Royal Navy ships scrambled to shadow more than 100 Russian warships in two years
The Royal Navy has stalked scores of Russian warships around the UK coast in the past two years, a Defence Minister has revealed.
Vessels from Vladimir Putin’s armed forces were tracked more than 100 times as they sailed past Britain, according to Baroness Annabel Goldie. The Conservative peer also told how Royal Navy submarines shadowed Kremlin subs in the “UK’s marine area”.
The revelation will strike fear into Moscow as submarines are supposed to be able to go undetected. Answering a written parliamentary question, Baroness Goldie told peers: “In 2021 the Royal Navy escorted 66 Russian warships through UK waters; 41 such warships were escorted in 2022. During the same period the Royal Navy also located and tracked several Russian submarines in the UK's marine area to guard against intrusion into UK sensitive waters.”
The dip in Russian vessels entering British waters last year compared with 2021 could be because Putin wanted his warships closer to Russia as war rages with Ukraine. In June, the Royal Navy ordered the £1billion, Type 45, Daring-class destroyer HMS Defender to track a Russian flotilla in the English Channel.
The Royal Navy's Type 23 frigate HMS Sutherland with one of the Steregushchiy-class warships (FRPU (E) Royal Navy)The Portsmouth-based ship shadowed the guided-missile frigate Admiral Grigorovich and two Stereguschiy II-class corvettes, Soobrazitelny and Stoikiy. RAF Typhoon fighters based at Coningsby, Lincs, and a P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft from RAF Lossiemouth in Scotland were also involved in the operation.
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HMS Defender’s Commanding Officer Commander Peter Evans said at the time: “HMS Defender is the Fleet’s quick reaction escort, which means we’re ready to respond to any threats to the nation’s safety or security. Escorting ships through UK waters is routine activity for the Royal Navy and demonstrates our commitment to the vital sea lanes upon which the UK depends.”
In recent months, the Type 23, Duke-class frigates Northumberland, Kent, Portland and Montrose, and the River-class offshore patrol vessels Severn and Mersey “have all been involved in similar operations to monitor Russian … including two Udaloy-class destroyers, Admiral Levchenko and Vice-Admiral Kulakov”, said the Royal Navy.
Former First Sea Lord Admiral Lord West told the Mirror: “I do hope we are monitoring very closely the Russian ships that are likely to interfere with our undersea cables and undersea infrastructure - power lines, oil and gas pipelines. This is a real threat and we need to be able to check all the time when one comes into our waters, we need to track where they’re going so we have an absolute handle on what’s being done and what we need to check on. We need to move with some sense of urgency on this because the damage that can be done would be catastrophic economically to our country.”
Former First Sea Lord Admiral Lord West (PA Archive/PA Images)The Mirror told this month how the “total loss of transatlantic telecommunications cables” was one of the 89 “key threats” facing the UK identified in the National Risk Register published by the Cabinet Office. Earlier this year, the Government bought a ship, later named RFA Proteus, to protect “critical national infrastructure”.
The Ministry of Defence said the 6,000-tonne, 321ft vessel “will act as a ‘mother ship’, operating remote and autonomous offboard systems for underwater surveillance and seabed warfare, vital to our national security”. The ship was previously called the Topaz Tangaroa and was used by offshore energy firms for work on oil rigs, sailing under the flag of the Marshall Islands.
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