'Russia spying on British nuclear submarines is escalation of murky underwater missions'

Russia has escalated its clandestine maritime operations across the globe - both above and below the sea. Its submarine force is probably the most secretive of Russia’s armed services and its chiefs would love to penetrate Britain’s submarine service.

At the same time ‘shadow fleet’ of ageing and innocuous-looking vessels has been used to dodge sanctions and on spying missions. That is probably why mysterious have been discovered dotted about on the sea bed of Britain’s coastline. It is believed these devices, some of which have washed up ashore, are equally secretive Vanguard-class nuclear submarines.

These are four -powered ballistic subs called HMS Vanguard, HMS Vengeance, HMS Victorious and HMS Vigilant. At any one time one of these beasts of the deep is lurking somewhere in the world beneath the waves, poised to launch the UK’s nuclear deterrent Trident missiles.

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This would be in response to an attack from Russia or any of the west’s enemies. The Trident 2-D5 missile is the ultimate guarantee of our security and that of our allies. They can be fired at targets up to 4,000 miles away, ejected from the sub’s ballistic missile tubes by high-pressure gas before igniting when they reach the surface of the water.

It is hoped that it is the presence of the strike of last resort threat would deter the Kremlin, or any other country from launching a nuclear weapon. But that domesday leverage would become virtually eroded if the Russians were able to crack the mystery of the whereabouts of the Vanguard submarine on deterrence duty. These monitoring devices could be aimed at some kind of contingency in the case of war, perhaps mapping Vanguard’s exit and entry points from the British coastline.

That is entirely possible and worrying enough. But what if they were as a precursor to some kind of action Putin was considering, like an attack on a NATO ally in eastern Europe. It could be an act of sabotage against the UK’s submarine fleet, any other Royal Navy asset, oil installations off the coast or the thousands of miles of communications cables traversing the Atlantic which link the UK and Europe to America.

Destroying these cables could cripple economies for several days, hitting financial transactions, markets and communications between industrial contacts. At least 11 communications cables have been tampered with in the past two years and Russia is prime suspect. In December last year, the Estlink 2 power cable between Finland and Estonia was damaged, along with four telecommunications cables.

Finnish authorities suspect the Cook Islands-flagged Eagle S, part of Russia’s “shadow fleet,” caused the damage by dragging its anchor. This is being investigated as potential sabotage, with a 60-mile anchor drag mark found on the seabed. In January 2025, a fiber-optic cable connecting Latvia and Sweden (Ventspils to Gotland) was damaged, prompting a Swedish sabotage investigation.

The economic and social effect of a major overt attack on the cables could be devastating and spark confusion whilst other attacks were launched. Pinpointing the whereabouts of the UK nuclear deterrent could at that exact moment be of huge importance to the Russian military, perhaps having a fleet of attack submarines in the area or prepared to attack from far away. And the monitoring devices would help Russia monitor direction of travel, speed at which the submarine travels, always looking for patterns that could be used to predict maneuvers in times of war.

How these monitoring devices were dropped off is unknown but one theory is that they were transported on any number of oligarch yachts, or by the “shadow fleet,’ or they could have been deployed by one of Russia’s clandestine submarines. This silent war in the Atlantic is being fought in the murky depths and it does not stop at dropping off monitoring devices. Amid increasing Russian spy activities in UK waters, the government is ramping up efforts to safeguard the country’s vital undersea infrastructure and seeking support from private tech firms to upgrade its undersea defences.

The UK’s new £400million project codenamed Cabot will be launched to safeguard vital undersea infrastructure. It aims to deliver two uncrewed drones as maritime guards - one being PROTEUS, a rotary-wing uncrewed air system the other is CETUS an extra-large uncrewed underwater vehicle for anti-submarine warfare and search capability in the North Atlantic.

The UK has also deployed The Royal Fleet Auxiliary ship Proteus, a deep-sea surveillance vessel tasked with countering Russian threats in domestic waters. It is the only surface ship in the UK’s arsenal capable of patrolling the deep-sea areas where Russia’s most advanced threats, such as nuclear-powered mini-submarines, could be lurking.

However, despite these developments, UK defense officials believe that more aggressive steps should be implemented, including laying sea mines around sensitive areas, a strategy not used since the Cold War. Russian submarines have often been thought to have made close incursions into British waters, as well as the warships that frequently pass through the Channel or up and down the North Sea.

They may well have been going to and from areas of interest such as off the coast of Syria in the Mediterranean but they could well have been monitoring our own reaction times. The frequent approaches towards the UK by Russian spy planes are always intercepted by RAF Typhoons from Lossiemouth or elsewhere.

And these will have provided Russian war planners with ample intelligence on UK reactions times, formations, whilst testing communications with Kremlin submarines and warships. We have been out of the Cold War for a few years now, tussling at arm’s length with Russia in theatres of war such as Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East. But there is increasing and worrying evidence that Putin is gearing up for war and is becoming less worried by the day about us knowing it.