From the Times and the Sunday Times, this is the story. I'm Manveen Rauner. Speeches by the Defence Secretary aren't usually a cause for great alarm, but when he stood up a few days ago and revealed a series of events that had just taken place off the coast of Britain, it's sent to chill across Parliament.
So last week, a Russian, what is officially called an oceanographic research vessel. But if I told you that, for example, it's spent a lot of its time hanging off the coast of Guantanamo Bay, hanging around lots of undersea cables around the British Isles. That might give you a better picture of what it actually does, which is what basically the Royal Navy thinks it does, which is it's a Russian spy ship.
And this Russian spy ship turned up off the coast of the British Isles, not the first time that it had done so, and entered Britain's exclusive economic zone. It started to approach British waters, I think it was about 45 miles off the coast of the UK when the Royal Navy gently shepherded it away from British waters up through the channel and up out of the North Sea. And the RAF deployed maritime patrol aircraft to basically monitor exactly what it was doing.
because basically British patients had snapped. This was not the first time that it had come to the UK and it had snapped to the extent that the defence actually took the kind of unusual step of going to MPs to announce what had happened and deliver a strong message to Putin and say, we see you, we know what you're up to and we're not going to stand for it.
It seems like the cold war is not only back, it's heating up. The story today, the underwater war against Russian sabotage.
My name is George Grills, I'm defence correspondent for The Times. George, what happened last week wasn't the first time we've seen Russian spy ships turning up in British waters. How common is this and how long has it been going on?
I think you can date this back to the Cold War, to be honest. If you think about where Britain is on a map, it is basically at the entrance to the Atlantic as far as Russia is concerned. So if Russia wants to get to the Atlantic, it has to basically pass the UK.
and there's something called the Greenland-Iceland UK Gap, which is this kind of stretch of water, which is Russia's entrance to the Atlantic, and constantly the Royal Navy's job has been since the Cold War, basically, to patrol that and to work out what Russian submarines, what Russian warships are kind of passing through there. So it's not uncommon for
Soviet ships, even back in the day, to pass through near the British Isles. I think what is a new phenomenon is the loitering of Russian spy ships around critical undersea infrastructure and the fact that Britain appears to be taking a slightly more robust approach to that.
So in November the Yanta, which was the same ship that was involved in this incident last week, actually came again to Britain was hovering near critical underwater infrastructure, telecommunications cables, pipelines and
The Royal Navy kind of took the decision to actually surface a nuclear powered attack submarine, HMS Astute, right next to the spy ship, and they literally said, good morning, which is all they needed to say, because it's basically telling them, we're watching you, we know what you're up to.
That must have been quite the shock to see a submarine turning up next to you. And it's an unusual move because they're usually very, very secretive.
Yeah, it might surprise us to know, but a lot of these things are quite coordinated. So if you think, for example, in the air, if Russian fighter jets are kind of approaching NATO airspace, then everyone kind of knows the dance that follows NATO's crumbles, some airplanes, they go up, they say, we're watching you, they turn around and go back. So often these sorts of kind of military moves are pretty coordinated.
But there does seem to be a kind of step up certainly in the maritime domain of nervousness about undersea's infrastructure and therefore taking a slightly more aggressive approach towards Russian ships that kind of approach the UK. And that feels different too. So as you say, the Yantar, this Russian spy ship turned up in November. It was back again last week. And really unusually, we had the defence secretary standing up in Parliament and talking about it.
Mr. Speaker, this is another example of growing Russian aggression, targeting our allies abroad and us at home. The heads of NI6 and the CIA recently stated together in a joint statement Russia is waging, they said, a reckless campaign of sabotage across Europe. Going very public about what was happening in a way that they hadn't in November, for example. I want to thank all the personnel involved for their dedication and their professionalism.
And I also want President Putin to hear this message. We see you, we know what you're doing, and we will not shy away from robust action to protect this country.
These incidents with the Yantar, this Russian spy ship, come at a time when we're really starting to see just how vulnerable underwater infrastructure really is. You know, there've been a number of instances recently where underwater cables and pipelines have been damaged. How is the defense secretary dealing with that threat?
Well, the attraction to hostile actors, namely Russia and China, is that this is quite often deniable. It's very hard to prove, for example, that a submarine cable or an infrastructure that has been damaged has been done so deliberately and that it wasn't an accident. Therefore, if you want to cause huge economic harm to the West and to the UK,
you can do so potentially in a way where it doesn't get traced back to you. So all of the NATO response has been and why this submarine surface right there is basically to try and remove that and be able to pinpoint exactly who is responsible for breaking what cable and hopefully deter countries from attacking that infrastructure by having very credible proof that it's them who's responsible.
And to call it out in Parliament in that way feels very unusual too. And understand he's even changed the rules of engagement. For the last two days the Royal Navy has deployed HMS Somerset and HMS Time to monitor the vessel every minute through our waters. And I changed the Royal Navy's rules of engagement so that our warships can get closer and better track the yanta.
And also when you can actually use a submarine, usually you wouldn't use a submarine against, for example, a research vessel, but I guess it sends a bit of a message, doesn't it, if you have a nuclear powered attack submarine surfacing right next to you? It's intimidation, isn't it, really? And clear message that you don't think it's really a research vessel? No. What do you think the anti has been trying to achieve when it turns up in British waters back in November last week? What is it trying to do?
And also off the Irish coast it spent a long time in 2021. A lot of the transatlantic underwater cables kind of go through Ireland. So that would explain why it might be interested in that sort of area. I think a lot of it is reconnaissance. I don't think a ship that's flying a Russian flag necessarily is going to be caught.
Snipping cables and sending divers down there as a plant explosives and all the rest of it. That would be war. Well that would be war exactly and it removes the deniability but what they could be doing is researching exactly where these cables are, what depth and how easy they are to get to what they.
Seabed is like in that place what the currents are like, where they think, for example, ships are not patrolling, where there might be gaps in defences. So it's collecting information, most probably. I mean, we are speculating potentially other ships that, you know, they can use more deniably to attack infrastructure. And I suppose it gets a sense of how quickly we respond to these things too. So it's almost testing our response times. You mentioned the underwater cables.
This isn't something we talk about often enough. Just explain what they are and why they're so important. If you think about modern economies, they're totally reliant on these cables that are on the floor of the ocean. So 95% of internet traffic or over 95% in fact comes from these subsea cables.
If you think about the lights that we turn on at home and the heating that we have through our radiators, that all comes from gas and the gas comes from pipelines.
It even comes also to the speed at which you can communicate through these cables. You have pipelines for energy, then you have telecommunications cables, and every day $10 trillion in financial transactions are kind of secured through basically instantaneous communication through these cables. And we're an island as well. So we are particularly vulnerable to this because we can be cut off in a way that perhaps mainland Europe is slightly more defensible.
So at the worst, we could be cut off without electricity, gas, without internet access, telecommunications. I mean, that starts to look like a very bleak world. Yeah, it's a cheap and deniable way of basically destroying Western economies. Wow.
And it's not just us facing this threat. This does seem to have become the new battlefront for Russia and Europe. Talk us through where else it's been happening.
We had a series of attacks or accidents. We're not entirely sure what they are yet at the end of last year. So in the space of two months, there were three cables that were snapped and they were all in the Altix Sea and they all appeared to have curd when oil tankers owned through slightly complicated ownership structures transporting what appears to be petrol from Russia.
Dragged their anchors over the bed of the Baltic Sea, and basically severed the cables underneath. One instant involved a Chinese vessel in November, and that cut telecommunications cables in Swedish waters. That had apparently been dragging its anchor for about 100 miles.
But they've said it was an accident and they haven't completely denied any deliberate sabotage. And then only a few weeks later on Christmas Day, a power line between Estonia and Finland was also ruptured in exactly the same way. A oil tanker with a slightly dubious ownership structure was dragging its anchor for 60 miles along the sea bay slowed as it approached the cable, dawdled over the cable and learned to hold suddenly the power grid.
operators are reporting that there's been a sudden break in energy. George, you've been to the Baltic to see this up close. Just describe the scene, describe where you were and what was happening.
I was very cold last week. In fact, you might even be able to tell from my voice that I picked up something. It was freezing. I was out in the middle of the Gulf of Finland, which is the far north-eastern corner of the Baltic. That's where Finland, Russia and Estonia meet. I was out in the middle of the sea.
well below freezing. It was around dawn. It doesn't really get very light there at that time of the year because it's such a northerly latitude. It was windy. I was lucky because I was wearing lots of layers, but we were speaking to some of the elite German divers. They're trained to be mine clearance divers, so their main job is basically to do a few sea mines, but those skills are obviously transferable to protecting underwater cables.
Anyway, there's this immense German guy who was probably about six foot nine, six foot ten wearing his full scuba kit. He only had his hands exposed for a moment, but the way in which they just went red straight away and the kind of steaming breath coming out of his wetsuit, it was perishing. And what was he doing? What possesses you to get into a wetsuit when it's as cold as that in middle of the Baltic?
So this is all part of Operation Baltic Century, which is a NATO mission to patrol NATO's sea border with Russia and protect those undersea pipelines and cables from any further interference. Basically, if you want to find out what's happening with the underwater cables that are on the
bottom of the city where you have to go down there. And you can use the multiple drones to go down there and record the footage, but they're not as maneuverable as a human being. And so it's quite often up to divers to try and do that job. And what exactly were they looking for and what did they find?
So at this stage of the operation, it's not so much an investigation into what has happened before. It's to show that we are operating in this area. So if you do anything more, we will know what you're up to. Coming up, how serious is the threat from Russia?
Well, we're in a cold war again, aren't we? But arguably even worse, because if you look now, there's apparent sabotage going on. That's in just a moment.
George, you were telling us earlier about these incidents where we're seeing oil tankers with dubious and very complicated ownership structures turning up, dragging anchors across the seabed, high unusual behavior, which are then cutting underwater cables. They would argue that they're doing it inadvertently, but clearly there are question marks around all of that.
You mentioned one of those incidents in particular, the one that occurred on Christmas Day, and that really seems to be the moment when all of this escalates. Just take us back to that incident. Tell us what happened. So the Eagle S is a hulking great big oil tanker. It was sailing from St Petersburg to it seems to be either Turkey or Egypt. It was carrying fuel. It's allegedly part of Russia's shadow fleet.
Tell us about that. What is this shadow fleet? Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Western countries put sanctions on Russia, but basically being entirely reliant on its oil and gas exports needed to find other markets and other ways to get there. And so they came up with this ruse where basically they use
very old oil tankers, perhaps not properly insured, perhaps not altogether safe to sell oil and sell gas, and they disguise where it's coming from through the ownership structures. There's no Russian flag on this. There's no Russian flag on this. There's no Russian connection.
But the fact that it's coming straight from St. Petersburg and is not very far off the coast of St. Petersburg when suddenly it starts slowing down as it approaches a power cable and drags an 11-ton anchor for 60 miles along the seabed, as Finnish authorities believe, gives the impression that there's a little bit of inadvertent vandalism going on or perhaps intentional vandalism. I mean, tell us about that. Dragging an anchor for 60 miles on the seabed, that's not normal behavior.
To be fair, there are conflicting reports. Some people are, you know, there was a report in the Washington Post that was saying that European and American intelligence agencies think it was just human error and the crew was incompetent. If you ask any seamen, if they accidentally dropped an 11 ton tanker overboard, which I would imagine is quite hard to do, you just cut it straight away. You just let go because you'll probably have another one. They didn't do that. They continued to drag it along the seabed.
And this boat maybe had form because it was seen also loitering off another piece of critical undersea infrastructure in the North Sea off the coast of Holland, a cable that connects the UK and mainland Europe and the US.
only a few months before. So that leads to more questions. And then there are also reports in Lloyd's List, which is the kind of oldest shipping journal in the world, which talked about how it had dropped sensor-like devices in the English channel before then that there were unauthorized people on board who no one knew who they were. So it builds up quite a picture of what this ship was doing. And
What happened was that it was seen as so blatant by the Finns compared to previous events. They just said enough is enough. Damn the consequences. We're going to board this ship and impound it. And just tell us about the Finnish response because it was quite a moment.
Yeah, the Finns don't muck about. They sent some helicopters out in the Baltic Sea and basically boarded the vessel, took it back to Finland and said we were arresting the crew and detaining them and asking them lots of questions until we find out what on earth went wrong here. And they basically weren't buying the excuse that it was pure accident that caused this damage.
How much damage did dragging this anchor for 60 miles do? They'd ruptured S-Link 2, which is a energy pipeline between Estonia and Finland, and it's a particularly advantageous moment for Russia to see that pipeline broken because Estonia is trying to wean itself off Russian gas. So Estonia is particularly reliant right now on its connections to other countries. Ah, so the moment that gets cut. They're in a bit of a pickle, yeah.
And George, the Finns decided to step up and respond in the firmest possible way. Why has it been so hard in the past for countries to do that?
Free passage is quite governed, and there's a lot of rules about what you can and can't do in international waters, and there's also a lot of rules about what are straits, for example, the English channel is a strait, so countries are allowed to freely pass through them, and a big no-no is, funnily enough, landing on a
internationally flagged vessel in the middle of international water and taking it and bringing it back to your own country, you can't do that. Are the Finns in trouble for this? They could potentially be in trouble, they want to build up a case, but arguably
Even if they did get a fine, it's unlikely to be more than the cost of repairing undersea's cables. So you might make the calculation down there, so I'm going to act now and deal with the lawyers later, because if this ship goes and drags its anchor along another cable and we haven't stopped it, then that's going to be more expensive for us.
And have they managed to come to any conclusion? Have they got any answers? At the moment, the ship is still impounded. No charges has been brought. No spying equipment was found on the ship. And that was the key allegation of this Lloyd's List report from earlier. So we're at a bit of an empath. What did the lawyers for the boat say?
The finished lawyer who's acting on behalf of the US, he accused Finland of hijacking it from international water, so that would be breaking the law of the seas. He said, finish authorities did not have jurisdiction whatsoever to board the vessel and conduct investigations. And then we asked him about whether it's supposed links to the shadow fleet. And he said, it is unnecessary to ask anything about shadow fleets, whatever it means.
After Finland had that really striking response, we then had John Healy standing up in Parliament last week talking about this in a way that, you know, he hadn't in November when we'd had a very similar incident. Has something changed? Is every turn to corner? Is this starting to look like a coordinated response? I think that incident on Christmas Day in particular was seen as so flagrant that it demanded, you know, a step up.
And so now NATO has now something called Operation Baltic Sentry, which involves a Dutch frigate, German minesweeper, French minesweeper coming soon, a Swedish Corvette coming soon, the UK is sending its maritime patrol calf, which are sort of PA submarine hunting planes, and then also river joints, which are spy planes. So it is a bit of a response now. It's kind of saying enough is enough.
The Finnish Prime Minister Alexander Stup has been very strong on this. So we've had three of these cases in the past year. First time we let the ship go. I think that was a mistake. Second time it was in Swedish German waters. They boarded and third time we actually confiscated.
How about the Russians? How are they responding? Because, as you say, they've been doing this for a while. They're not used to quite such a strong response from countries like Finland and the UK. Well, the Russians have adopted their usual playbook all the way through and said they're not responsible and there's no deliberate sabotage.
George, you're a defence correspondent. You watch the risks to security on a daily basis. You've been to the Baltic Sea. You've seen this up close. Is this the new battlefront we should all be worried about? Is this the place where we're vulnerable, where we're quite exposed? It's one of them. I think you would also include in that satellites. If you think about how modern economies work, they rely on
me being able to send an email and you being able to buy this or deliver that. And all that sort of logistics is powered through undersea cable. So it's attacking that, but also it relies on satellites. And all kind of major powers are investing in their space capabilities, testing missiles that could take out satellites. So that would be another area where you would want to invest to potentially protect yourself. But then also if you cast your mind back to
The summer, there were those incidents with delivery packages exploding at airports. DHL planes. DHL planes, exactly. If you rain, you're in places like that. Exactly. And Donald Tusk, the Prime Minister of Poland, only last week was saying this is Russian terrorism. They are aiming to take out planes, transatlantic planes using delivery packages. So that's another way in which you can kind of interrupt economies and logistics, not to mention the loss of life, but
potentially another deniable form of attack similar to those underwater cables. And George, how seriously should we take the threat from Russia now? Are we getting to a point where it feels like we're entering the stage of a war?
Well, we're in a Cold War again, aren't we? But arguably even worse, because if you look now, there's apparent sabotage going on. And that's a pretty direct threat, isn't it? It's a really, really dangerous moment.
That was George Grille's defense and political correspondent for The Times, and you can find his report from the freezing Baltic Sea online at thetimes.com with a subscription. The producer today was Olivia Case. The executive producer was Kate Ford. Sound design and theme composition were by Malasetto. If you found this episode useful, do leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.