UK vows to ‘take on Russian spy ship’ after laser attack on RAF jet | UK | News
Britain has fired a chilling warning shot at Russia by threatening military action against future attacks by a suspected spy ship caught trying to blind RAF pilots with lasers off the coast of Scotland.
Defense Secretary John Healey pulled no punches when announcing the Royal Navy would tear up its “rules of engagement” to deal tough with the Yantar after the ship was found to be threatening British waters earlier this month, The Telegraph reported.
At a bombshell Downing Street press conference, Healey revealed the ship had brazenly fired beams at the RAF P-8 Poseidon submarine hunter sent to track its movements – an action he described as “extremely dangerous”.
The angry Minister of Defense warned Russia and Vladimir Putin, saying: “We see you, we know what you are doing and we are ready if Yantar goes south this week.”
He sternly warned that Britain had “military options ready should Yantar change course.”
Royal Navy will become more aggressive
Stepping up Britain’s military intervention, Healey promised that British warships would now shadow Yantar more closely and aggressively, approaching a distance understood to be about the length of a football field.
This marks Yantar’s second brazen entry into UK waters this year; defense chiefs are convinced the ship is using its sensor array to spy on critical undersea infrastructure.
MPs are pushing for an even tougher line, with a senior defense official saying it would be “inconceivable” for British ships to open fire on Yantar unless it did something “very, very aggressive”.
Call for ‘more assertive retaliation’
Matt Western, chairman of the National Security Strategy committee, insisted “there is more we can do” and warned that “a more assertive retaliation may be required.”
Russia mocked Healey’s “provocative statements” and its London embassy described the “endless accusations and suspicions of the British leadership” as “simply ridiculous”.
Moscow claimed that the Yantar was an “oceanographic research vessel” operating in “international waters” and denied that it undermined the security of the United Kingdom; instead he blamed Britain’s “course of Russophobia and the escalation of militarist hysteria” for “creating the preconditions for new dangerous situations”.
Yantar ‘designed for surveillance and sabotage’
But Healey was adamant that Yantar was “part of a Russian fleet designed to compromise and hold our submarine infrastructure and the infrastructure of our allies” operating under the “Main Directorate of Deep Sea Research, or GUGI”.
He said the program was “designed to have capabilities for surveillance in peacetime and sabotage during conflict.”
Vowing Britain “will not tolerate a threat to the British people’s essential connections under water”, he highlighted the UK’s readiness to lead allies in responding to attacks on critical infrastructure.
The standoff comes as tensions between Britain and Russia over the war in Ukraine are at boiling point and Yantar is the Kremlin’s latest attempt to test the West’s resolve.
