The Russian spy ship stalking Europe’s subsea cables
Covert operations in waters surrounding the British Isles pose a grave threat to critical infrastructure and a fresh challenge to Nato
Helen Warrell, Chris Cook and Daria Mosolova in London and David Djambazov in Sofia
© FT montage/PA/Planet Labs/CIALast November, a distinctive blue and white vessel set sail from a secluded inlet of Russia’s Kola Peninsula on a three-month voyage.
The ship, seemingly a civilian craft, sailed around Norway, down the English Channel and up into the Irish Sea, before looping southwards to the Mediterranean and east towards Suez.
But this was no pleasure cruise of Europe’s Atlantic coastline: Moscow’s military spy ship Yantar, kitted with a full armoury of surveillance equipment, was on a mission to map and potentially intercept the undersea cables on which Nato allies rely for internet access, energy, military communications and financial transactions.
Even as Moscow tests Nato’s responses with recent violations of airspace on Europe’s eastern borders, Russia’s less visible but similarly brazen undersea spying operations are causing increasing concern among European security and defence officials.
“[Yantar] is the tool Russia is using to somehow . . . keep us awake,” one senior Nato commander said earlier this year.
“She’s following cable lines and pipelines, making stops.
We are monitoring her very closely.”
Now a Financial Times investigation, which involved interviews with more than a dozen serving and former naval officers from Nato countries, independent maritime analysts and a former officer from Russia’s Northern Fleet, has uncovered fresh details about Yantar and its covert operations.
Using radar data collected by European Space Agency satellites, the FT was able to locate the spy ship hovering over critical cables in the middle of the Irish Sea in November, at a point in the voyage when the ship was seeking to hide its activities.
Yantar has also been positively identified over cables between Norway and its sovereign Svalbard archipelago — whose strategic location high in the Arctic has attracted significant Russian interest.
According to the FT’s analysis, while Yantar’s surveillance capacities were held back immediately after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 — possibly due to sanctions or fear of escalating tensions with Kyiv’s western allies — the spy ship is once again flexing its muscles.
The reporting also sheds new light on the secretive military unit that oversees the ship’s activities — Russia’s directorate of deep-sea research, known as Glavnoye Upravlenie Glubokovodnikh Issledovanii or GUGI.
Its operations are so classified that only a small group of highly trained Russian hydronauts are privy to them.
The majority of GUGI’s 50 vessels are submarines and smaller submersibles, some of which can reach depths of 6,000 metres, more than 10 times the depth of a conventional military submarine.
But it also has surface vessels, such as Yantar, which are much cheaper to operate over long distances, and can be used as platforms for submersibles and divers.
Earlier this year, Yantar’s presence in British waters elicited a rare public rebuke from UK defence secretary, John Healey, who described its loitering near critical seabed infrastructure as a sign of “growing Russian aggression” on this front.
But behind this public warning was a much wider pattern of activity: military assessments seen by the FT show that Yantar was one of several Russian naval vessels that congregated in UK waters for 13 months of sustained surveillance around nodes of critical infrastructure starting in the Autumn of 2023.
Taken together, these incidents indicate a resurgence of reconnaissance work by GUGI and Russia’s Northern Fleet as the Ukraine war settles into a long-term conflict.
“There is a perception that in 2022 and 2023, GUGI was in a crouch,” says Sidharth Kaushal, a maritime security expert at the Royal United Services Institute think-tank in London.
During this period, activity was irregular.
But as the war continued, the Russians understood where Nato allies’ thresholds were.
“By late 2023, early 2024, Moscow was becoming more accepting of risk, they were no longer pulling back assets,” Kaushal says.
Western officials believe that GUGI — which was sanctioned by the UK government this summer — is capable of conducting a full spectrum of covert operations against western adversaries.
The most likely is sabotage activity which falls in the so-called grey zone between peaceful relations and armed conflict.
But a precise map of underwater internet connections, energy pipelines and military communications cables would also be essential battlefield preparation for day one of an invasion — enabling Moscow to disrupt an enemy’s power supplies or scramble its emergency responses.
The seabed has become a widening target as global dependence on underwater infrastructure has grown: 99 per cent of the UK’s digital communications are now supplied via subsea fibre optic cables, and underwater pipelines carry three quarters of the country’s total gas supply.
Of particular sensitivity are the cables carrying data for the Integrated Undersea Surveillance System — a joint US-UK military network which monitors the movement of enemy submarines.
Yantar is equipped to drop submersibles with manipulator arms to tap military and internet cables and intercept information from them, or plant explosives to be detonated at a future date.
It is also possible that adversaries could interfere with the timing signals in underwater communication cables by altering the frequency of pulses passing through them — causing severe disruption in time-sensitive industries such as high-frequency trading.
Western naval officials told the FT that Yantar was likely to be identifying nodes between multiple cables, where disruption would have maximum impact.
GUGI’s sophisticated underwater reconnaissance capabilities pose a “significant threat” to the global underwater cable network, says Captain David Fields, the UK’s former naval attaché to Moscow.
“Russian military thinking places great emphasis on hitting early, hard and where it hurts to prevent escalation to a full-scale war.
It has invested a lot of time, money and effort in mapping the critical national infrastructure of their enemies to attack covertly or overtly,” Fields says.
“So if tensions were to dangerously accelerate, Russia could turn the lights out and turn off our energy and communications systems, undermining political will and social cohesion, thereby hoping to prevent escalation to an actual war.”
The GUGI directorate — also known as Military Unit 40056 — was first established in the midst of the cold war.
The CIA has been tracking its base in the Olenya Guba inlet, high on the Barents Sea coast, near Russia’s border with Norway, since the mid-1960s.
The bay lies less than two miles north-west of the Polyarnyy shipyard, made famous in The Hunt For Red October — a submarine spy thriller portraying the underwater “game of chess” between opposing US and Russian deep-water vessels.
Such is its secret status that GUGI operates entirely independently from the rest of Russia’s armed forces, and is answerable directly to the Ministry of Defence.
One former officer of Russia’s Northern Fleet describes the organisation as being closer operationally to the GRU — Moscow’s military intelligence agency — than to the Navy.
“In terms of the tasks they performed, they were always subordinate to the GRU,” he tells the FT, explaining that the Northern Fleet “only offered technical service” to GUGI, because it happened to be based close by.
Even GUGI’s name — the directorate of deep-sea research — is a euphemism, given that its focus is not science but espionage.
The unit is bolstered by protective security including floating dry docks, designed to hide submarines from satellite detection.
Defences around the Olenya Guba base have been strengthened in recent years: satellite photos show that a new defensive barrier was erected across the mouth of the bay to block the path of incoming vessels.
GPS jamming in the area is so intensive that even following the transit of ordinary civilian ships from Murmansk sailing north into Arctic seas past the Olenya Guba inlet is impossible, FT analysis has found.
Mobile phone use by GUGI operatives is also closely controlled.
As well as surveillance and sabotage in enemy waters, GUGI is responsible for maintaining Moscow’s network of underwater sensors, detecting foreign vessels in Russian maritime territory, and clearing up any equipment, such as sonar recording devices, that they leave behind.
GUGI personnel are, according to Kaushal, “exceptionally specialised”.
Its officers traditionally spent five years as submariners, then took a course based on Soviet cosmonaut training.
But the organisation has suffered a turbulent few years that hurt its reputation and morale.
A mysterious fire onboard its deep-diving Losharik submersible in 2019 resulted in the deaths of 14 of its most experienced personnel.
The following year, its longtime chief, Alexey Vitalyevich Burilichev, died from Covid complications, prompting an abrupt search for a successor.
Five years on, under Vladimir Grishechkin, a former submarine commander, GUGI is thriving.
Spending has continued even during the resource constraints of the Ukraine conflict, as the commissioning of new spy ships similar to Yantar has shown.
“[GUGI] has been investing heavily for many years and does not hide it,” says Pavel Luzin, an independent Russian military analyst.
He adds that the focus of the unit appears to have gradually shifted from defensive operations in support of Moscow’s submarine fleet — charting routes or installing underwater radio beacons, for example — to offensive actions, namely sabotage.
As GUGI’s role has evolved, Yantar is becoming more conspicuous.
FT satellite analysis of the pier at Olenya Guba, where Yantar docks, shows that after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the research vessel took three short voyages of just over a month each, and one slightly longer trip lasting around seven weeks.
It was not until November 2024 — over two and a half years after the start of the conflict — that the ship resumed its long tours, in this case 97 days at sea.
Before the conflict, Yantar made substantial journeys more regularly.
The most recent voyage included stops in the waters off the northern coast of Norway, where the Yantar loitered over two cables which supply data and communications to the island of Svalbard.
It then descended into the North Sea and the English Channel, before heading up to the Irish Sea.
It was here that the Yantar attracted the attention of the British military, which deployed RAF maritime patrol aircraft and warships to shadow it.
FT analysis has uncovered a clue as to why this mission caused such a strong response from the British government.
Using radar imagery collected by the European Space Agency’s satellites, the FT identified a vessel which matches the Yantar’s dimensions in the Irish Sea, and fits what is known about its journey.
The radar imagery does not allow for definitive detection but, when combined with automatic identification signals (AIS), it suggests that this vessel was stationary for several hours in a small stretch of sea containing three major cables — the CeltixConnect-2, Geo-Eirgrid and Rockabill — all of which are data connections linking Ireland with the UK.
Ireland, a non-Nato member which has historically relied on the UK and US for its defence, is particularly vulnerable to Russian sabotage; the accession of Sweden and Finland to the alliance two years ago has further increased its status as a relative outlier within Europe.
Kaushal suggests that Irish waters are “a blind spot in the defensive architecture around the UK”.
A Royal Navy veteran is more blunt.
“It would be very difficult for Russia to sever all the data flows into the UK because there are so many of them from so many directions.
It’d be a lot easier to cut Ireland off,” he says.
Without taking the risk of directly targeting Britain, a Nato member, he suggests Moscow would still have achieved a “significant economic and social hit on a close friend”.
Yantar has a history of provocations in Irish waters: it previously hovered over cables off Ireland’s Atlantic coast in August 2021, during its last substantial pre-Ukraine voyage.
While the Irish Navy said at the time that it was aware of the ship’s presence, it was not explicit about the nature of the threat.
Ireland’s defence ministry declined to comment on the more recent detection of Yantar in Irish waters.
This January, however, the UK’s Healey made clear in a statement to parliament that Yantar’s activities were not welcome.
“I want President Putin to hear this message: We see you.
We know what you are doing.
And we will not shy away from robust action to protect this country,” he said.
This statement now appears to have been about more than just the Yantar.
From October 2023 until November 2024, 11 Russian naval and non-military vessels conducted a sustained presence in Britain’s maritime area, including near Ireland, according to UK military analysis seen by the FT.
The activity during this period appears to have concluded in November 2024, after Yantar’s exploits in the Irish Sea.
The Royal Navy declined to comment on this apparent Russian operation.
But just months before it started, in the summer of 2023, Nato’s intelligence chief suggested that Moscow might be using cable sabotage to punish countries that were arming Kyiv.
“There are heightened concerns that Russia may target undersea cables and other critical infrastructure in an effort to disrupt western life, to gain leverage against those nations that are providing security to Ukraine,” the intelligence chief said.
“The Russians are more active than we have seen them in years in this domain.”
The dilemma for the UK, Ireland and allies around Europe is how to combat the threat.
The protection of cables is too critical to be left to industry — although there is increasing pressure on cable owners to invest in protective sensors on their undersea installations, which comes at a cost.
On September 19, British MPs and peers issued a scathing report on the security of undersea cables, in which they said they were “disturbed” by the scepticism they had encountered in some parts of industry and government about the need to prepare for more co-ordinated attacks in future.
They warned that, given the deteriorating security environment and the UK’s growing military role in Europe, they “could no longer rule out the possibility of UK infrastructure being targeted in a crisis”.
“We are also not confident that the UK could prevent such attacks or recover within an acceptable time period,” they concluded.
Within the British state, the sheer number of government departments overseeing cable security has fractured responsibility.
The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero is in charge of oil and gas pipelines, for example, while the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology has oversight of data and telecoms infrastructure.
The UK is not alone in this problem: Captain Niels Markussen, head of Nato’s centre for the security of critical undersea infrastructure, complained recently that six separate Danish government offices had been involved in the investigation into the 2022 explosions on the two Nord Stream pipelines which carry gas from Russia to Germany.
In Ireland, the government has made some efforts to bolster its security, most recently through a €60mn investment in underwater sonar.
The UK is consolidating its response: earlier this summer, the national security adviser gave the Royal Navy dedicated responsibility for securing undersea infrastructure.
Navy officials are now seeking funding for a new defensive ring of sensors and underwater drones, known as the “Atlantic Bastion”, to protect the cables and the UK’s Trident submarines from detection and sabotage by adversaries.
Currently, the UK and allies such as Norway deploy a rotation of warships and P-8 surveillance aircraft to monitor the “Greenland-Iceland-UK gap”, from where Russian ships and submarines enter the north Atlantic.
If they spot suspicious activity, the aircraft can drop sonar buoys to further investigate underwater activity within a defined location.
Atlantic Bastion would strengthen this patrol system with extra intelligence from uncrewed vessels both above and below the ocean, and sonar stations on the seabed.
However, the UK government has neither disclosed the total costs of this plan, nor committed to funding it.
While the proposed bastion capabilities would go a long way to improving detection, the UK should try harder to deter GUGI by confronting Moscow with evidence of its covert tactics, says one former naval officer.
Proteus — the Royal Navy’s surveillance and survey ship, which acts as Britain’s first line of defence against underwater sabotage — should drop autonomous vehicles capable of capturing video footage of Yantar’s activities and those of her sister vessels, he suggests.
This footage could either be made public or shared privately with Russia.
“That would deliver genuine deterrence,” the former officer says.
Maritime experts have repeatedly raised concerns that even if Britain builds better capabilities to detect nefarious undersea activity, it lacks the means to respond.
Due to a shortage of Type 23 anti-submarine frigates, coastal patrol boats have been deployed to shadow Russian vessels on some occasions.
The Ministry of Defence told the FT that it was “sharply focused” on the maritime security threat posed by Russia, and was harnessing new technology, including AI, to mitigate the risks.
“Alongside our Nato and Joint Expeditionary Force allies, we are strengthening our response to ensure that Russian ships cannot operate in secrecy near the UK or near Nato territory,” a spokesperson says.
“The Royal Navy maintains units at very high readiness . . . to respond to those potential threats, and take necessary steps to protect our interests.”
Some have suggested that deep-water capabilities tended to be overlooked in the early 2000s, when the armed forces were consumed by counterterrorism operations in the Middle East.
When questioned by MPs and Peers on whether the UK was “behind the curve” on protecting subsea infrastructure, Captain Markussen said in many European nations the danger had only been recognised more recently.
“We have not realised or focused on how important this has grown to be over time; we have simply forgotten that,” he said.
“For a long time we have been fighting distant wars and [maritime] security has been put to the back of our mind.”
GUGI, by contrast, has continued to hone its capabilities and to invest in resources to sharpen its aim.
Earlier this month Gwyn Jenkins, Britain’s First Sea Lord, made a rare reference to the unit while cementing ties with Norwegian naval allies.
Admitting in an interview with The Sun that he had seen evidence of the secretive military unit “regenerating” its capabilities, he noted cryptically that it had been “quiet for a while”.
His conclusion did not lack clarity.
“It appears,” he warned, “to be coming back.”
Additional reporting by Jude Webber in Dublin. Cartography by Aditi Bhandari
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