Photo:LPhot Dan Rosenbaum
London, 6 April – An invisible war is raging in the cold and dark waters around the British Isles. A war of cables, signals and silent threats. As The Telegraph has revealed, Russian spy devices have been discovered under the North Atlantic waters, hidden near critical infrastructure – presumably to monitor British nuclear submarines.
This is not Cold War fiction. Over the course of three months, the journalists collected information from more than a dozen former defence ministers, senior armed forces officials and independent experts. Their conclusion: Moscow has been conducting underwater espionage since at least 2020.
The enemy is in the depths
The first suspicions arose when unmanned devices were found near the submarine cables, washed ashore by the sea. Others were allegedly spotted by Her Majesty’s Navy. These devices are suspected to be designed to collect intelligence on four Vanguard-class submarines carrying nuclear weapons. One of them is constantly at sea, guaranteeing Britain’s nuclear deterrent.
“There is already a war raging in the Atlantic,” a senior British military official told journalists. According to him, Russian activity is “phenomenal”.
Superyacht spies and the suspicious Yantar
The newspaper also reports that before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, British intelligence already had evidence that Russian billionaires were using their superyachts for covert underwater reconnaissance. And the Yantar, known for its work for Russia’s Main Directorate of Deep Sea Research, was spotted in dangerous proximity to the British coast.
Its mission is suspiciously similar to preparations for sabotage against Western infrastructure.
The sea in the crosshairs
Over the past 15 months, at least 11 internet cables have been damaged in the Baltic Sea – and Western intelligence has no doubt that this is part of a hybrid war in which Russia seeks not only to strike but also to remain invisible.
The Telegraph reminds us: “Russia is the only country in the world with a fleet of specialised submarines for seabed warfare. And some of them, sources say, are superior to those of Britain and even its NATO allies.
The world continues to watch the surface headlines, while the real battle – silent, cold, technical – is already going on deep beneath the waves.
