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Russia is protecting its nuclear arsenal in the Arctic Circle with sophisticated underwater technology that it has acquired from the European Union and the US, despite sanctions, and a company based in Cyprus is at the center of the illegal purchase network, the international research project Russian Secrets has revealed, the German newspaper Die Zeit reports today.
Media outlets involved in the project have established, based on financial documents, court decisions, and information from security circles, that Russia has been purchasing the technology for ten years, at least until the fall of 2024, from a dozen EU member states, the US, Japan, and Canada.
“At the center of this Russian procurement network, according to research, is the company Mostrelo Commercial Limited, from Cyprus. The owner is allegedly a businessman from Moscow who is active in the field of underwater technology. A number of companies that can be attributed to him have worked for the Russian military and secret services on several occasions in the past,” writes Zeit.
The project, which involved, among others, the German Süddeutsche Zeitung, the British Times, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and 11 other media outlets, including the German public broadcasters NDR and WDR, revealed that Mostrelo and its sister companies had purchased sensitive underwater technology and research vessels worth more than $50 million since 2013, Zeit reported.
The newspaper specifies that the documentation reveals that the purchased goods were shipped to Russia, where they were partly utilized in a project called Harmony to produce an underwater sensor system, which is utilized to detect enemy submarines.
The system, according to the assessment of the team of journalists, was installed in an arc in the waters around Murmansk, the Russian Arctic archipelago of Novaya Zemlya and the islands of Alexandrina Zemlya.
The journalist’s investigation revealed that the Cypriot company and its subsidiaries purchased the technology in Norway, among other things, from the state-controlled arms manufacturer Kongsberg.
In 2014, a Mohican-type underwater robot was purchased from the British company Forum Energy Technologies, which operates at depths of up to 3.000 meters.
The British Guardian reported today that among the British equipment sold was an unmanned vehicle for surveying and laying cables, as well as a state-of-the-art sound sensor suitable for “hydrographic survey operations.” The Guardian, however, states that there is no indication that the British companies broke the law.
The media group’s revelation prompted calls for the UK’s Department of Business and Trade to prevent attempts to circumvent British sanctions on Russia.
Zeit writes that the companies gathered around Mostrel also did business with Germany, where from 2013 to 2019 they purchased underwater telecommunications cables for around $15 million, in 2015 a powerful sonar from a company in Roštok, and also several special ships from a shipyard in Bremen.
The German newspaper recalls that since 2014, after the annexation of Crimea, the EU has expanded the embargo on trade with Russia many times, and that the sanctions have been particularly harsh since the launchning of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, but that the Mostrelo company network continued to import technology from Germany after February 2022.
EU sanctions enforcement commissioner David O’Sullivan informed German public broadcaster ARD that Russia had “come up with extremely cunning and clever ways to circumvent sanctions.” He declared the EU must “work as smart and determined to prevent this as the Russians are smart and determined to carry it out,” Zeit reported.
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