Poland has passed a law allowing the sinking of a ship, vessel or aircraft that threatens the Baltic Pipe and other critical infrastructure in the Baltic. If Russia attacks the energy sector of the West, it will respond with force – writes Wojciech Jakóbik, editor-in-chief at BiznesAlert.pl.
A decade of Skuggkriget
Czech analyst Frantisek Marcik has warned that the Russians may have planted mines under NATO’s critical infrastructure for years to prepare for acts of sabotage, which may become useful now that Russia is invading Ukraine. „The security services of NATO member states believe that the Kremlin may have placed explosives on undersea gas and oil pipelines, electricity and telecommunications lines in the North Sea and the Baltic,” Marcik has warned on Seznam.cz. In his opinion the Russians have been spying on this infrastructure for years, whether it’s gas fields in the North Sea or offshore wind farms in Denmark and the United Kingdom. „Russia’s security services have been monitoring the bottlenecks and Achilles’ heels of critical infrastructure, as well as NATO countries’ response to mass acts of espionage. Russians were to use hundreds of ships for about a decade to conduct these activities. Allegedly for this purpose, civilian and scientific units were also used. When Scandinavian media were reporting about these activities after the telecommunications cable between Spitsbergen and the the Shetland Islands was cut, they talked about a „shadow war” or Skuggkriget in Swedish,” he said. According to Marcik, Russians have been doing this to be able to conduct sabotage on a larger scale. Their goal is to divert attention and conduct sabotage underwater to make it difficult to trigger article 5 of the NATO Treaty, which says that if one member of the Alliance gets attacked the others must help. The Government Security Center has explained why this would be difficult to BiznesAlert.pl. „Looking at what is happening in the world and the fact that no one is declaring war on anyone, I am convinced that all conflicts will be conducted with reference to the third article on the ability to self-defend or the fourth on concerted, joint action. No adversary will allow itself to make a move that would prompt NATO to trigger Article Five,” said Witold Skomra, advisor to the Government Security Centre, in an interview with BiznesAlert.pl.
Here’s what the Americans will do in case of an attack
A potential act of Russian sabotage in the Baltic Sea could be a matter of time. „At the moment we are dealing with a situation in which not only is there a risk of a threat to critical infrastructure, including energy, but it must be taken for granted,” Michał Piekarski, PhD, from the University of Wrocław told BiznesAlert.pl. „The Russians are preparing to interfere in the security of these facilities in Europe and sooner or later something will happen. This is due to the fact that Russia has not been able to achieve its political goals with the help of conventional armed forces. The vision of an open war with NATO means a catastrophic failure from the perspective of Russia, while hybrid impact, for example through sabotage aimed at energy cables on the seabed, telecommunications infrastructure or gas pipelines, can have an effect,” our interlocutor warned. Poland’s decision to change the law is not an accident, and the goal is to send a clear message to the Kremlin.
Shortly after the May recess, the Polish government amended the law to give the Minister of National Defense broader powers to respond to threats to critical infrastructure in the Baltic Sea. The minister will be able to decide on the elimination of a ship, a vessel, an airplane or an unmanned aerial vehicle that would threaten the Baltic Pipe, Naftoport, LNG terminal, or other critical infrastructure that provides the Polish state with necessary goods, such as energy resources or energy itself. The amendment to the Law on the Protection of Shipping and Seaports and Some Other Laws provides that the Ministry of Defence may decide to take appropriate measures and have the Armed Forces remove the threat. The minister is supposed to inform the prime minister about this, and then give specific instructions to the Operational Commander of the Armed Forces Branches on which units or subdivisions are to form the so-called task force, which measures should be applied and what restrictions should be observed. The entire decision process needs to be put in writing so that it can be analzed later. The order to use force is issued by the already mentioned commander. The amendment expands the list of entities covered by such protection to include the Baltic Pipe, ships and ports, facilities, equipment and installations that are part of the infrastructure providing access to ports of fundamental importance for the national economy. We are talking about Polish windows to the world for raw materials from outside Russia and other goods reaching us by sea. The law also lists artificial islands, and therefore also those intended for offshore wind farms, which Poland plans to build from 2025. „The Minister of National Defence may decide that the Armed Forces of the Republic of Poland shall take the necessary measures in the Polish maritime areas to sink this ship or floating object,” the document reads. Measures shall be appropriate to the risk and minimise damage. Restrictions shall, however, be waived where a vessel poses a threat to ships, port facilities or their infrastructure, where there is a possibility of an attack on human health or life or where the release of a hostage is necessary, or where there is a reasonable suspicion that an explosive device is on board a ship or a floating object, and may be used as a means of terrorist attack. The decision may also concern the shooting down of an aircraft, and therefore also a drone. A civilian object violating the trajectory, not responding to the orders of the relevant state bodies, using radio silence or conducting suspicious communications, disrupting the operation of the transponder, preventing identification, can be intercepted. In the absence of cooperation, warning shots are fired. Eventually it is to be shot down.
The update will go to the Sejm
The assumptions of the amendment to the act and subsequent procedures applied by the Armed Forces of the Republic of Poland must be in line with NATO standards and other international agreements applied by Poland. It should be expected that similar regulations are or will be implemented in other Western countries, and cooperation will also take place at the level of NATO and the European Union in accordance with the arrangements made in autumn 2022 after the sabotage of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines. Poland and the West will respond with force to any acts of sabotage. The amendment on the protection of infrastructure in the Baltic Sea was adopted by the government on May 5 and will now go to the parliament. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the growing threat to critical infrastructure in Poland should ensure cross-party support for these provisions.