LONDON: Britain warned Russia on Wednesday that it was ready to deal with any incursion into its territory after the spy ship Yantar was detected on the edge of UK waters north of Scotland.
Defense Secretary John Healey said the Russian vessel had directed lasers at pilots of surveillance aircraft monitoring its activities.
“My message to Russia and to Putin is this: We see you. We know what you’re doing. And if the Yantar travels south this week, we are ready,” Healey said during a speech in London.
The Russian embassy in a statement accused the British government of being “Russophobic” and “whipping up militaristic hysteria,” adding that Moscow has no interest in undermining the UK’s security.
Healey issued the warning as he made the case for increased defense spending a week before the government releases its new budget. While Prime Minister Keir Starmer has pledged big increases in military spending in the face of threats from Russia, China and Iran, the government is facing tough choices as it eyes tax increases and spending cuts to close a multi-billion-pound shortfall in its finances.
Healey also announced plans to build at least six new munitions factories at sites from Scotland to Wales. The government in June committed 1.5 billion pounds ($2 billion) to build the plants, which it says will create at least 1,000 jobs, drive economic growth and insure that the military has a constant supply of explosives, propellants and pyrotechnics.
British officials said the Yantar is part of the Russian navy, designed to conduct surveillance in peacetime and sabotage during times of war. Because of this, the UK and its allies track the ship and work to deter its operations whenever it approaches British territorial waters.
“It is part of a Russian fleet designed to put and hold our undersea infrastructure and those of our allies at risk,” Healey said, referencing attacks on pipelines and cables under the Baltic Sea earlier this year.
This isn’t the first time the Yantar has probed Britain’s defenses, Healey said. After a warning last year, the Yantar left UK waters for the Mediterranean. When the Russian ship later sailed through the English Channel in January, it was followed by HMS Somerset, a frigate assigned to homeland defense.
Healey said the UK must adjust to a “new era of hard power.” He cited the conflict in the Middle East, troubles between India and Pakistan and Chinese spies targeting democratic institutions in the UK, as well as the war in Ukraine.
Britain in June pledged to increase defense spending to 5 percent of gross domestic product by 2035, in line with most other NATO nations. The commitment includes 3.5 percent of GDP on core defense spending, with another 1.5 percent on infrastructure projects designed to support the nation’s defense. The UK spent about 2.3 percent of GDP on defense last year.
“This is a new era of threat. It demands a new era for defense, an era of hard power, strong allies and of sure diplomacy,’’ Healey said. “And as the threat grows, Britain must step up, and we are.”
UK warns Russia it’s ready to deal with any incursion after spy ship is spotted
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UK warns Russia it’s ready to deal with any incursion after spy ship is spotted
- “My message to Russia and to Putin is this: We see you. We know what you’re doing. And if the Yantar travels south this week, we are ready,” Healey said
- The Russian embassy in a statement accused the British government of being “Russophobic” and “whipping up militaristic hysteria“
Trump takes unconventional approach to communicating to the public about war in Iran
- The communications strategy opened Trump to criticism that he hadn’t done enough to explain the rationale and objectives of the war
Typical of an unconventional presidency, the Trump administration waited more than 48 hours to make any live, public communication to the American people about why it had decided to go to war with Iran.
President Donald Trump discussed why he launched the attack prior to a White House ceremony honoring military heroes on Monday but took no questions from reporters. Earlier in the day, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Dan Caine briefed journalists at the Pentagon.
The two days previous, Trump delivered two pretaped statements that were released on Truth Social, the social media site owned by the president’s media company, and granted telephone interviews to more than a dozen journalists — several of which produced fragmented responses that, to some, clouded as much as they cleared up.
The communications strategy opened Trump to criticism that he hadn’t done enough to explain the rationale and objectives of the war, even as the American military suffered its first casualties. By contrast, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has teamed with the US against Iran, delivered two statements the day the war began and addressed reporters Monday at the site of a missile attack that killed nine people. The Israeli military has held multiple press briefings each day.
“The American people need a commander in chief, and he has been absent in that role,” Rahm Emanuel, White House chief of staff under President Barack Obama, said on CNN Monday. Emanuel, a Democrat, is contemplating a run for the presidency in 2028.
An unconventional strategy leads to criticism
Peter Baker, chief White House correspondent for The New York Times, wrote on social media that “after Trump launched a new war on Iran, he did not rush back to the White House to make an Oval Office address to rally the nation as other presidents have done. He stayed at Mar-a-Lago to attend a glitzy political fundraiser.”
That post provoked a response from Steven Cheung, White House communications director. “Imagine being a reporter so consumed with Trump Derangement Syndrome that he wants President Trump to mimic the failed policies of the past. The truth is that President Trump spent the majority of his time monitoring the situation in a secure facility, in constant contact with world leaders, and made multiple addresses to the nation that garnered hundreds of millions of views. He also took dozens of calls with reporters.”
The calls included one with Baker’s colleague at The Times, Zolan Kanno-Youngs. Trump’s mobile phone number is known to many of the reporters who cover him, and the president often takes their calls for on-the-spot interviews. Besides The Times, he spoke in the aftermath of the attack to journalists for ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, CNBC, Fox News Channel, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Axios, Politico and an Israeli television station.
Most of the calls were brief and marginally illuminating; Politico’s Dasha Burns said Trump answered but said he was too busy to talk. The public couldn’t hear what Trump said in the interviews and was dependent upon what the journalists chose to report on the conversations.
“I spoke to President Trump today and he told me that the operation in Iran is going to go very fast,” Libby Alon, a reporter for Channel 14 News in Israel, wrote about her interview on X. “It’s doing very well, and (will) make the people of Israel very happy, and the people of the world very happy.”
The Times reported that in its six-minute chat, Trump “offered several seemingly contradictory visions of how power might be transferred to a new government — or even whether the existing Iranian power structure would run that government or be overthrown.”
In one of his two conversations with Trump, ABC News’ Jonathan Karl said when he asked about the death of Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the president said: “I got him before he got me. They tried twice. Well I got him first.” CNN’s Jake Tapper went on the air minutes after his conversation Monday, saying Trump told him “the big one is coming soon,” an apparent reference to a future attack.
Asked for comment, White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said: “President Trump is the most transparent and accessible president in American history. The American people have never had a more direct and authentic relationship with a president of the United States than they have with President Trump.”
Hegseth briefing concentrates on friendly reporters
Pentagon reporters learned late Sunday about Hegseth’s briefing. Reporters from The Associated Press, Reuters, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News Channel and Stars & Stripes were permitted into the briefing room, but Hegseth did not call on them. Instead, he took questions from NewsNation and Trump-friendly outlets like the Daily Caller, Daily Wire, One America News and the Christian Broadcasting Network. Most mainstream news outlets left their regular stations at the Pentagon last fall rather than agree to Hegseth’s rules restricting their work.
Hegseth denounced the “foolishness” of people wanting to know details of the operation in advance, such as whether Americans would commit to more than air power, and said the operation would continue as long as it took to achieve objections. He initially ignored NBC News’ Courtney Kube when she called out a question: “President Trump put a four-week time limit on it. Are you saying he’s wrong?”
Later, Hegseth denounced Kube for asking “the typical NBC sort of gotcha-type question. President Trump has all the latitude in the world to talk about how long it might take — four weeks, two weeks, six weeks, it could move up, it could move back. We’re going to execute at his command the objectives he set out to achieve.”
Unlike Pentagon briefings in past administrations, reporters were given assigned seats, with the Trump-friendly outlets seated in front. Jennifer Griffin, Hegseth’s former colleague at Fox News Channel who left the Pentagon with other reporters after not accepting his new rules, was seated in the last row.
