Name: Russian spy ship on edge of UK waters, defence secretary says | BBC News
Uploaded: 2025-11-19T17:04:03.000Z
Duration: 3 min 45 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

The UK Defense Secretary issued that press conference from Downing Street.

He said that a Russian spy ship called the Yantar was operating on the edge of UK waters north of Scotland.

Past perfect

And he added that it had directed lasers at pilots of surveillance aircraft monitoring its activities.

Our political correspondent Ben Wright joins us live now.

Not the first time that the Yantar has been around in UK waters.

But just talk us through what we've learned today.

Yes, it was a fairly stark statement at the top of his press conference, a press conference billed as being a moment to talk about how Britain is building up its defense industry in response to a more dangerous world, in response to threats from Russia.

And to illustrate that there was an update from John Healey on the movements of this Russian spy ship, the Yantar, which is familiar to the Ministry of Defense.

He said, though, that what's different this time is that this ship, which is sort of going in and out of British waters just north of Scotland, did, for the first time, I think it was about two weeks ago, sort of used laser beams to distract the British surveillance planes, maritime surveillance planes, planes that had been tracking this ship.

And that's the first time that has happened.

And that is what John Healey was calling out this morning.

He said the message to Russia is that we see you, we know what you're doing, and

if the Yantar travels south this week, we are ready, he said.

Now, back in January, the Yantar, I think, was moving through or at least skirting British waters.

And at that point, the Ministry of Defense used a submarine that had been tracking it, a hunter submarine, to surface just in front of it, to sort of send a clear signal of deterrence, to tell it to back off.

And that's what they did back at the beginning of the year.

And potentially that is the sort of action that could be taken if this ship continues to sort of pester and fringe and enter British waters.

But it's part of a much bigger pattern, of course, of Russian incursions and aggressive action.

In the last few years, just this year, we've seen, of course, planes sort of skirting European airspace.

We've seen all sorts of cyber attacks from Russia, all against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine, of course.

And this is John Healey saying, look, we have to be ready for further Russian action.

We have to be able to build up a defence capability in the UK that can withstand it.

So by and exactly by being ready, just talk us through how that possibly could look.

We had the big Strategic Defense review earlier this year.

The government, for instance, has put forward a billion and a half to sort of seed the buildings of new munitions factories which he was talking about today.

And he's outlining where the locations of these new armaments factories might be.

The government's opening or the UK is opening two new drone factories this week.

There is a lot going on and that's what John Healey was saying.

He was also trying to frame this new defense posture that Britain has as as an economic opportunity to bringing jobs to former industrial heartlands right across the UK that he thinks will create jobs and opportunity.

But the threat, he has been quite clear, is that it is real, it is growing, and

And there is a question mark over our preparedness in a Defence Select Committee report that was published today that said, really on the home front, the UK public governments right across Whitehall are not yet ready for what this could mean in the coming years.