UK says it foiled undersea operation as Russian sub, frigate enter British waters
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The British government announced on April 9 that it had successfully intercepted a Russian military operation near critical underwater infrastructure in UK waters.
A Russian attack submarine entered British waters with the aim to distract the country’s armed forces, the British government said.
Other vessels belonging to the Russian military’s Main Directorate of Deep Sea Research (GUGI) were found “conducting nefarious activity over critical undersea infrastructure elsewhere,” reads a press statement from the British government.
Along with allies, namely Norway, the UK government says it made known to all Russian vessels that they were being monitored, and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the government’s policy is to expose publicly all such activities.
“To Putin, I say this: we see you, we see your activity over our underwater infrastructure. You should know that any attempt to damage it will not be tolerated and would have serious consequences,” UK Defense Minister John Healey said.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha praised the UK for uncovering the latest Russian operation on social media, and called on the international community to “abandon any wishful thinking."
He said that Moscow should be “sanctioned without mercy to keep its aggressive ambitions at bay.”
In a separate incident, a Russian frigate has escorted two sanctioned tankers through the English Channel, defying Starmer’s pledge to detain vessels linked to Moscow’s shadow fleet, the Telegraph reported on April 8.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitri Peskov confirmed on April 8 that Russian warships had entered UK waters, claiming without evidence that it was a response to “incidents of piracy in international waters," the Russian news agency RBC reported.
Undersea sabotage has climbed up the political agenda across Europe with instances of damage to subsea cables and Russian vessels lurking near critical underwater infrastructure on an increasingly frequent basis since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Between 2024 and 2026, over 20 subsea cables in the Baltic and Arctic regions were damaged.
