This Is Not A Drill podcast with Gavin Esler: Deep Waters - Russia’s undersea information war

In the latest episode of This Is Not A Drill, Gavin Esler discusses the threat to European infrastructure from undersea sabotage with Sophia Besch, a senior fellow in the Europe Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. And to assess the wider threat from potential hybrid warfare operations we hear from Ian Bond, deputy director of the Centre for European Reform.

When a British submarine surfaced in the North Sea to warn off a Russian spy vessel sailing just 45 miles from the British mainland, a series of shadowy maritime sabotage incidents burst onto the front pages and into public consciousness.

In the past year undersea cables vital to European digital infrastructure have been targeted for damage - most notably in the Baltic Sea. With blame difficult to pinpoint, suspicion has fallen on Russia, which Western security services have warned is engaged in ‘hybrid warfare’ - utilising sabotage, cyber attacks and other non-military hostile acts - in a bid to weaken NATO countries and destabilise Western democracies.