LONDON (AP) \u2014 British and Norwegian militaries led a weekslong operation to deter Russian submarines suspected of \u201cmalign activity\u201d in the North Atlantic, the U.K. military said Thursday.<\/p>\n
Defense Secretary John Healey said a frigate, planes and hundreds of personnel monitored a Russian attack sub and two spy submarines near undersea infrastructure north of the U.K. He said the Russian vessels eventually left after the operation that lasted more than a month.<\/p>\n
Healey said his message to Russia was \u201cwe see your activity over our cables and our pipelines and you should know that any attempt to damage them will not be tolerated and will have serious consequences.\u201d<\/p>\n
Representatives of Norway\u2019s defense and foreign ministries, as well as the armed forces, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n
British officials have tried to keep Russia in the international spotlight even as the world\u2019s attention is focused on conflict in the Middle East. They have also stressed the overlap between conflicts there and in Ukraine, saying Russia has supplied Iran with drone parts and other support.<\/p>\n
Healey told a news conference that \u201cPutin would want us to be distracted by the Middle East,\u201d but Russia is the main threat to the U.K. and its allies.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will not take our eyes off Putin,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
In late March, the U.K. said its military was ready to seize ships suspected to be part of Russia\u2019s \u201cshadow fleet\u201d of vessels shipping oil in violation of international sanctions over Moscow\u2019s war on Ukraine. Previously, Britain had only helped France and the U.S. monitor ships before they were boarded.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are ready to take action\u201d against the vessels, Healey said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON (AP) \u2014 British and Norwegian militaries led a weekslong operation to deter Russian submarines suspected of \u201cmalign…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10245,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3570,13,44,4960,4959,1237,4961,6,3396,1625,46],"class_list":{"0":"post-10244","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-britain","8":"tag-ap-top-news","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-general-news","11":"tag-john-healey","12":"tag-military-and-defense","13":"tag-norway","14":"tag-norway-government","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-united-kingdom-government","17":"tag-vladimir-putin","18":"tag-world-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116374583803285994","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10244\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}