Russian Ships Are Circling British Waters: Mapping Britain's Undersea Vulnerabilities

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Video originally published on December 2, 2025.

Off the British coast, a calculated threat is unfolding. Over recent weeks, Russian warships have repeatedly operated just outside British territorial waters, conducting missions that remain officially unclear but deeply concerning to London and its NATO allies. These vessels haven't simply been passing through—they've targeted British aircraft with lasers, made conspicuous displays of lurking in Britain's exclusive economic zone, and raised urgent questions about their true objectives. This isn't merely a naval provocation; it's part of a broader hybrid war playing out across Europe, one in which Russia appears to be methodically mapping and potentially preparing to target the undersea infrastructure that keeps Britain connected and powered.

Key Takeaways

Russian warships, including the suspected spy vessel Yantar, have been operating in British coastal waters with increasing frequency and aggression, targeting RAF aircraft with lasers in an unprecedented escalation.

The Yantar, officially described as an oceanic research vessel but widely identified as a spy ship, operates under Russia's Main Directorate for Deep-Sea Research (GUGI) and reports directly to the Russian Ministry of Defense.

British Defense Secretary John Healey warned that southward movement of the Yantar into territorial waters would be met with military action, and the Royal Navy modified its rules of engagement for closer monitoring.

Russian vessels have threatened UK waters at a thirty-percent-higher rate over the past two years compared to previous periods, reflecting Moscow's broader confrontational posture against Western nations.

Britain's undersea fiber-optic cables and oil and gas pipelines represent critical vulnerabilities that are essentially unguarded across their entire combined length, making them prime targets for Russian hybrid warfare.

The Yantar is assessed with high confidence to be mapping Britain's undersea cables and pipelines, identifying their precise positions and most vulnerable points for potential future attacks.

The Yantar: A Spy Ship in British Waters

Measuring approximately 108 meters in length with a crew complement of sixty and displacing just under six thousand tons, the Russian vessel Yantar presents a deceptively benign appearance. According to Russian authorities, the ship serves as an oceanic research vessel. However, NATO nations and Western intelligence agencies identify it as something far more concerning: a sophisticated spy ship equipped with autonomous submarines and advanced technology designed for crucial undersea reconnaissance operations.

The Yantar operates under Russia's Main Directorate for Deep-Sea Research, known by its Russian acronym GUGI. While GUGI vessels ostensibly pursue scientific objectives, they report directly to the Russian Ministry of Defense—a command structure that reveals their true military nature. Until recently, the Yantar maintained a position less than fifty-five kilometers from UK territorial waters, a presence that naturally triggered British concern and military response.

When the Yantar entered the UK's outer coastal waters, British Defense Secretary John Healey explained to parliament on November 19th that the UK responded with appropriate force. The Royal Navy dispatched a frigate while the Royal Air Force deployed multiple P-8 Poseidon patrol aircraft—American-made Boeing 737 variants equipped with sophisticated surveillance and weapons systems. But as these Poseidon aircraft approached the Russian vessel operating in British coastal waters, the Yantar's crew executed what's known as a dazzling attack, directing powerful lasers at the incoming aircraft.

This laser targeting represents an extremely dangerous escalation. Shining powerful lasers at aircraft pilots causes disorientation, potential loss of control, and depending on laser strength, even permanent blindness. According to Healey, this marked the first instance of any Russian ship directing lasers at RAF pilots within their own coastal waters. Flight-tracking data suggested that British Eurofighter aircraft also responded to the situation and may have similarly been targeted by the vessel's laser systems.

Following this incident, the British military intensified its monitoring of the Yantar. Healey issued a pointed warning: "if the Yantar travels south this week, we are ready." Given the vessel's position at the time, the implication was unmistakable—southward movement would have brought the ship into Britain's territorial waters and likely resulted in military action, potentially including weapons fire. Healey revealed that the British Navy had modified its rules of engagement to enable closer monitoring of the Yantar while it remained within Britain's larger exclusive economic zone.

Throughout the vessel's stay, it was watched closely but never formally stopped, boarded, or fired upon. The ship's captain or decision-makers in the Kremlin ultimately chose not to travel south into territorial waters, avoiding direct confrontation. Russia's response to the British attention was predictably dismissive, accusing the UK of "Russophobia" and engaging in "military hysteria"—characterizations that deflected from the provocative nature of the Yantar's operations and its crew's decision to target British aircraft with lasers.

Additional Russian Naval Incursions

Days after the Yantar incident, Britain's Ministry of Defense announced the presence of two additional Russian warships in sensitive waters: the corvette Stoikiy and the military tanker Yelnya. These vessels were attempting to transit the English Channel at its narrowest point, where British and French territorial waters overlap—a geographically and legally complex area that typically sees relatively unrestricted passage.

Although the overlapping territorial waters entitle France and Britain to collaborate and potentially bar traffic through the Channel, such actions are rarely taken. In this case, however, Britain made the relatively uncommon decision to intercept the approaching vessels, monitoring them closely before handing responsibility to another NATO member once they exited the Channel.

The British government framed these incidents as the latest indicators of Russia's willingness to aggressively probe NATO waters. Defense Secretary Healey noted that Russian vessels have threatened UK waters at a thirty-percent-higher rate over the past two years compared to previous periods—a statistical increase that reflects Moscow's broader strategic shift toward more confrontational postures against Western nations supporting Ukraine.

Context: A Pattern of Russian Naval Activity

While Russian ship activity near the UK consistently generates headlines—particularly as the two nations find themselves on opposite sides of the Ukraine conflict—these incidents are far from isolated. In 2025 alone, multiple occasions have required the British Navy to monitor Russian warships approaching uncomfortably close to British waters.

In February, six Russian naval and merchant ships sailed through the Channel carrying ammunition being evacuated from Syria during Russia's partial withdrawal from that country. March saw the UK tracking three Russian spy ships through the Channel. In June, British forces watched as a Russian corvette escorted multiple oil tankers from Russia's shadow fleet—vessels designed to evade international sanctions. July brought a submarine, frigate, and corvette through the Channel and North Sea under British observation. In September, the UK tracked four Russian warships in the same areas, including the same submarine as it returned to port.

This pattern demonstrates that while London refuses to allow Russian warships to travel unmonitored near British coasts, such transits are not unprecedented. Geography itself partially explains this frequency: Russian ships departing the Baltic Sea from ports near St. Petersburg or from the Kaliningrad exclave have limited routing options. To reach the Atlantic Ocean, these vessels must either transit the English Channel or navigate north between Scotland and the Faroe Islands while exiting the North Sea.

Under international maritime law, the English Channel is defined as an international strait, even in areas where French and British maritime territory overlap. Consequently, neither France nor Britain have historically attempted to close the Channel to Russian traffic—at least not before last week's interception of the Stoikiy and Yelnya. However, what Russian ships are definitively not entitled to do under maritime or any other law is target British pilots with lasers. This aggressive action represents a new and concerning escalation in Russian behavior.

Russia's Broader European Escalation Campaign

Russia's willingness to escalate provocations against the UK can be partially explained by examining Moscow's recent actions elsewhere across Europe. Since September 9th and 10th, when nearly two dozen unarmed Russian drones entered Polish airspace, Russia has clearly transitioned into a phase of escalating provocations against European nations.

These escalations have taken multiple forms: drone and armed aircraft incursions along NATO's eastern flank, unexplained drone overflights above sensitive military facilities and major airports, and direct acts of sabotage such as the November explosions on Polish railway lines. Russia has refused to acknowledge these operations in any official capacity, maintaining plausible deniability while the evidence of its involvement accumulates.

Although Russia hasn't confirmed the strategic thinking behind these recent escalations, the purpose is widely understood among Western intelligence and defense analysts. Moscow appears to be testing NATO's resolve, measuring member states' willingness—or unwillingness—to absorb political costs and mount effective responses. These operations also serve to probe NATO members' capabilities for detecting and countering such hybrid warfare tactics.

In this context, Russian ships regularly sailing close to Britain or positioning a known spy ship in British waters functions as a calculated reminder. Russia is present, Russia is watching, Russia may or may not be conducting nefarious operations, and critically, the British aren't willing or able to stop it. For Moscow, targeting the UK specifically may carry particular significance. Due to geographic distance, the strength of UK law enforcement and intelligence services, and the difficulty Russian and Eastern European operatives face blending into British society compared to more ethnically diverse Eastern European nations like Poland, Russia has been unable or unwilling to conduct regular acts of significant sabotage on British soil. Naval provocations and undersea operations may represent Moscow's most viable avenue for hybrid warfare against the United Kingdom.

Britain's Undersea Vulnerabilities

The presence of the Yantar specifically poses a threat greater than nearly any other asset in Russia's current arsenal, and understanding why requires examining Britain's fundamental geographic and infrastructural realities. The United Kingdom is an island nation—or more precisely, an archipelago nation—which means it must import anything it needs from abroad by sea. While most imports arrive by ship, tunnel, or air, two absolutely critical sectors rely on different means of supply: energy and information. In both cases, these vital resources reach Britain from beneath the waves.

For energy, Britain depends on a network of oil and gas pipelines settled deep under the ocean to receive imports from partner nations across the North Sea. For information and connectivity, Britain receives the vast majority of its data and maintains Internet connectivity to the outside world through undersea fiber-optic cables. These cables carry an almost incomprehensible volume of critical communications and financial transactions.

Both Britain's pipelines and its cables are essentially unguarded. British warships and patrol aircraft monitor the water's surface, and the Royal Navy's ten submarines conduct classified operations at unknown locations. However, Britain's naval capabilities—and those of other NATO nations that might assist in defending these assets—fall far short of what would be required to ensure continuous monitoring of every pipeline and every cable across their entire lengths.

This vulnerability has long been recognized as a slow-burning problem within British military and defense circles. Experts could agree that undersea infrastructure might become a problem eventually, but justifying significant resource allocation to protect these assets proved difficult when resources were limited and the threat seemed theoretical. Since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, however, this calculus has been changing as the UK confronts an adversary with growing willingness to challenge Europe directly.

Technological evolution has arguably been an even more important factor driving this reassessment. Unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) have become increasingly important in maritime warfare. As these UUVs proliferate and hybrid warfare becomes a daily reality on the European continent, Britain's failure to adequately protect its undersea assets has transformed from a theoretical concern into an urgent operational problem.

The Yantar's Likely Mission: Mapping Critical Infrastructure

The Yantar has been traveling through sensitive waters with increasing frequency over the past year, and its activities have raised serious concerns in London. In early 2025, when the Yantar appeared in the North Sea, Britain's alarm reached such levels that the Royal Navy took the extraordinary step of surfacing one of its submarines directly in front of the spy ship—a dramatic deterrent measure that navies rarely consider, as it reveals submarine capabilities and positions.

The threat posed by the Yantar conducting reconnaissance in these waters represents an undeniable cause for concern. British intelligence and defense officials assess with high confidence that the Yantar is attempting to map all of Britain's undersea cables and pipelines, determining their precise positions and identifying their most vulnerable points.

Former Royal Navy Commander Tom Sharpe, speaking to the BBC about the Yantar's possible objectives, explained: "The most obvious one is they sit above our cables and our undersea critical infrastructure and they nose around in the cables that transfer up to [seven trillion dollars] worth of financial transactions every day between us and America alone."

For a nation that has proven harder for Russia to target through conventional hybrid warfare methods, these undersea pipelines—and especially the fiber-optic cables—represent an exceptionally valuable target set for Moscow's operations against London. Although Britain has built some level of redundancy into its fiber-optic connections, Moscow would only need to destroy or incapacitate a small number of cables to generate massive impact. Such an attack could disrupt life for tens of millions of British citizens while grinding communications, finance, and other critical sectors to a halt.

Attacking Britain's pipelines could enable Russia to cause an environmental catastrophe while simultaneously restricting British energy resources—potentially during cold winter months when energy demand peaks and supply disruptions would cause maximum suffering. The operation wouldn't require extensive resources: just a few well-placed explosives that could remain underwater for months, or UUVs navigating unseen toward predetermined undersea coordinates. The Yantar and similar vessels wouldn't even need to be in the vicinity when attacks occurred.

Evidence suggests such preparatory operations may already be underway. On November 15th, a suspected Russian tracking device was discovered off the Welsh coast—an acoustic monitoring device called a sonobuoy that had imploded under pressure before washing close to shore. While this older device was unlikely to have been deployed by the Yantar specifically, its discovery provides context for how long Moscow has been focused on this region of the Atlantic and gathering intelligence on British undersea infrastructure.

The Challenge of Defense

Most troubling of all, it may already be too late to prevent Russia from gathering the intelligence it needs. The Yantar has been operating in the area for an extended period, other Russian vessels have conducted operations in the same zones, and even if Russia's maps of British undersea resources remain incomplete, they don't need to be comprehensive to enable devastating attacks.

The asymmetry of this threat creates an almost impossible defensive challenge: Britain must protect all of its undersea infrastructure across the entire combined length of thousands of kilometers of cables and pipelines, whereas Russia only needs to successfully strike a few pinpoint locations to cause catastrophic disruption.

This situation exemplifies a pattern that has appeared repeatedly in European security discussions: the consequences that emerge when European nations are slow to anticipate future threats, unwilling to invest adequately in their own defense, and overly permissive when they could be responding more forcefully to suspected threats from known adversaries.

Under international maritime law, the Yantar is legally permitted to operate where it has been positioned, conducting whatever activities it pursues in international waters. However, if in coming weeks or months a sequence of surprise explosions takes Britain offline or destroys its oil pipelines, Britain's deep and abiding respect for maritime law will provide no consolation and no protection for the millions of citizens who will suffer the consequences.

Parts of the British government have already recognized the severity of this problem. In a September report, the nation's National Security Strategy Committee explicitly criticized the government for its timidity in protecting undersea cables. However, as of now, no substantive policy changes have been implemented to address these vulnerabilities.

The Hybrid War's Asymmetric Reality

In the hybrid war currently playing out across Europe, one side has already decided that traditional constraints no longer apply—that the gloves are off. The other side, at least at present, doesn't appear to share this assessment or hasn't yet formulated an adequate response to this new reality.

If Britain and its NATO allies remain content to watch as their undersea cables and pipelines, military bases, airports, and critical infrastructure are systematically mapped, surveilled, and eventually targeted, then those nations will bear responsibility for explaining the consequences to their own citizens when attacks occur. The intelligence gathering is happening now, in plain sight, with vessels like the Yantar operating with relative impunity while British forces monitor but do not interdict.

If these nations would prefer to avoid the pain and disruption of an escalating hybrid war—if they wish to protect their citizens, economies, and critical infrastructure from the attacks that current Russian reconnaissance operations are clearly preparing—then the time to begin taking meaningful defensive action was yesterday. All they can do today is attempt to play catch-up, racing to implement protections and countermeasures that should have been established years ago.

Currently, it remains unclear whether Britain and its allies will even make that attempt, or whether they will continue prioritizing legal niceties and avoiding escalation over the practical necessity of defending critical infrastructure from a demonstrably hostile adversary. The Russian ships circling British waters are not engaged in innocent passage or routine naval operations. They are conducting reconnaissance for potential future attacks, testing British resolve, and exploiting the gap between what international law permits and what strategic necessity demands. How Britain and NATO respond to this challenge in the coming weeks and months may well determine whether Russia's hybrid warfare campaign expands to include devastating attacks on the undersea infrastructure that keeps Britain connected, powered, and functioning.

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FAQ

What is the Yantar and why is it significant?

The Yantar is a Russian vessel measuring approximately 108 meters in length, displacing just under six thousand tons, with a crew of sixty. While Russia officially describes it as an oceanic research vessel, NATO nations and Western intelligence agencies identify it as a sophisticated spy ship equipped with autonomous submarines and advanced technology for undersea reconnaissance. It operates under Russia's Main Directorate for Deep-Sea Research (GUGI), which reports directly to the Russian Ministry of Defense. Its significance lies in its assessed mission of mapping Britain's undersea cables and pipelines to identify vulnerabilities for potential future attacks.

What was the laser 'dazzling attack' incident?

When British Royal Air Force P-8 Poseidon patrol aircraft approached the Yantar to investigate its presence in British coastal waters, the vessel's operators directed powerful lasers at the incoming aircraft in what is known as a dazzling attack. This was the first time any Russian ship had directed lasers at RAF pilots in their own coastal waters. Such attacks cause disorientation, potential loss of aircraft control, and depending on laser strength, even permanent blindness. Flight-tracking data suggested British Eurofighter aircraft may also have been targeted.

Why do Russian ships frequently pass near British waters?

Geography partially explains this frequency. Russian ships departing the Baltic Sea from ports near St. Petersburg or from the Kaliningrad exclave have limited routing options to reach the Atlantic Ocean. They must either transit the English Channel or navigate north between Scotland and the Faroe Islands while exiting the North Sea. Under international maritime law, the English Channel is defined as an international strait, even where French and British territorial waters overlap, so neither country has historically attempted to close it to Russian traffic.

What undersea infrastructure is at risk?

Britain's undersea fiber-optic cables and oil and gas pipelines are the primary assets at risk. The fiber-optic cables carry the vast majority of Britain's data and Internet connectivity to the outside world, including up to seven trillion dollars worth of financial transactions daily between the UK and America alone. The oil and gas pipelines transport energy imports from partner nations across the North Sea. Both types of infrastructure are essentially unguarded across their full lengths.

How could Russia attack Britain's undersea infrastructure?

Russia could use well-placed explosives that remain underwater for months, or deploy unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) navigating unseen toward predetermined undersea coordinates. The Yantar and similar vessels would not even need to be in the vicinity when attacks occurred. Destroying or incapacitating even a small number of fiber-optic cables could disrupt life for tens of millions of British citizens and grind communications, finance, and other critical sectors to a halt. Attacking pipelines could cause environmental catastrophe while restricting energy resources.

What has Britain done in response to these Russian naval provocations?

Britain has dispatched Royal Navy frigates and Royal Air Force P-8 Poseidon patrol aircraft to monitor the Yantar. The Royal Navy modified its rules of engagement to allow closer monitoring within Britain's exclusive economic zone. When the corvette Stoikiy and tanker Yelnya attempted to transit the English Channel, Britain intercepted and monitored them before handing responsibility to another NATO member. In early 2025, the Royal Navy took the extraordinary step of surfacing a submarine directly in front of the Yantar as a deterrent. However, the Yantar was never formally stopped, boarded, or fired upon.

Why is Britain particularly vulnerable to Russian hybrid warfare through undersea operations?

As an island nation, Britain must import critical resources by sea, including energy through undersea pipelines and data through undersea fiber-optic cables. Due to geographic distance, strong UK law enforcement and intelligence services, and the difficulty Russian operatives face blending into British society, Russia has been unable to conduct regular significant sabotage on British soil. Naval provocations and undersea operations therefore represent Moscow's most viable avenue for hybrid warfare against the United Kingdom.

What is the broader context of Russia's escalation campaign in Europe?

Since September 2024, when nearly two dozen unarmed Russian drones entered Polish airspace, Russia has transitioned into a phase of escalating provocations against European nations. These have included drone and armed aircraft incursions along NATO's eastern flank, unexplained drone overflights above sensitive military facilities and major airports, and direct acts of sabotage such as explosions on Polish railway lines. Moscow appears to be testing NATO's resolve, measuring member states' willingness to respond, and probing their capabilities for detecting and countering hybrid warfare tactics.

Sources

About the Author

Jackson Reed

Jackson Reed creates and presents analysis focused on military doctrine, strategic competition, and conflict dynamics.

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