Ireland and the United Kingdom should jointly establish naval patrols to protect undersea communications cables, gas and electricity pipelines and other key assets from Russian aggression, the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly (BIPA) has said.
A joint statutory Cables Protection Commission including civilian and military representatives should firstly map all cables serving the two countries, as well as those linking both with continental Europe and North America, the assembly said.
Noting agreements this year between Ireland and the UK, and the UK and the European Union, the assembly said these offered “a promising basis for further mutual co-operation” on security and defence matters.
“We expect these agreements to result in a more collaborative approach to security and defence issues which concern BIPA jurisdictions, while also recognising Ireland’s long-standing tradition of military neutrality,” a report by the assembly said.
RM Block
Urging the need for speed, the assembly said Ireland and the UK must undertake “rapid” actions to address the threats that exist in Irish and British waters, and between Ireland and the UK and continental Europe and North America.
The continuing Russian invasion of Ukraine has “highlighted the vulnerability of countries across Europe to geopolitical threats”, exacerbated by the strains that have been created by the UK’s departure from the EU, the assembly said.
Greater co-operation on intelligence and countermeasures is needed, it said, to tackle Russian forces’ involvement in helping refugees across eastern European borders to weaponise the migration issue in EU public opinion.
“Irregular migration, and in particular migration into EU member states facilitated by malign overseas actors, has a significant and observable effect on security in the EU and, indeed, across [Ireland, the UK, Isle of Man and Channel Islands],” it said.
While saying the 100-year-old Irish/UK Common Travel Area is “working well under current arrangements”, the assembly said police forces in both jurisdictions must take care to ensure their actions do not diverge.
Reporting on its meeting with the European Hybrid Centre of Excellence, the assembly report noted that the centre said no map of undersea cables existed in the EU, while no single statutory body had responsibility to protect them.
Russian and Chinese co-operation on hybrid threats – such as election interference and anti-western disinformation – and maritime threats are “a real problem”, while vulnerabilities in space “are a growing concern”.
“Hybrid attacks in eastern Europe targeting politicians are becoming more commonplace,” the report said, listing bomb threats and attacks against Russian opposition. Cyberattacks are “growing in scale and complexity”, while there was disruption of railway traffic in Poland through a radio hack, it said.
“There have been arrests for espionage and conducting or preparing sabotage. Energy infrastructure is a big target – the Nord Stream sabotage remains unattributed,” it reported the centre of excellence as saying.
Noting conversations with British embassy officials based in the Baltics, the BIPA report said: “Russia is facilitating a migrant crisis into Finland – migrants from Belarus, Somalia, Syria and Yemen."
“Migrants are beginning to hear about the Russian route – it started at conventional border crossings but is now becoming a bigger problem elsewhere,” a summary of the conversations with the officials noted.
Estonian defence experts told BIPA that “Russia tries to exploit areas where there is less unity”, where psychological warfare, including propaganda, sowing distrust and confusion, are used, along with direct threats.
“This can cause nearly as much damage as an actual attack. Russia regards the Balkan countries as only temporarily part of Europe, that they will eventually be part of Russia again,” the Estonians told the committee.
