FRESH off a mission tracking Vladimir Putin’s shady ships, a British navy commander reminisces about a time when UK sailors were once friendly with the Russians.
But Commander Craig Raeburn – Standing Nato Maritime Group 1’s chief of staff – warns the sprawling nation is now the UK’s top foe.
Speaking to The Sun on board Nato warship HNLMS Johan de Witt in London, Raeburn told how the crew work around the clock the keep Britain safe from Putin‘s wrath.
Anchored in the shadow of Canary Wharf is the 16,800-tonne Dutch assault vessel, having just returned from deployment in the Baltic Sea around Western Europe.
Commanded by Dutch Commodore Arjen Warnaar with 170 crew members on board, the hulking grey ship has just spent more than two months as the flagship of a task force keeping tabs on 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.
Kitted out with a hangar, two landing spots and a stern-located landing well-dock, both helicopters and landing craft can be quickly dispatched.
Johan de Witt also houses its own hospital ward, complete with an operating table, and – among its maze of hallways – control centres and bedrooms for intrepid crew members.
Whether it’s reconnaissance, rescue or warfare, the mighty ship and its crew are ready to react.
Since Putin ordered his troops into Ukraine in 2022, the Baltic Sea has become a flashpoint for tensions between Russia and Nato – charged by Finland and Sweden’s decision to join the alliance.
Just months ago, the Kremlin redrew its territorial waters in the Baltic.
The finger of blame for GPS jamming incidents and destruction of underwater cables and pipelines has largely been pointed in Putin’s direction.
Megalomaniac Vlad is known to use a shadow fleet – a clandestine network of hundreds of vessels with dubious ownership to evade policing.
Severing of critical undersea cables that act as digital arteries and economic lifelines late last year prompted Nato to create Baltic Sentry – ramping up patrol of the area.
Raeburn said: “They [Russian ships] know they’re getting watched.
“We’ve reduced our reaction time to that kind of activity from seven hours to about one – meaning we can get any kind of surveillance on a specific target or a specific malign vessel that we want to investigate.
“We also use artificial intelligence to monitor shipping lanes and monitor any kind of traffic within the Baltic and the Atlantic and through the English Channel.
“We watch Russian vessels because if there’s anyone who’s going to conduct malign activity, it would be them.
“We have seen in the past where they’ve stopped in areas, they’ve stopped in the vicinity of cables. And we have to make sure they’re not conducting any intrusive activity on the underwater infrastructure.”
Thousands of kilometres of undersea cables and pipelines that carry data, internet traffic and energy across Europe lie in the Baltic Sea – and any attack could have grave consequences globally.
But the fleet’s commander Warnaar believes their presence is having the desired affect.
“We haven’t seen any [incidents] developing [in the last half of] this year, and we hope to keep it that way,” he said.
After the Cold War finally finished in 1991, many hoped there would be a geopolitical shift and a peace dividend.
But the threat from Russia across the Baltics and to the UK looms larger than ever.
Putin firmly believes the Baltics should be back in his sphere of influence as the aging dictator frantically attempts to live out his dream of reuniting 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 not to take US military support for granted anymore.
Raeburn recalled: “When the Russian Federation had just started, the USSR had collapsed and we’d lost the impetus for the Cold War, everyone was relaxed.
“No one was operating up in the high north, very little was going on in the Baltic.
“I remember back in those days, in about 2005, I was on a post exercise with a Russian [destroyer], and we were all friends together.
“But now that’s all changed and people have to change their mindset.
“Russia is definitely the biggest threat, especially when they’re involved in the conflict with Ukraine.”
As tensions become palpable amid alarming drone incursions of Nato airspace, Raeburn’s team is also involved in the new Eastern Sentry to bolster the alliance’s eastern flank.
Nato aircraft were scrambled when alleged Russian drones violated Poland’s airspace in September – with Romania, Denmark, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia have also reporting incursions by jets or drones in recent weeks.
“We’ve repositioned a huge amount of Nato surveillance assets and aircraft onto the eastern flank to react to that threat,” Raeburn said.
It will come as a reassurance to Western nations that fear war could one day be on the cards.
But both Raeburn and Warnaar are in agreement – the alliance is ready come what may.
