Ukrainian Navy Captain: Russians Are Starting To 'Play Chapayev'

How to respond to sabotage in the Baltic Sea?

The world has recently witnessed a series of sabotages. In the Baltic Sea, tankers are damaging undersea cables, and a similar incident occurred recently off the coast of Taiwan.

Pavlo Lakiychuk, 1st rank Captain of the Ukrainian Navy, head of military programs of the Strategy XXI Center for Global Studies told Charter97.org how to respond to these attacks:

— Everyone knows who is behind this, it is clearly not ISIS. We are talking about more technological states and structures. Back in 2007, Russian General Gerasimov put forward the concept of indirect actions, this is the so-called Gerasimov doctrine, the concept of hybrid war, as it later got its name. Then, perhaps, the expert community did not pay attention to her.

In reality, we now have what Gerasimov promised. What are the benefits of hybrid actions? Surprise factor. No one expected such actions. So, what's next? We are talking about sabotage. This is obvious, there is a fact of sabotage in the Baltic, and not only, but there are simply no mechanisms for responding to them.

I recall 2021, the prerequisites were there before, but the most massive focus that Russia pulled in the Black Sea was the blockade of Ukraine from the sea, the hybrid blockade. It consisted in the fact that the Russians took and declared a quarter of the sea as one huge polygon, a zone closed to navigation.

The International Maritime Organization, the international community, created the principle of maritime closure to ensure the safety of navigation. We all want to swim safely. For civilian vessels not to fall into the zone of exercises, so that they, roughly speaking, do not arrive, some points in the world ocean are closed. The military is reporting this. This is beneficial for everyone.

Russians just turn over the board on this chessboard and start "playing Chapaev." Everyone understands that these are deliberate aggressive actions, but they are invested in that concept of action for the sake of peace, for the sake of security. No one knows what to do with it. If the Russians begin to repeat such actions in the Baltic Sea, there is no answer to the precedent. The same applies to sabotage on pipelines, on communication cables, on electric cables on the seabed.

It's not just about the Baltics. No wonder the spy ship, the Russian hydrograph, which was regularly noted in the areas of cable laying in the Baltic Sea, was already caught beyond the Faroe-Iceland border in the Atlantic Ocean [NATO anti-submarine defence line in the North Atlantic between Greenland, Iceland and the UK – Ed.]. But there lies the lion's share of the same transatlantic networks. They are not protected and no one was going to protect them, no one could think of such a threat. Now we are to consider it.

— If we talk about response mechanisms, NATO sends ships to the Baltic Sea to protect the underwater infrastructure. Would that be a good answer?

— Moreover, NATO has created a special center for responding to threats in the Baltic Sea. Well, let's imagine NATO warships sent to the Baltic. So, what's next? There are civilian vessels in the Baltic Sea, at least they are flying civilian flags. Alleged emergencies occur on them. Everyone understands that you can't lose an anchor and pull it for three hours!

But the explanation is simple — "an emergency situation, lost the anchor, everyone slept, well, they didn't notice. Well, yes, we will have to compensate, probably, in this particular case. " And what will the military do? I don't know how to respond to hybrid threats. The concept of Gerasimov, the concept of hybrid war, it implies that it is necessary to create threats, to wage war in non-traditional ways against which there is no immunity, no means of counteraction.

The 'green men' in Crimea — what was it? Why did the whole world silently watch Russia occupy Ukraine? Did the Russian 'little green men' from come from Mars? This is not Russian aggression, is it? Putin admitted that it was Russian aggression two years later. Before that, everyone was just in shock watching the 'Martians' seize the Ukrainian land.

— Given that traditional methods do not work against such hybrid attacks, what response could be most effective?

— As a military, I would advise one way, but this is also not quite the right approach, because Putin's global plan is to break all possible systems, existing agreements, to force them to respond by force. The one who has more strength will be right, and the system that is based on international law should be scrapped.

It is suggested that in response to sabotage and terrorist actions, there should be the most effectively comparable strikes. But, probably, this is what Putin is trying to achieve. So I don't know what the international community should do, what the West should do. They raised this monster themselves and continue to grow it, unfortunately.

The West is trying to use various simulacra that may stop the growth of these metastases for a while, but is it like treating cancer? If you stop the growth of the tumor, it grows, but not so fast, but still it devours the body.

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