Russian President Vladimir Putin’s forces dramatically escalated their shadow war against NATO on Wednesday, with the U.K. warning “military options” were on the table after a spy ship blinded air force pilots with lasers.
The Russian spy ship Yandar was spotted lurking off the coast of Scotland, prompting a military response, Defense Secretary John Healey said.
When British Royal Air Force jets were deployed to monitor the ship and move it on its way, the Yantar crew responded by flashing lasers at the aircraft, either to “interfere with the pilots, or let us know they see us watching,” a military source told The Times.
The incident was met with fury by the British government, which announced they were changing the naval rules of engagement in response to the incursion.
Healy warned, “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.”
The Yantar, an intelligence-gathering vessel designed to scrape data on undersea cables, is part of the Russian naval fleet.
Healey said its appearance in British waters should be seen as a military action. The ship was previously spotted off the coast of Hawaii in October, which prompted a response from the U.S. Coast Guard.
“This is the first time we’ve had this action from Yantar directed against the British RAF. We take it extremely seriously,” Healey said.
“I have changed the navy’s rules of engagement so that we can follow more closely, monitor more closely, the activities of the Yantar when it’s in our wider waters.”
The incident comes after the Trump administration’s dramatic announcement on Tuesday night that it had been secretly working with Russia on a comprehensive 28-point peace plan for Ukraine, developed without Kyiv’s knowledge or input.
The plan, cobbled together by Trump envoy Steve Witkoff after three days of talks with Russian negotiator Kirill Dmitriev, includes plans for peace in “Ukraine, security guarantees, security in Europe, and future U.S. relations with Russia and Ukraine,” Axios reports.
It is not yet clear how the plan will resolve any of the long-running territorial disputes in eastern Ukraine. Still, Dmitriev said he is more optimistic about the current plan as, unlike in previous talks, “we feel the Russian position is really being heard.”
The Ukrainian government is still in the dark about the contents of the deal, with Volodymyr Zelensky telling reporters in Turkey on Wednesday that he has only “positions and signals” from the U.S. at this time.
So desperate is the administration for Ukraine to accept the peace plan that the White House even announced it was sending Army Secretary Jamie Driscoll and a team of four-star generals directly to Kyiv this week for unscheduled talks aimed at pressuring them to accept.
“What we are going to present [to Ukraine] is reasonable,” a White House official told Politico, who said they plan to make Zelenskyy an offer he cannot refuse.
“We don’t really care about the Europeans,” the official added, showing no interest in de-escalating Russia’s shadow war with NATO. “It’s about Ukraine accepting.”
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