00:00What do we know about the Russian spy ship seen in European waters?
00:08A Russian vessel was pursued by British warships when it sailed through the English Channel last week.
00:14This is what the UK Defence Minister said.
00:17Let me be clear. This is a Russian spy ship used for gathering intelligence and mapping the UK's critical underwater infrastructure.
00:30The ship, known as Yanta, on paper only carries out oceanographic research, but it belongs to Moscow's Defence Ministry and Western officials believe it's mainly used for deep-sea espionage.
00:43Last week, Yanta was first detected around 83 kilometres off the British coast.
00:48We tracked her movements over the following days and found she had sailed through the English Channel before continuing towards the Kattegat Strait between Denmark and Sweden,
00:58suggesting she was heading back to base in St. Petersburg.
01:01This is not unusual. Russian ships commonly use this route to head back to their base, and the ship didn't break any international rules.
01:09But it is believed that Yanta could be mapping critical undersea infrastructure, such as communications cables and gas pipelines.
01:18These have recently been severed in suspected acts of sabotage.
01:22Yanta is well-equipped to map undersea infrastructure.
01:26It can hover over a specific location.
01:29On board, it has human-carrying submarines that can reach 6,000 metres below water.
01:34There are also deep-sea robots tethered to the ship that can deposit or retrieve objects from the seabed.
01:41Naval experts told us that the ship is well-known to European authorities,
01:45but the UK's firm response suggests governments are increasingly nervous about Yanta's operations
01:51and the potential that the intelligence it gathers could be used in the future acts of sabotage.
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