Iceland tracking Russian spy ship that monitored NATO drills off its coast
Icelandic authorities say they have spent more than a week tracking a Russian intelligence vessel that shadowed NATO exercises in the waters east of the country, working in close coordination with allies to keep eyes on the ship.
The vessel, the Yuri Ivanov, is described by officials as a combined spy and warship. It monitored the alliance’s Dynamic Mongoose exercise, a regular anti-submarine drill held east of Iceland and closer to Norway, in the days before the end of May, according to Jónas G. Allansson, director of the defence office at Iceland’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs.
Allansson said it was not unusual for Russian ships and aircraft to observe NATO exercises wherever they take place. The Yuri Ivanov had been sailing around the drill, which ended just before the turn of the month, and has been tracked ever since.
“There has been an eye on this ship for at least a week, if not longer,” he said in an interview with Icelandic public broadcaster RÚV.
The vessel was either trying to gather intelligence on the exercise and on communications between NATO member states, or to relay information to other Russian ships, officials said. Allansson said the ship’s likely aim was to intercept and better understand what the allies were doing during the large drill, though it could also have been communicating with other Russian vessels.
The monitoring has relied on a mix of submarine-hunting aircraft, ships and planes, and on information sharing among allies about the vessel’s location and activity. On June 6, an aircraft flew out to the ship to confirm its position and photograph it and the Icelandic Coast Guard released images taken during a surveillance patrol the same day.
Iceland, a founding member of NATO, has no standing military of its own and relies on the alliance and the Icelandic Coast Guard for surveillance of its surrounding waters, a stretch of the North Atlantic that sits along key routes between Russian naval bases and the open ocean.
