Why are Russian warships in the English Channel?

0:02Jane Kelvey:Sky News, the full story first.

0:10Jane Kelvey:A Russian warship taking pot shots at two pensioners sailing the English Channel tells us a lot about our ability to defend against Vladimir Putin. This is why.

0:24Jane Kelvey:As the day wraps up, get the scoop on what's been happening with Here's the Scoop, a new podcast from NBC News with me, your host, Yasmin Vasugian. We'll take a deep dive into the day's top stories with NBC News' trusted journalists. It's a fresh take that's sharp, thoughtful, and it's informative, bringing you closer to the headlines and conversations that are shaping our world. From the front page to the zeitgeist, Here's the Scoop from NBC News. Listen daily wherever you get your podcasts.

0:56Jane Kelvey:Do you remember the last time you crossed the Channel app? Maybe you and the kids were on your way to a campsite for your holidays. Maybe you were even on a bit of a booze cruise. But I imagine the furthest thing from your mind would have been getting shot at by a Russian warship. Except that's exactly what happened to Alan and Jane Kelvey, a retired couple from Buckinghamshire. They were sailing to France on their yacht Bright Future, a name which, for a few tense moments, must have felt wildly optimistic. The Russians say they only fired warning shots as the boat was at risk of colliding with theirs, the Admiral Grigorovitch.

1:32Jane Kelvey:Alan and Jane say they weren't. The Ministry of Defence is downplaying the incident, but this is serious, significant and says a lot about our ability to defend ourselves. Professor Michael Clarke is Sky's security analyst. Michael, always good to see you. Look, I'm worried that we perhaps are just become a little bit sanguine about what is going on around the United Kingdom. Simply put, what on earth is a Russian warship doing a handful of miles off the coast of the Isle of Wight?

2:05Alan Kelvey:Well, it's been a handful of miles off the coast of Suffolk for several weeks. It sits by the wind farm off Suffolk. We're talking about the Admiral Gregorovich, which is a very powerful frigate. It was part of the Black Sea Fleet. I think at one time it was the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet. So it's a modern frigate, and it has been escorting dark fleet tankers, you know, illegal tankers carrying Russian illegal oil to markets around the world, up and down the channel. And it's been resupplied at least once, sitting off the Suffolk coast. The Navy is tracking all of this, but it tracks it with what it's got available.

2:37Alan Kelvey:So HMS Tyne, which is an offshore patrol vessel, that tracked it. And then as it came down to the Isle of Wight, it was tracked by HMS Mersey, which is, again, an offshore patrol vessel. And those are just really Coast Guard cutters. They're not much more than that, but they track it. And so the Grigorovich has been hanging around for a long time. It's up to no good in the sense that it's escorting illegal ships backwards and forwards. It's trying to act as a deterrent against the Navy, our Navy or anyone else's Navy, the French Navy or the Dutch Navy, intervening to seize one of these tankers.

3:08Alan Kelvey:Now, last Sunday, the Navy did what it's been claiming it would do since March and it seized a tanker, the Smerios. And the Smerios was taken into Weymouth, right, near the Isle of Wight. So the Gregorovitch is not normally seen in these waters. So it's sitting not too far off the Isle of Wight. So I think that Gregorovich was there to have a look at what was going on. That's my guess. It's not normally in that part of the British Isles. But in answer to your basic question, why is a Russian frigate hanging around? It's been doing it for a long time.

3:38Jane Kelvey:Is this a provocation? Are the Russians essentially on the wind-up? Because legally, they're allowed to be where they are, aren't they?

3:44Alan Kelvey:They're in international waters, yeah. They stay in international waters. I mean, you'd expect them to do that. And they have a right to be there, just as if we sent frigates or, for that matter, of submarines or anything else up into the Bering Sea off the Kola Peninsula, as long as they stay in international waters, they have a right to be there as well. But that doesn't necessarily mean it's not provocative. No, it can be provocative. And in this case, it's provocative, not because the Gregorovich is going to fire on, you know, coastal sort of towns the way the Germans did in 1914. It's provocative because the Russians are determined to run shadow fleet tankers up and down in and out of the channel.

4:17Alan Kelvey:And you could say, well, why don't they go the long way around? Because they come through the channel because it's quicker. It's shorter. It's another 500 miles. And some of these tankers are rust buckets, these Shadow Fleet tankers. If they have to go into the deep Atlantic to avoid British seizure, then some of them will not do very well in sort of high Atlantic swells. So they much prefer to come through the channel. And as long as we let them, which we were doing until last Sunday, they'll do it. The action that the Ministry of Defence took on, so I know the British government took, in seizing this Shadow Fleet tanker It did have an immediate effect because at least five or six other Shadow Fleet tankers were on their way down the North Sea.

4:55Alan Kelvey:They were coming through the same route. They all turned away. And they presumably are now on the long way around. So it's part of a bigger game which has gone one notch up since Sunday. And that's, in my view, is why the Grigorovich was where it was. And then this incident is, it's something of nothing. But your question is exactly right. What was it doing sitting off the Isle of Wight?

5:17Jane Kelvey:Let's talk about exactly what happened to Anne and Jane Kelvey from Buckinghamshire. I mean, this is one of the most British stories I've ever heard of. On their yacht, sailing off to France and they encounter a Russian frigate. What do we know was going on?

5:31Alan Kelvey:All right, so it was a misty day, which is OK. They were on their 40-foot yacht. They're obviously experienced sailors. They say that they were 500 metres away from the Grigorović. The Grigorović said they were getting close and they were on a collision course. They say they weren't on a collision course. And the Grigorovich said a number of slightly odd things. One is that they said they had a steering problem and they were drifting, that this frigate was drifting. And they were worried that this yacht was on a collision course with them, which the yacht denies. Let's be honest about it.

6:02Jane Kelvey:The Grigorovich versus this 40-foot pleasure yacht. I mean, I know which one's going to come off the worst in a collision.

6:08Alan Kelvey:Oh, I mean, the Grigorovich is about 3 ,500, 4 ,000 tonnes. Right. And a 40-foot pleasure yacht is, I don't know, 5 tonnes, 6 tonnes maximum. So if it hit the side of the Grigorovich, it might sort of damage the paintwork, but no more. It would scratch it, but that's all it would do. But the Grigorovich then said, they said, we radioed them and they didn't get response. I don't believe that for reasons I'll come to. Then they said, we put up flares and got no response. Now, if they put up flares, then other boats would have seen them. Nobody seems to have seen them. Even given the mist? Well, there's plenty of boats around there.

6:42Alan Kelvey:It seems odd to me if they put up flares that they weren't reported by somebody else. Then they said that they sounded their klaxon twice, five times each, which the boat did here, the pleasure craft did here. And then they started taking rifle shots in the air or in front of the boat. And again, rifle shots is a strange thing to do. If you want to put shots across somebody's bow, you'd use a machine gun because it's unmistakable. Machine gun. I mean, four or five rifle shots can just sound like a bit of a crack. As it happens, the couple in the yacht did identify them as rifle shots and they veered away.

7:16Alan Kelvey:And then the other thing about this is that 500 yards is quite a distance if you talk about sailing boats. I mean, two warships at 500 yards, you know, going at 15 knots, that's quite something. But, I mean, a sailing boat is going to go at seven or eight knots. And a sailing boat can turn on a sixpence. The Royal Navy asks mariners to keep 250 yards away, not 500. And that 250 yards is regarded as safe. so the Russians were overreacting to a boat that didn't think it was doing anything strange.

7:46Jane Kelvey:We've mentioned the fact that this Russian boat appears to have been adrift. I mean, shouldn't they have told someone about that?

7:55Alan Kelvey:Yes, the first thing they should have done, this is my question since yesterday, was what happened to Channel 16? In maritime affairs, Channel 16 is always kept open, right? So you only go into Channel 16 for functional reasons. So you might sort of call up Marina Weymouth, Marina Weymouth, and Marina Weymouth will come on board and say, Channel 8 and then switch to Channel 8 and then you have the conversation you want to have with Marine and Weymouth. If anybody starts having a chat on Channel 16, then the Coast Guard will cut in and say, get off, because Channel 16 is the open channel for functional conversations as to where else to go to talk or a mayday of something of some sort.

8:29Alan Kelvey:And the Coast Guard will monitor this. So there must have been some chatter going on. The Russians say they tried to radio them. Now, the logical thing, they would have tried to contact them on Channel 16 to say, you're on a collision course, change course. The Coast Guard would have heard that, either the French Coast Guard or the British Coast Guard. There must be some chatter there somewhere if the Russians did what they said they'd do. And if the Gregorovich was drifting, if they'd had a steering problem, then they should have been on Channel 16 to the Coast Guard to say we have an engine problem.

8:56Alan Kelvey:And then the Coast Guard would have informed everybody, we've got a Russian frigate drifting off the Isle of Wight. Be careful.

9:02Jane Kelvey:There's no reason that the Russians would not do that by merit of the fact that they are a military rather than a civilian ship.

9:08Alan Kelvey:They shouldn't make any difference because, you know, maritime law applies or civilian maritime law applies to warships as well as civilian ships, certainly in all situations outside war, which thankfully we still are. But the Russians, you know, they usually they do ignore normal conventions on air routes. They travel with their transponders off. They behave as if they're not going to bother with the regulations. And that's obviously what I think that's what the Grigorović was doing. and you know that's what that is what they do but then they claim that they did everything according to maritime practice which they didn't and it is it is absolutely not part of maritime

9:45Jane Kelvey:protocol to fire warning shots yeah that was the bit i was going to ask you about you know firing a couple of guns into the air doesn't sound to me desperately worrying no only the

9:55Alan Kelvey:couple on the yacht said it was a bit it's a bit scary and curious and they thought they obviously thought oh we better turn away then in case this is so british so we'll go somewhere else then dear. So don't worry about it. So I mean, that's why the whole the whole incident was curious. But I think the Russians overreacted. If they were drifting, if they thought this yacht was bothering them, or if they thought maybe there's journalists on the yacht or that somebody was coming to nose around, because they were drifting, then they overreacted. And they didn't follow, in my view, they certainly didn't follow the protocols that you would have expected them to.

10:29Jane Kelvey:The Prime Minister has said that this was reckless, not sinister. I mean, brass tacks here, Michael. Do you believe the account that we have been given of what happened? Is this retaliation by the Russians for what we did to their shadow tanker fleet?

10:44Alan Kelvey:No, I mean, genuinely, I think, I believe the MOD on this one, or the Prime Minister on this one, I think it was reckless and foolish. Somebody on the Grigorovich panicked. I don't think there was much thought behind it. And the more I thought about it, the more I thought, if this thing was drifting, I mean, you know, it's a big ship. to have drifting in a crowded waterway. They might have been quite alarmed and then they might have over-interpreted the idea that there was a sailboat 500 metres away but not on a collision course. But it comes at a time when there are much bigger, genuine issues on the maritime security of Britain, which the Russians are challenging, undoubtedly.

11:17Jane Kelvey:You know, rewind perhaps a year, two years, three years. And would a Russian ship, in similar circumstances, have deployed even small arms fire against what was clearly a British pleasure cruiser?

11:28Alan Kelvey:No, I don't think so. I mean, that's the point. Things are more delicate now. There is a rise in tension since the Ukrainian war and since the Shadow Fleet really got into gear, as it were. I mean, nobody's entirely sure how many ships there are in the Shadow Fleet, but it goes from something like 400 to 1 ,200, according to what day you measure it, because some ships are legal and then they go illegal for a couple of voyages, then they go legal again, and they're always changing their registrations and changing their owners. And basically, they're run by a lot of ship owners in Russia and China and the UAE.

12:03Alan Kelvey:And it's those ship owners who keep playing games with the registrations, which was easier to do three or four years ago, much harder to do now. Because AI and the use of AI by the Coast Guards and the maritime agencies is able now to track people through all these changes of ownership and changes of registration. And so it's much more difficult now to disguise what a ship is actually doing.

12:26Jane Kelvey:OK, so looking back into the history books, have we ever seen something like this before? I mean, have the Russians taken pot shots at British civvy vessels in the past?

12:35Alan Kelvey:Oh, I was thinking about this last night. When was the last time the Russians might have fired at British vessels in British waters? 1904. OK, so a while ago then. A while ago. It's a wee while back. The Russo-Japanese War, the Dogger Bank incident, when a Russian fleet was on its way around the world to take on the Japanese fleet, and when they got off the Dogger Bank, they came across a British fishing fleet and thought it was Japanese, so fired on it. I mean, what they thought the Japanese were doing off the Dogger Bank is anyone's guess. But they fired on it, and it was a big incident at the time, the Dogger Bank incident, October 1904.

13:08Alan Kelvey:Yeah, and we talked about going to war with Russia over it. We didn't, but it was one of those crazy things. And then the Russian fleet went all the way around the world, and then Japanese completely beat them at the Battle of Tsushima, destroyed them totally.

13:28Jane Kelvey:As the day wraps up, get the scoop on what's been happening with Here's the Scoop, a new podcast from NBC News with me, your host, Gassman Vasugian. We'll take a deep dive into the day's top stories with NBC News' trusted journalists. It's a fresh take that's sharp, thoughtful, and it's informative, bringing you closer to the headlines and conversations that are shaping our world. From the front page to the zeitgeist, Here's the Scoop from NBC News. Listen daily wherever you get your podcasts.

14:07Jane Kelvey:OK, so the Kremlin are downplaying this. The Ministry of Defence and the Prime Minister are downplaying this. Alan and Jane are downplaying this quite, quite brilliantly. But it is still a significant incident. And even if this were not a direct retaliation for what took place in terms of that member of the shadow oil tanker fleet, it is of a piece with the sort of thing that the Russians might well do or are actually doing. I mean, we've been hearing just this week from the former MI6 chief, Sir Richard Moore, saying that Russia is deliberately expanding the battlefield to Britain. I mean, this, whilst maybe not an example of it, could well have been an example of it.

14:46Alan Kelvey:Yeah, I mean, I think this incident is a something or nothing incident in itself. But it comes at a time of heightened tension and it shows the recklessness of Russian behaviour and the fact that they are prepared to put a major frigate pretty close to Britain's shores on a long-term basis because of what they're doing in relation to the Shadow Fleet and just general attempts, I think, to intimidate Britain and to show that they will use force if necessary. which is why if Britain repeats last Sunday's operation and goes for another Shadow Fleet tanker, the next one will be harder and the one after that will be harder because the Russians will make an incident of it and they'll threaten some sort of shooting incident.

15:27Alan Kelvey:And the only way to prevent that is you've got to overwhelm them at the point of contact. You've got to overface them at whatever the point of contact is. So we need, you know, two Type 23 frigates or a Type 23 and a Type 45 destroyer and ideally an attack submarine as well and all the helicopters. We've got to be able to get round the Gregorovic, if that's what it is, and say, don't even think about it, pal. You know, we've got two frigates, you know, zeroed in on you. So we are taking this tanker, this illegal tanker, and we're towing it into Weymouth. Leave it alone. In order to do this peacefully, you've got to be able to overmatch them at the point of contact.

16:01Alan Kelvey:At the moment, there's no sign that we could really do that.

16:04Jane Kelvey:That was going to be my question. I mean, can we right now? And if we can't, what have we learned through the firing of small arms in the direction of a 40-foot yacht about the state of the UK's readiness to defend itself at sea?