Yantar: How serious is the Russian spy ship movement?

For Russia, the Yantar is an ocean research vessel; For others, including the United Kingdom, it is a spy ship and a concern for British defense chiefs.

The ship has long been suspected of secretly tracing Britain’s undersea cables, where more than 90% of our data is transferred, including billions of dollars in financial transactions.

But now, a new escalation, with revelations that Yantar sailors pointed lasers at Royal Air Force pilots in patrol planes.

Pointing a laser in a pilot’s eyes is provocative and, to use the words of Defense Secretary John Healey, “deeply dangerous.” It is illegal in the UK and can result in a prison sentence.

Healey’s direct message to Russia and its leader Vladimir Putin was stark: “We see you. We know what you are doing. And if the Yantar heads south this week, we are ready.”

By this, he is hinting that if the Yantar crosses within Britain’s 12-mile maritime border, there would be a military response.

This is not the first time that the Yantar has appeared near British shores: earlier this year, a Royal Navy submarine made a very unusual move to surface right in front of the ship as a sort of deterrent measure.

The concern is that this is part of an ongoing Kremlin operation to locate and map all vital undersea cables and pipelines connecting the UK to the rest of the world.

It is also part of a broader pattern of Russian activity, as it tests NATO’s reactions, resolve and defenses. We have seen similar moves with recent drone incursions across Europe and Russian fighter jets flying in NATO airspace.

When three Russian fighter jets entered the skies over Estonia without permission in September, Italy, Finland and Sweden sent planes under NATO’s mission to reinforce their eastern flank.

All this is interesting information for Russia.

As an island nation, Britain relies heavily on its network of undersea cables that carry data. There are also vital oil and gas pipelines connecting Britain to North Sea neighbors such as Norway.

These cables and pipes are largely defenseless and are apparently of great interest to Russian research vessels.

NATO has identified deep-sea cables as part of the world’s critical infrastructure. But they are also strategic pressure points, he says, warning that adversaries could exploit them through sabotage or hybrid warfare, threatening both civilian and military communications.

Retired Royal Navy Commander Tom Sharpe made it clear what the spy ship could be doing: “The most obvious is that they sit on top of our cables and our critical undersea infrastructure and snoop around the cables that transfer up to $7 trillion in financial transactions every day between us and the United States alone.”

The Yantar may be described by Moscow as a research vessel, but it is part of Russia’s secretive Main Directorate of Deep Sea Research, or GUGI, which reports directly to the Defense Ministry.

And although the ship is packed with high-tech communications equipment, what’s most worrying is what we can’t see.

It can operate remotely piloted miniature submarines that can dive to seabeds many thousands of meters below the surface. These are capable of mapping the location of cables, cutting them or placing sabotage devices that could potentially be activated in times of war.

The Royal Navy is experimenting with various means of combating the threat, such as a new ship called Proteus, but critics fear much of the damage to Britain’s coastal security has already been done.

Any foreign vessel operating in British waters must comply with UK domestic laws and international maritime conventions.

The cornerstone of these complex rules is the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). This allows foreign ships to sail through coastal waters as long as their passage is “innocent”, meaning it does not threaten the peace or security of a coastal nation like Britain.

President Putin was at an AI conference in Moscow on Wednesday and gave no immediate reaction to the situation developing north of Scotland.

Russia’s embassy in London says it is not undermining UK security and has condemned UK Defense Secretary Healey’s statement as provocative.

But all this is happening while war rages in Ukraine, a conflict that Putin blames on the West and apparently has no intention of stopping anytime soon.

Additional reporting by Tiffany Wertheimer and Stuart Hughes