By John Irish
PARIS, Feb 3 (Reuters) - Russia's investment in its Northern Fleet is undiminished despite more years of conflict in Ukraine, the British navy's top naval commander said on Tuesday, adding that responding to Moscow's aggressive posture was testing for Western powers.
"Russian investment in their Northern Fleet, and in particular, in their subsurface capabilities, is undiminished," General Gwyn Jenkins, First Sea Lord of the Royal Navy, told French think tank IFRI's naval conference in Paris.
"Despite the horrendous cost in terms of national resource and blood to Russia, of their egregious invasion of Ukraine, they have continued to pump resource into their Northern Fleet and their subsurface capabilities," he said.
Jenkins, who was speaking alongside top navy chiefs from the United States, France, Italy and the Netherlands, said Russia's activity was testing Western capabilities, given how long it took to upgrade, build and develop new vessels in a fast-changing technological environment.
"It doesn't take many assets to fix us as allies, because we have a very low risk tolerance of allowing a aggressive actor operating in our backyard, and that does take a lot of resource to respond to," Jenkins said.
Vice-Admiral Harold Liebregs, commander of the Royal Netherlands Navy echoed Jenkins' comments saying Russia was being increasingly emboldened in the North Sea and loitering over vital infrastructure, possibly preparing further actions.
"We see ships operating drones that fly over our territory, and we see the shadow fleet, or Dark Fleet, that's fueling the Russian war economy, using ships that are ill maintained, not insured, and posing all kinds of liability issues in our precious North Sea," he said.
"I think the main point here is that we should not accept this as the new normal, because it pushes us back in a position where we have less freedom to manoeuvre, and that creates a less suitable strategic position."
(Reporting by John Irish;Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta)
