minister. Medvedev’s tirades against western leaders often contain personal insults and he has suggested repeatedly that western support for Ukraine is leading the world to the brink of a third world war. “The horsemen of the apocalypse are already on their way,” he said last year.

The Times