The defense ministers of Britain and Norway today signed a strategic partnership to protect critical undersea infrastructure against the Russian threat.

“The growing use of maritime resources in energy and communication creates more opportunities for adversaries to threaten critical undersea national infrastructure, as we have seen with the damage to the Nord Stream natural gas pipeline,” the British Ministry of Defense said in a statement. It says London and Oslo have “jointly increased security patrols in the area”.

The Russians have, according to British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace, “a dedicated naval program designed simultaneously to examine and potentially sabotage or attack critical national infrastructure belonging to its adversaries.”

Moscow has a “certain number of submarines and other equipment”, “spy ships”, he continued during a press conference in London with his Norwegian counterpart Bjorn ‘Arild Gram.

“Whether we’re talking about Nord Stream” which was targeted at the end of September in a major sabotage whose perpetrators were not found, “or we’re talking about our own infrastructure, this is an area that is vulnerable and needs to be protected,” said Ben Wallace. .

“We have to be vigilant about our own weak points,” and against “the deliberate program that the Russians have invested in,” he warned, “we have to do the same.”

Underlining the need for close and increased military cooperation between allies, the Norwegian minister underlined that it is possible to “improve our ability to detect submarines” and “protect our underwater infrastructure”.