A secret Russian submarine mission into British waters has further exposed the parlous state of our Armed Forces, Labour was warned last night.
It emerged yesterday that the Kremlin had sent one attack sub and two spy submarines into the North Sea where they were able to observe vital undersea cables and pipelines serving the UK.
They were tracked by a Royal Navy warship and helicopters for a month before retreating, with sonar devices dropped to deter them from damaging the critical infrastructure.
But experts said the incident was yet another stark illustration of how threadbare the UK’s military has become, following the fiasco over the lack of warships in the Mediterranean when the Iran war broke out.
In another embarrassment, Vladimir Putin sent a warship to escort sanctioned Russian oil tankers through the English Channel this week.
It has prompted renewed calls for the Chancellor to immediately increase spending on the Armed Forces to 3 per cent of GDP as well as publishing the long-overdue Defence Investment Plan.
Former First Sea Lord and Labour security minister Lord West said: ‘We need to put the Russians under pressure and not take any nonsense, whatever it takes. And if they want to start a shooting match we should shoot back.
‘If Putin is going to start sending submarines into our territorial waters that is a breach of international law. Essentially Putin is already at war with us in the grey zone, using cyber warfare, and he is pushing the boundaries elsewhere.
Vladimir Putin sent a warship to escort sanctioned Russian oil tankers through the English Channel this week
Pictured: This satellite image released by the MoD is of Russian naval base Olenya in the High North, along with their spy ship Yantar and specialist GUGI submarines before they departed port for UK waters
‘The Royal Navy needs to defend our waters. We need a bigger Navy and more defence spending. Apparently Rachel Reeves is against this. We need to shift to 3 per cent of GDP immediately and to 3.5 per cent by the end of this Parliament.
‘All this jam tomorrow is no good. The threat is today. Investment is required now.’
Conservative defence spokesman James Cartlidge said: ‘This situation underlines the failure to rebuild the Royal Navy. It also remains a failure of government for the Ministry of Defence not to have published the Defence Investment Plan.’
The covert Russian submarine operation in and around British waters was revealed by Defence Secretary John Healey at a Downing Street press conference. He said he was doing so ‘to expose the continuing Russian activity that threatens us in the UK, and to highlight our constant readiness to respond’.
A Russian Akula class attack submarine was spotted entering international waters in the North Sea several weeks ago, according to the MoD. It was watched around the clock by Type 23 frigate HMS St Albans, RFA Tidespring and Merlin helicopters deployed by the Royal Navy alongside RAF P8 aircraft.
However, it was only acting as a decoy while mini-submarines from Russia’s Main Directorate of Deep Sea Research (known as GUGI) conducted ‘nefarious activity over critical undersea infrastructure elsewhere’. GUGI specialises in underwater surveillance, sabotage and reconnaissance, and its mini-subs are believed have retractable arms that allow them to cut cables or even intercept them to allow Russia to monitor data flowing thought them.
The RAF and Navy deployed floating devices known as sonobuoys to track the Russian vessels while the British frigate covered thousands of miles and the aircraft flew for more than 450 hours in a month-long operation.
The attack sub ‘retreated home’ after being identified, Mr Healey said, but the two GUGI vessels that remained were left in no doubt ‘that their attempted secret operation had been exposed’ and they too have ‘now left UK waters and headed back north’. There is no evidence they caused any damage to undersea cables or pipelines, he said, and he stressed that the activity was in the UK’s ‘wider waters’ – which stretch deep into the North Sea alongside Norway – rather than close by shore.
Defence Secretary John Healey said Russia remained the ‘primary threat to the UK and to Nato’ despite the war in Iran
Addressing President Putin directly, the Defence Secretary said: ‘We see you. We see your activity over our cables and our pipelines, and you should know that any attempt to damage them will not be tolerated and will have serious consequences.’
He added that Russia remained the ‘primary threat to the UK and to Nato’ despite the war in Iran.
‘When a crisis erupts noisily and dangerously, as it has done in the Middle East, I understand people questioning why all UK military assets and personnel have not been deployed to deal with it, but that is not in Britain’s national interest,’ he said.
He was repeatedly asked about the need to increase military spending more quickly and to publish the delayed Defence Investment Plan, but insisted that Rachel Reeves and Sir Keir Starmer were both committed to national security.
‘We’re taking the steps to rebuild the strength of our armed forces, reinforcing Britain’s security and boosting Britain’s economy and economic growth,’ he said.
And he stressed that ‘despite all eyes being on the Middle East’, the military ‘is also defending the homeland’.
In what will be seen as a veiled swipe at Donald Trump, Mr Healey said: ‘By what we’re doing, rather than by what we’re saying, we recognise that while we’ve got responsibilities that we’re discharging in the Middle East, we won’t take our eye off Nato, we won’t take our eye off defending and deterring on the northern flank, and we won’t take our eye off the Putin threat.’
The MoD also disclosed further images yesterday of Royal Navy ships monitoring other Russian vessels close to the British coast.
In one image, HMS Somerset, HMS St Albans and a Merlin helicopter tracked a Russian tanker followed closely by what appeared to be a Kremlin warship.