Royal Navy Shadows Russian Warships for Three Days
Royal Navy Shadows Russian Warships for Three Days
The News
Three Royal Navy ships and a helicopter tracked four Russian vessels for 72 hours as they moved through the North Sea and the English Channel last week, the Navy said Saturday.
Two of the ships being watched were sanctioned cargo vessels — part of what Western officials call Russia's "shadow fleet," the aging tankers and freighters Moscow uses to move oil around sanctions and pay for its war in Ukraine.
The Russian group was escorted by a destroyer and a frigate, an unusually heavy guard for commercial traffic.
Timeline
The Russian task group moves south from the North Sea, through the English Channel and toward the Strait of Dover.
a Type 45 destroyer — along with the Type 23 frigate HMS St Albans and HMS Severn, plus a Navy helicopter, use radar and aerial surveillance to monitor the four ships.
The Russian navy sends the frigate Neustrashimy to guard the two sanctioned cargo ships. The destroyer Admiral Levchenko is also tracked.
A NATO ally takes over monitoring duties off Ushant, at the western end of the Channel. The Navy did not name the country.
Royal Marines board the shadow-fleet tanker Smyrtos — the first such boarding by UK forces.
The BBC, The Guardian and The Sun report details of the three-day operation.
Reactions
First Sea Lord Gen. Sir Gwyn Jenkins said shadow fleet vessels pose "an unacceptable risk" to maritime security and the environment.
Jenkins said the increased attention is already forcing the vessels to change routes, adding cost and delay to Russia's oil trade.
The Navy says its monitoring of Russian movements around the UK is up 25% so far this year.
What's Next
The unnamed NATO ally that picked up the shadowing off Ushant has not said what, if anything, it did next.
Britain has sanctioned more than 500 shadow-fleet ships, and the open question is whether tighter surveillance pushes Russian shipping onto longer routes — or provokes a sharper response from Moscow.
More
Why Americans should care: the shadow fleet is the plumbing of Russia's war economy. Every barrel that slips past sanctions is revenue Washington and its allies spent three years trying to choke off — and the ships doing it are now sailing under armed naval escort through NATO's busiest waterway.
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