Fresh from a mission tracking Vladimir Putin’s shady ships, a British navy commander reminiscences about a time when UK sailors were once friendly to the Russians.
But Commander Craig Raeburn, chief of staff of NATO’s Standing Maritime Group 1, warns that the expanding nation is now the UK’s main enemy.
Speaking to The Sun aboard the NATO warship HNLMS Johan de Witt in London, Raeburn told how the crew are working around the clock to keep Britain safe from Putin’s wrath.
Anchored in the shadow of Canary Wharf is the 16,800-tonne Dutch assault ship, which has just returned from its deployment in the Baltic Sea around Western Europe.
Commanded by Dutch Commodore Arjen Warnaar with 170 crew members on board, the massive gray ship has just spent more than two months as the flagship of a task force monitoring threats.
Just hours after docking in Greenwich, The Sun was invited on board to find out more about its crucial mission to safeguard the UK and beyond.
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Equipped with a hangar, two landing sites and a star-located landing dock, both helicopters and landing craft can be dispatched quickly.
Johan de Witt also houses his own hospital room, complete with an operating table and, among its maze of corridors, control centers and sleeping quarters for intrepid crew members.
Whether reconnaissance, rescue or war, the powerful ship and its crew are ready to react.
Since Putin ordered his troops into Ukraine in 2022, the Baltic Sea has become a flashpoint of tensions between Russia and NATO, blamed by Finland and Sweden’s decision to join the alliance.
The alleged sabotage of underwater infrastructure – on which the UK’s connectivity, economy and energy security largely depends – has intensified what officials see as a “hybrid war” Moscow is waging against the West.
Since Russian territory, including St. Petersburg – home to its key naval fleet – lies at the mouth of NATO waters, the sea risks becoming a tinderbox.
Just a few months ago, the Kremlin again delimited its territorial waters in the Baltic.
The finger of blame for incidents of GPS jamming and the destruction of undersea cables and pipelines has largely been pointed at Putin.
The megalomaniac Vlad is known to use a shadow fleet: a clandestine network of hundreds of boats of dubious ownership to evade police surveillance.
The breakdown of critical undersea cables that act as digital arteries and economic lifelines late last year led NATO to create Baltic Sentry, stepping up patrols in the area.
Raeburn said: “They [Russian ships] know that they are being watched.
“We’ve reduced our reaction time to that type of activity from seven hours to about one, which means we can get any type of surveillance on a specific target or a specific malignant vessel that we want to investigate.
“We also use artificial intelligence to monitor shipping routes and monitor any type of traffic within the Baltic and Atlantic and through the English Channel.
“We look at Russian ships because if there is anyone who is going to carry out evil activities, it would be them.
“We have seen in the past that they stopped in areas close to the cables. And we have to make sure that they are not doing any intrusive activity on the underwater infrastructure.”
Thousands of kilometers of undersea cables and pipelines carrying data, internet traffic and energy across Europe lie in the Baltic Sea, and any attack could have serious global consequences.
But fleet commander Warnaar believes their presence is having the desired effect.
“We haven’t seen anything. [incidents] development [in the last half of] this year and we hope it continues to be that way,” he stated.
After the Cold War finally ended in 1991, many hoped for geopolitical change and a peace dividend.
But the threat from Russia through the Baltics and the UK is greater than ever.
Putin firmly believes the Baltic countries should return to his sphere of influence as the aging dictator frantically tries to realize his dream of reunifying the Soviet Union.
And there are fears that if the tyrant triumphs in Ukraine, he could set his sights on the region, especially after Donald Trump warned NATO to no longer take American military support for granted.
Raeburn recalls: “When the Russian Federation had just started, the USSR had collapsed and we had lost the impetus for the Cold War, everyone was relaxed.
“No one was operating in the north, very little was happening in the Baltic.
“I remember in those days, around 2005, I was in a later exercise with a Russian [destroyer]and we were all friends together.
“But now all that has changed and people have to change their way of thinking.
“Russia is definitely the biggest threat, especially when it is involved in the conflict with Ukraine.”
As tensions become palpable amid alarming drone incursions into NATO airspace, Raeburn’s team is also participating in the new Eastern Sentry to reinforce the alliance’s eastern flank.
NATO aircraft were affected when suspected Russian drones violated Polish airspace in September; Romania, Denmark, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia have also reported aircraft or drone incursions in recent weeks.
“We have repositioned a tremendous amount of NATO assets and surveillance aircraft on the eastern flank to respond to that threat,” Raeburn said.
It will be an assurance to Western nations that they fear war may one day be on the cards.
But both Raeburn and Warnaar agree: the alliance is ready no matter what.
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Warnaar said: “NATO has always been ready [for war].
“My group has been around since 1968. This is not something new. So yes, NATO is ready.”
A small naval bottleneck could be the tripwire that triggers World War III
by Harvey Geh, new foreign reporter
While heart-stopping plane crashes take place in the skies and “ghost ships” leave a trail of sabotage, a small naval stretch on NATO’s border could be the tripwire that triggers an all-out war.
Located between two European capitals, the Gulf of Finland is vital to keeping Vladimir Putin’s war machine afloat.
But experts fear that a war between Russia and NATO could break out here.
Stretching just 80 miles at its widest point, the Baltic Sea chokepoint serves as a lifeline for Putin’s “shadow fleet” operations.
These ghost ships, which regularly pass through the Gulf, have murky ownership details that are difficult to trace, making them ideal for Moscow to transport goods while avoiding sanctions.
Although the Gulf of Finland is a “small space,” it has plenty of room for global conflict, said international security expert Tom Keatinge.
He told The Sun: “It’s obviously very sensitive from a NATO perspective. There are a lot of military aircraft flying over that area… but it’s also very sensitive for the Russians.”
With the Finnish capital Helsinki to the north, the Estonian capital Tallinn to the south and Russia’s second largest city St. Petersburg to the east, tensions are rising daily in this small strip.
Russian foreign policy expert and former Georgian diplomat Natalie Sabanadze said the Gulf of Finland is a major hotbed of war.
He detailed how the region has seen countless ships evade sanctions passing through Russian oil-exporting countries, vital to keeping Putin’s war economy going.
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