Reports: Russia using ships to spy on northern European waters

Reports by Scandinavian media suggest that Russia is spying on critical infrastructure in northern European waters with research ships, among other things.
Investigative journalists from the Nordic broadcasters SVT, NRK, DR and Yle reported on Wednesday that a Russian military programme aims to record the positions of offshore wind farms, gas pipelines and electricity and internet cables around Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland, for example.
In total, the media outlets have identified 50 vessels that have made suspicious journeys over the past decade, including research and cargo ships, fishing boats and yachts.
Explosions occurred on September 26 on three of the four strands of the two Nord Stream pipelines that connect Russia and Germany through the Baltic Sea. Germany, Sweden and Denmark launched investigations into the incidents, but the perpetrators have not been identified.
Recently, the newspaper Information reported that a Danish patrol boat had taken 112 photos of Russian ships near the pipelines four days before the explosions.
In their joint documentary "Shadow War," SVT, NRK, DR and Yle reported that Russian ships were regularly patrolling in Nordic waters. However, the suspicious ships had switched off their transmitters used for identification in order to stay under the radar.
As an example, the broadcasters cited a Russian research vessel that was sighted in November 2022 in the Kattegat between Denmark and Sweden: Officially, it was conducting marine research, but it had sent radio messages to a naval base in Russia. When DR journalists went out to the ship, they saw a masked man with a rifle on deck.
According to the broadcaster, intelligence services and experts assume that the action is intended to prepare acts of sabotage in order potentially, for example, to paralyse the power supply in northern Europe.