Secretive and highly paid submariners are behind some of Russia s most worrying undersea operations
In a potential conflict between Russia and the West, one of Russia’s most secretive outfits, the Main Directorate for Deep Sea Research, could play a critical role.
Gugi
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Secretive and highly paid submariners are behind some of Russia’s most worrying undersea operations
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- NATO is increasingly worried about Russian activity around vital undersea cables and pipelines.
- Russia’s military has developed an array of capabilities to carry out underwater operations.
- A key part of that is a secretive unit known as GUGI, which is responsible for deep-sea missions.
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In a potential conflict between Russia and the West, one of Russia’s most secretive outfits, the Main Directorate for Deep Sea Research, could play a critical role.
Known as GUGI, the directorate is responsible for conducting sabotage and surveillance against critical maritime infrastructure, including undersea cables and energy pipelines.
Founded in 1965, GUGI is within the Russian Ministry of Defense but is separate from Russia’s navy, even though it draws personnel from the 29th Separate Submarine Division, according to a recent report by Sidharth Kaushal, a research fellow on sea power at the Royal United Services Institute, a British think tank.
Little is known about the GUGI assessment and selection process, but it appears to be an elite and difficult-to-join outfit. Soviet-era candidates needed to be officers and have at least five years of experience in the submarine service. They had to pass “a gruelling course based on the training of Soviet cosmonauts,” Kaushal writes.
The specialized and technical nature of GUGI’s work suggests many members are still officers. A July 2019 fire aboard the Losharik, a submarine operated by GUGI, killed 14 of the 18 sailors on board — of those 14, all were officers, including seven captains first rank.
That specialization is also reflected in their pay. GUGI members receive “considerable salaries” because the organization treats their “effective salaries as a deployment bonus related to the time they spend at extreme depths,” Kaushal writes. “As a result, in 2012, GUGI personnel were earning 600,000 roubles,” or about $20,000, a month.
A secretive fleet
GUGI operates a number of deep-sea and other specialized submarines and surface ships.
The directorate is believed to have six specialized nuclear-powered deep-sea submarines — three of them mini-subs — that can dive to nearly 3,300 feet thanks to their titanium hulls. Losharik could reportedly dive to nearly 10,000 feet and possibly deeper.
To allow them to sabotage underwater infrastructure, these submarines carry a complement of tools, including manipulator arms and lock-out compartments that allow divers to exit into the ocean.
However, the small size of these specialized undersea vessels limits their range, so GUGI’s fleet also includes two nuclear-powered submarines that previously carried ballistic missiles but have been converted to carry other GUGI subs under their hull and covertly deploy them close to their target. GUGI also operates the nuclear-powered special-mission vessel Belgorod, the world’s longest submarine, which can carry the smaller Losharik.
GUGI has a number of surface vessels, notable among them the special-purpose survey ship Yantar. The ship is believed to be able to carry a manned deep-sea submersible that can dive up to 6,000 meters. Yantar also appears to host a number of other manned and unmanned submersibles and to be able to map underwater pipelines and cables.
H I Sutton, a naval analyst who has researched Russia’s submarines, told The Barents Observer in 2018 that Moscow had “invested heavily in this secretive fleet, even in times of economic hardship.”
The GUGI fleet is based at Olenya Bay on the Barents Sea, although at least one GUGI unit appears to be based at St. Petersburg on the Baltic Sea.
The Olenya Bay naval base is closed off and its defenses were recently bolstered with a floating barrier to block underwater vehicles from entering the bay. The base appears to have two floating docks to obscure the activities of its smaller subs from surveillance.
Murky activities
As tensions with Russia have risen, NATO has focused more on Russian activity around critical maritime infrastructure — the data and energy cables, pipelines, and wind farms that power Europe and connect it to the rest of the world.
In 2017, the US Navy admiral in charge of NATO submarine forces said the alliance was “seeing Russian underwater activity in the vicinity of underwater cables that I don’t believe we have ever seen.” NATO’s intelligence chief warned this year that Russia could attempt to sabotage undersea cables in retaliation for Western support of Ukraine.
GUGI is responsible for mapping and sabotaging that infrastructure. It is also responsible for tapping underwater cables, recovering sensitive equipment from the sea, “maintaining Russia’s undersea sensor networks and conducting surveillance near its maritime bastions,” according to the RUSI report.
Yantar, the special-purpose survey ship, was spotted lingering near undersea cables west of Ireland in 2021. Personnel from GUGI’s St. Petersburg unit were also reportedly spotted near the Nord Stream 2 pipeline as construction on it wrapped up in the middle of that year — though Russian involvement in the Nord Stream sabotage or in other cases of damage to other undersea cables has not been proven.
Attributing specific acts of spying or sabotage to GUGI is difficult because of the covert nature of its operations and because Russia’s navy has similar responsibilities. The navy also operates oceanographic research vessels that Western experts and officials have said function as spy ships and which could share data with GUGI.
“We know that Russia has the capacity to map but also potentially to conduct actions against critical infrastructure,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters on June 16. “That’s also the reason why we have, for many years, addressed the vulnerability of critical undersea infrastructure.”
Stoltenberg spoke after NATO defense ministers had agreed to establish the NATO Maritime Centre for the Security of Critical Undersea Infrastructure, which is meant to facilitate coordination between governments and private firms.
“There’s no way that we can have NATO presence alone all these thousands of kilometers of undersea, offshore infrastructure, but we can be better at collecting information, intelligence, sharing information, connecting the dots,” Stoltenberg said.
Constantine Atlamazoglou works on transatlantic and European security. He holds a master’s degree in security studies and European affairs from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. You can contact him on LinkedIn and follow him on Twitter.
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