Germany will take an active part in the future NATO mission to protect critical infrastructure in the Baltic region.
This was stated by Chancellor of Germany Olaf Scholz at the Baltic Sea Summit in Helsinki on January 14, reports the correspondent of Ukrinform.
Scholz stated that incidents and sabotage at sea have recently become more frequent, which are clearly part of a hybrid strategy that threatens European countries. Therefore, the protection of critical infrastructure, including underwater infrastructure, is very important for the security of the countries in the region, to which NATO must respond and increase its presence in the Baltic Sea.
He called the joint German-Norwegian initiative to form NATO's own structure to protect such infrastructure a very important step and promised active participation of Germany.
«We will participate, using all the maritime operational infrastructure at our disposal», – assured the Chancellor.
He reported that the preparatory work will take 90 days, after which it is planned to create a joint structure surveillance.
Germany plans to invite representatives of the defense ministries and the arms industry to Rostock to discuss technical surveillance capabilities, including using drones.
Scholz, according to him, offered to specifically discuss what measures can be taken against ships that have caused (could have caused) or are suspected of planning damage to infrastructure facilities. He added that at the meeting it was agreed to create a working group based on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the countries that will participate in the mission to consider legal options in this aspect.
«You need to create… tools so that we can not just observe, but act,” the politician said.
Sholz called the meeting in Helsinki a sign of unity and readiness to resist hybrid attacks against underwater infrastructure and bring the perpetrators to justice.
The leaders of the countries of the region also discussed the problem of the Russian «shadow fleet», which poses a threat, including to ecology, and assured that further measures will be taken against this fleet.< /p>
Two new NATO members – Finland and Sweden – have already announced that they will participate in the mission with their ships. A ship of the Estonian Navy is already patrolling the Gulf of Finland.
Germany, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Sweden took part in the summit in Helsinki.
In recent months and weeks, the fiber optic cable between Helsinki and Rostock was reportedly damaged, the Estlink 2 transmission line between Finland and Estonia was cut, etc. There is a suspicion that this happened due to the fact that the ships dragged their anchors along the bottom.