Russian ships off coast of Ireland 'a cheap way to send a threat'
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The presence of Russian cargo vessels off the coast of Ireland was “a cheap way to send a threat” to Ireland, the EU and Nato, according to an Irish academic at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs.
Eoin McNamara said while the vessels were commercial “all lines lead back to the Kremlin” as was the case with companies like the Wagner group and energy companies.
Two Russian ships had been spotted of the west coast of Ireland last week. The ships, named Umka and the Bakhtemir, raised concerns among defence officials when they were seen engaging in unusual manoeuvres off the Galway coast.
The two ships were identified on the Marine Traffic global ship tracking map.
The two vessels then left the Irish Exclusive Economic Zone, but then turned around and steamed north, where they were identified off the north Kerry coast west of Dingle last Thursday.
“They say they are cargo vessels, they can be all those things, but they are sending a signal that they know where the cables are and that they have the equipment to disrupt,” Mr McNamara told RTÉ's .
Ireland was “not set up” to properly monitor incidents like the Russian vessels, he said. The Irish Defence Forces were dependent on intelligence from elsewhere and there was a “gap” in the capacity of the forces.
The 79.8m-long Umka is an offshore supply vessel and the Bakhtemir, also 79.8m long, is a salvage and rescue ship. It is equipped with diving platforms and subsea submersibles capable of deep water work on infrastructure.
Surveillance of vital subsea communications cables has been increased since the reported sabotage last September of the Nord Stream pipelines, built to transport gas from the Russian Federation to Germany through the Baltic. The pipelines are owned by the Russian company Gazprom, and no group has as yet been identified as responsible for the attack.
It was later reported the ships' unusual movements were probably a result of efforts to avoid bad weather, rather than anything sinister.
Meanwhile, Independent TD and former army ranger Cathal Berry said the lack of capability of the Defence Forces to shadow the Russian ships was “simply not good enough for a sovereign state”.
“This is the big issue really, that Ireland has very little capability to counter what's happening off our west coast,” he told .
“We couldn't even put a naval ship out there over the weekend because of the current problem in Haulbowline in Cork. Normal practice is if you have a sensitive convoy moving through your economic waters, you would put out at least one of your naval ships to shadow that convoy.
“Unfortunately, Ireland had no capability from a crewing shortage point of view to deploy a ship — so we had to rely on the Air Corps. They can put up an aircraft for a number of hours at a time and monitor the situation, but there's no substitute for having a naval ship on station.”
The Irish Examiner reported on Sunday that all of the country’s naval ships were docked in port on Saturday in spite of concerns over the presence of two Russian ships off the west coast.
Mr Berry added that Ireland was also unique in having no sonar capability.
“Ireland has absolutely no sovereign underwater capability whatsoever. Not only can we not intervene in relation to what's happening below the waves, but we can't even see below the waves.
“We don't have any vessels with a sonar capability, which makes us unique in the European Union.
“We're an island nation, we have a responsibility for over 15% of EU waters. It's just completely unacceptable that three commercial Russian vessels, in a time of war, can move down the west coast of our country and loiter in and around our territorial waters.
“They were no more than 13 nautical miles off the coast of Kerry, and that's simply just not good enough for a sovereign state,” said Dr Berry.