CHARLES KONG SOO

A Russ­ian in­tel­li­gence-gath­er­ing ship Yan­tar (Am­ber) re­cent­ly en­tered T&T wa­ters. Un­like three pre­vi­ous vis­its in 2018 by an­oth­er Russ­ian ves­sel, the Vik­tor Leonov, which docked in Point Lisas in March and near the Hy­att Re­gency Port-of-Spain, in Jan­u­ary and Feb­ru­ary, the ship was an­chored out at sea from the Port of Port-of-Spain.

The ship-track­ing site Marine­Traf­fic.com list­ed the Yan­tar ar­riv­ing at the Port-of- Spain port on No­vem­ber 8th at 4.19 pm and an­chor­ing six kilo­me­tres south-east of the Point Baleine light­house, one of the far­thest points among the ships that were an­chored far away from the pub­lic’s eyes.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed via email, Cana­di­an OS­INT (Open-source in­tel­li­gence) re­search con­sul­tant Stef­fan Watkins, who be­gan track­ing the Yan­tar af­ter the US mil­i­tary voiced con­cern about Russ­ian ac­tiv­i­ty around un­der­sea ca­bles, rais­ing fears they could at­tempt to tap in­to or sev­er the lines, to ask him what was the pur­pose of the ves­sel in T&T and it’s ca­pa­bil­i­ties.

Watkins said: “I be­lieve Yan­tar left Mur­man­sk, Rus­sia in ear­ly Oc­to­ber, and hadn’t been spot­ted (by any­one that I’m aware of yet) else­where in the At­lantic be­fore ar­riv­ing from the North East to Trinidad wa­ters on Fri­day.

“Russ­ian me­dia sources have sug­gest­ed it was mon­i­tored by NA­TO ves­sels dur­ing its tran­sit from the North­ern Fleet, in­clud­ing the guid­ed-mis­sile de­stroy­er USS Don­ald Cook, based out of Ro­ta, Spain, but there have been no state­ments from NO­RAD (The North Amer­i­can Aero­space De­fense Com­mand) or the US Navy about that yet.

“As of Fri­day night, the ship was at an­chor be­side a Pana­man­ian-flagged tanker, Lore­na B (IMO:9438212), at the Port-of- Spain an­chor­age.

“Lore­na B has been reg­u­lar­ly pro­vid­ing fu­el from Pointe-a-Pierre to many ships that stop in Port-of-Spain, from re­view­ing the past month of traf­fic.

“The an­chor­age acts as a hold­ing area be­fore com­ing in­to port, like a park­ing lot, but there’s no way for me to tell if it will en­ter port, or just leave, now that it had pre­sum­ably tak­en on fu­el.”

He said un­like Yan­tar’s pre­vi­ous trip in the North At­lantic and Arc­tic in 2016, which al­lowed it to be tracked with suf­fi­cient de­tail to iden­ti­fy sev­er­al of the ob­jects it stopped over, in­clud­ing the sunken So­vi­et Navy Mike-Class Sub­ma­rine K-278 Kom­so­mo­lets, this time the ves­sel sailed with its AIS satel­lite transpon­der off un­til just be­fore it an­chored off Trinidad, so he had been “blind” to where they had stopped along the way.

Watkins said the ship’s trip co­in­cid­ed with re­ports of a large Russ­ian Navy sub­ma­rine ex­er­cise in the At­lantic.

Asked if Trinidad was a favourable port for such ves­sels, Watkins said the Vik­tor Leonov was in Ja­maica from Feb­ru­ary 1st-4th in 2017, where it re­stocked be­fore con­duct­ing op­er­a­tions off the US east coast for about two months, but he was un­clear why Russ­ian navy ships hadn’t been fre­quent vis­i­tors since. He said Cu­ba didn’t have a lot of ex­tra pe­tro­le­um, so for fu­el at least they might be bet­ter served else­where.

Watkins said while Russ­ian ships do stop in Cu­ba, he didn’t be­lieve the coun­try had all the fa­cil­i­ties need­ed to ful­ly re­stock Yan­tar.

The 354-foot Yan­tar is of­fi­cial­ly an oceano­graph­ic re­search ves­sel, re­port­ed­ly with a crew of about 60 but al­so has sur­veil­lance equip­ment and has act­ed as the moth­er ship for manned and un­manned deep-sea sub­mersibles and mi­ni-subs.

These ves­sels are op­er­at­ed by the Russ­ian Navy Main Di­rec­torate of Un­der­wa­ter Re­search (GU­GI), the equiv­a­lent of the US Na­tion­al Un­der­wa­ter Re­con­nais­sance Of­fice (NURO), the same di­rec­torate that op­er­at­ed the Russ­ian Navy’s spe­cial pur­pose sub­marines, sus­pect­ed of con­duct­ing in­tel­li­gence col­lec­tion from un­der­sea ca­bles.

Watkins said Yan­tar’s deep-sea oceano­graph­ic re­search ca­pa­bil­i­ties en­abled it to per­form tasks re­lat­ed to re­triev­ing sunken ob­jects, like air­craft black box­es or cryp­to­graph­ic gear, or use those same ca­pa­bil­i­ties to scout for sen­sor ar­rays or mil­i­tary fi­bre op­tic ca­bles; for fu­ture sab­o­tage, or ad­di­tion­al in­tel­li­gence col­lec­tion.

This is not the ship’s first for­ay in­to the Caribbean. When it was first com­mis­sioned in 2015, the Yan­tar’s lo­ca­tion was re­port­ed near the Turks and Caicos Is­lands on Sep­tem­ber 1 and it sailed in­to the port of Willem­stad, Cu­ra­cao, on Sep­tem­ber 20 to be re­sup­plied.