{"id":302717,"date":"2025-01-30T07:08:56","date_gmt":"2025-01-30T07:08:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=302717"},"modified":"2025-01-31T07:56:56","modified_gmt":"2025-01-31T07:56:56","slug":"the-russian-spy-ship-in-britains-waters-preparing-ground-for-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=302717","title":{"rendered":"The Russian spy ship in Britain\u2019s waters preparing ground for war"},"content":{"rendered":"

Memphis Barker \u2013 The Telegraph.co.uk Jan 29, 2025<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Sailing off the south coast of England, the\u00a0Russian<\/a>\u00a0trawler known as the Yantar carried its usual array of hi-tech equipment.<\/p>\n

In photographs released by the\u00a0Ministry of Defence<\/a>, a large radar dome can be seen behind two masts bristling with antennae.<\/p>\n

Officially, these allow the 108 metre-long craft to monitor ocean currents, befitting a\u00a0vessel the Kremlin maintains<\/a>\u00a0is part of its oceanographic research fleet.<\/p>\n

But it was the ship\u2019s more nefarious purposes that prompted a rare display of British naval power on Jan 20, when the\u00a0Yantar was confronted by a British warship<\/a>, HMS Somerset, and patrol vessel HMS Tyne.<\/p>\n

Humdrum though it may appear, the Yantar is known to carry two submersibles that can dive down up to 6,000 metres, allowing their crew to map, monitor and potentially sever the undersea cables that transmit data around the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet me be clear, this is a spy ship,\u201d said\u00a0John Healey, the Defence Secretary<\/a>, as he revealed the Royal Navy operation last week.<\/p>\n

And while the encounter looked peaceful from above, analysts and former navy officers told The Telegraph that Britain is likely to be already engaged in direct conflict with\u00a0Russia\u2019s \u201cdark fleet\u201d<\/a>, deep underwater and out of sight.<\/p>\n

In the images released by the MoD, a third ship looms over the Yantar, RFA Proteus. The \u00a365 million auxiliary ship, completed in 2019, also possesses submersibles \u2013 only these have the kind of claws needed to sever the cables connecting Yantar to its mischief-making deep-sea craft.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Russian vessel Yantar (left) and RFA Proteus. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cI reckon by now the Yantar will be missing some of its equipment,\u201d said Tom Sharpe, a former Royal Navy submariner. \u201cIf it isn\u2019t, it should be.\u201d<\/p>\n

The\u00a0details of underwater battles<\/a>\u00a0typically remain shrouded in secrecy for decades, observed only by passing sea life as they take place.<\/p>\n

The last British submarine known to have severed a cable was HMS Conqueror in 1982. Fresh from firing the missiles that sank Argentina\u2019s Belgrano in the Falklands War, it cut an acoustic array trailed by a Soviet trawler.<\/p>\n

\u201cThank goodness it was one of our submarines\u201d to have performed the daring operation, said a jubilant Margaret Thatcher.<\/p>\n

Similar efforts are likely under way today, said Dr Sidharth Kaushal of the Royal United Services Institute think tank. \u201cI would be surprised if\u2026 efforts to outcompete each other just short of the threat of war by both Russian submariners and Western ones are not occurring.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Yantar is an openly provocative target. For almost a decade, the 60-crewed ship has trailed undersea cables around the world, its position revealed through the pings it sends to the Automatic Identification System, a global maritime tracking network.<\/p>\n

From Guantanamo Bay to the North Sea, it is suspected of mapping out Nato\u2019s critical underwater infrastructure to prepare for eventual conflict.<\/p>\n

The global internet network relies on around 500 undersea cables, with 60 or so running through Britain. The most important of these travel across the Atlantic and carry critical financial data between Wall Street and the City.<\/p>\n

In a worst-case scenario, the Yantar could be dropping charges on those cables to be detonated in the event of war, said Mr Sharpe.<\/p>\n

Matt Western, the chairman of the Joint Committee on National Security Strategy, told The Telegraph that the consequences of an attack would be \u201cgrim\u201d, hitting \u201ccommunications, essential services relying on the internet, the finance sector, payments systems, supply chains and so on\u201d.<\/p>\n

Russia\u2019s dark fleet<\/a>\u00a0is already suspected of four sabotage operations in the Baltic since November, severing cables connecting\u00a0Estonia to Latvia, Sweden<\/a>\u00a0to Lithuania and Norway to Finland and Germany.<\/p>\n

To knock out the UK\u2019s internet connection, dozens of cables would have to be severed simultaneously. Some analysts speculate that, besides threatening such a strike, the Yantar\u2019s probing missions could serve another purpose.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think they probably want to go after critical military cables and discriminate those from the wider network,\u201d Mr Kaushal said. The location and purpose of such cables is classified, but when bad weather severed one off the US coast in 2007, it grounded the army\u2019s Iraqi drone fleet for a week.<\/p>\n

In his statement to Parliament last week, Mr Healey revealed a British submarine had surfaced near the Yantar during a sortie it made into British waters in November.<\/p>\n

The nuclear-class Astute submarine could have lurked underneath the Yantar for \u201cdays\u201d, Mr Sharpe suggested, potentially getting close enough to take photographs of its hull and \u201cmap the underwater fittings\u201d.<\/p>\n

In revealing itself to the Russian craft, the submarine provided a clear show of force to the Kremlin, but the breaching carries risks. Moscow will now be able to monitor any sensor data the Yantar collected in the hours before, listening for any tell-tale acoustic signals left by the not-quite silent boat.<\/p>\n

In the Russian military, Gugi is the agency responsible for deep-sea espionage, reporting directly to the ministry of defence rather than the navy. Its officers were \u201cvery capable\u201d, Mr Sharpe said, informed by decades of experience over the Cold War.<\/p>\n

The Soviet Union built up the world\u2019s second-largest fishing fleet in the early 1970s and converted dozens of trawlers into spy ships, taking advantage of their hardiness and large amounts of hangar space.<\/p>\n

When a US navy destroyer approached a Soviet vessel lurking off the coast of Virginia in 1964, the ship\u2019s captain reported that the small craft \u201cspun on a dime\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey may have looked like godforsaken pieces of junk, but they were manned by talented crew\u201d.<\/p>\n

Four years earlier, Harold Macmillan, Britain\u2019s prime minister, warned that the presence of fishing trawlers near a weapons testing range at Aberporth, Wales, was bringing the Soviet Union \u201cperilously close to a showdown with the West\u201d.<\/p>\n

That Russia is able to deploy much the same tactics decades on from the Cold War stems from the protections afforded to civilian vessels under international laws around freedom of navigation.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you want to protect against it,\u201d you may have to compromise fundamental principles like the ability of civilian ships to sail \u2013 and collect intelligence \u2013 through international waters, said Katja Bego, a research associate at Chatham House.<\/p>\n

That could have knock-on effects on international shipping through the Red Sea or the tense waters in the western Pacific. Russia, which denies any spying, has already threatened to deploy warships to \u201cprotect\u201d its civilian fleet.<\/p>\n

In part, this is a riposte to the West\u2019s increasing naval muscle. In December, Finnish commandos boarded the Eagle S, the trawler suspected of severing the Estlink 2 power cable in the Gulf of Finland. They found the ship \u201cbristling\u201d with spy equipment that allowed it to monitor Nato ships and aircraft, Lloyds List reported.<\/p>\n

Could British commandos be called upon to board the Yantar, if its brazen snooping continues?<\/p>\n

\u201cOther countries have boarded and detained vessels suspected of sabotage,\u201d Mr Western said, days after announcing an inquiry into Britain\u2019s undersea defences. \u201cThe committee\u2019s inquiry will take a close look at what powers and capabilities the UK has, and how well they are being used.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lawyers should already be working on establishing the legal basis for a boarding operation, Mr Sharpe added. There would be little point in the SBS speeding out of Poole only to have to turn back half-way.<\/p>\n

As ever, the risk of conflict spirals in a direct confrontation. No Royal Navy sailor will forget the fate of commander Lionel Crabb, who was deployed to examine the underwater hull of the Ordzhenikidze, a Soviet cruiser that docked in Portsmouth in 1956. His body, missing its head, was found floating in the waters nearby.<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While the encounter looked peaceful from above, analysts and former navy officers told The Telegraph that Britain is likely to be already engaged in direct conflict with Russia\u2019s \u201cdark fleet\u201d, deep underwater and out of sight<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":302720,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[58,91],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-302717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-Current_Affairs","category-russia"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=302717"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302717\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":302721,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302717\/revisions\/302721"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/302720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=302717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=302717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=302717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}