How a Tiny Archipelago Gave Russian Ships a Foothold in the Atlantic
While Europe has worked hard to close security gaps since Russia invaded Ukraine, a tiny island group in the North Atlantic provides a loophole for Russian ships to fish and dock in its waters and ports, among them vessels accused of spying and sabotage. Western nations are growing increasingly wary of what’s going on in and around the Faroe Islands, a self-governing territory under the Kingdom of Denmark which has a longstanding fishing agreement with Moscow. The agreement lets Russian vessels call at Faroese ports, circumventing a ban from European Union ports.
It also gives Russian vessels fishing rights in waters shared between the Faroes and the U.K, prompting the British government to push the Faroese to suspend it—something the islands’ leaders haven’t yet agreed to do. The dispute illustrates how Europe has sharpened its focus on waterways in the North Sea and the North Atlantic, as it enters a new era of great-power conflict with Russia after its invasion of Ukraine. The Faroese-U.K.
special area falls within a strategic transit route between Greenland, Iceland and the U.K., known as the GIUK Gap, which since the Cold War has been a key access point for military operations in the North Atlantic. As countries have become more dependent on offshore energy facilities and undersea fiber cables that enable internet access and financial transactions, the gap’s importance has grown. “Seabed critical infrastructure and energy infrastructure have been targeted and will be targeted in the future.
It is an awareness that the U.S. and Europe have been waking up to in the last year," said Rebecca Pincus, director of the Polar Institute at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. Following criticism from the British, the Faroe
. Read more on livemint.com
