‘Cold War’ concerns about Russian ship patrolling coast
Concerns have been raised about a Russian tug, potentially carrying out a “military” role, which has been seen sailing back and forth east of Shetland.
The Nikolay Chiker has repeatedly sailed past Unst – and Saxa Vord – and down towards Fetlar, before turning and heading back up towards Unst.
The ship attracted American attention in 2014 after moving similarly off the coast of Florida during preparations for a SpaceX rocket launch.
MP Alistair Carmichael said there was “reasonable suspicion” that this tug was performing a military role for Russia.
“This behaviour is reminiscent of the Cold War and needs to be taken seriously.
“Even if only because of the development of the space port, Shetland is again going to be a strategically significant part of the UK.
“Of course, back in the Cold War days the Royal Navy would send ships to shadow this sort of thing. We simply do not have the vessels to do that now.”
The Royal Navy has not responded to an approach for comment.
Doug Holland
This is standard behavior for both superpowers. They are not the only ones who do this. Read ‘Stalking the Red Bear’ by Peter Sasgen – details the antics of Nato submarines spying on the Russian Naval bases near Murmansk ( home of their Northern Fleet ). American , and I believe British submarines, have actually entered the 12 mile limit of the then Soviet and now Russian territorial waters up there. This is nothing new for both sides. We used to spy on Russian test missile telemetry via our naval forces. A Soviet ‘spy trawler’ used to be permanently ‘based’ off the Malin Head in Northern Ireland during ‘The Troubles’ to monitor British Army communications in Ulster. Besides when NATO wants Ukraine to join Nato thus would be permanently on the border of Russia but that isn’t mentioned. Both sides do this all the time, just when we do it to the Russians we never hear about it. No cause for major concern.
Chris Overgaard
Whatever you claim, this needs to be taken very seriously. It’s not a coincidence.
Eric b
I was stationed at RAF saxa ford in the late 70’sand russian fishing boats aka Sig’s used to watch from us as we were a NATO sight 9signals unit
Mr ian Tinkler
Just mapping out the various undersea pipelines. Nord Stream-type pipeline mines on our North Sea supply infrastructure would create quite a mess.