Vladimir Putin sent the Kazan nuclear sub past the UK earlier this month (Image: GETTY)
Vladimir Putin is “trying to rattle cages” and turn the clock back to the days of the Soviet Union, former Royal Navy Chief Lord West of Spithead has warned, after a Russian nuclear submarine was spotted off the coast of Scotland.
As reported in the Sunday Express, the 13,800-tonne sub, Kazan, passed by the UK’s nuclear naval base in Faslane without crossing into British waters.
It yesterday emerged that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was given a “secret briefing” about the incident, which occurred earlier this month.
Lord West, who served as First Sea Lord and Chief of the Naval Staff from 2002 to 2006, told Express.co.uk: “The thing is regularly the, during the Soviet times, they deployed submarines down into the Atlantic and off our coast.
“And actually, that started happening again in the last couple of years.”
READ MORE: Putin humiliated as Ukraine ‘destroys one-third of Russian Black Sea fleet’
Vladimir Putin is ‘reckless’, warned Lord West (Image: GETTY)
The specific incident was not in itself a cause for concern, Lord West emphasised, explaining: “We have a very good mechanism whereby we can detect their nuclear submarines and vaguely know where they’re going and monitor them and track them and things like that.
“They are no longer Soviet subs but it is the same issue with nuclear submarines coming down off our coast, and indeed coming down looking for our deterrent submarines but they’ve never found one and they are never going to because we have managed to track them too well.”
Nevertheless, the wider context was more concerning, Lord West acknowledged.
He said: “Putin is showing what it is that he’s about.
Russia nuclear submarine Kazan arrives in Havana (Image: Getty)
“He is already in a grey zone war with NATO, we’ve seen him doing using cyber attacks, we’ve seen other things happening and of course, we’ve had the war in Ukraine as well and I think this is just this is symbolic of all of that.
“I mean, he’s just tried to rattle cages all the time. He’s a very stupid and dangerous man, I’m afraid.”
Asked to compare the situation with the Cold War period which characterised post-World War II relations between the West, and particularly the USA, and the Soviets, Lord West said: “It’s actually a little bit a little bit further up than cold war.
“It’s cold war, but a little bit more dangerous.
Nuclear warheads factfile (Image: Express)
“I think we all should be worried that we’ve got an autocrat leading Russia who is so dangerous and doesn’t seem to like to obey the international order. That is very, very dangerous indeed.”
Asked what Putin’s objectives were, Lord West said: “I think there are a number of things.
“Obviously, he’s got his aims in Ukraine, where he wants a vassal state alongside him that won’t ever join NATO, but actually does exactly what he wants.
“He harks back to the time of the Soviet Union when it was surrounded by vassal states like this, the Baltic States, for example, and Poland, and in his mind, he thinks that was the way it should have been.
“And he also feels that the Soviet Union was a wonderful thing which fell down and they had their faces crushed into the mud sort of thing, which didn’t actually happen to them.
“But he wants Russia to be seen as one of the great nations in the world. And powerful and important. That’s why he got involved in Syria, that’s why he’s done a number of the things he’s doing.
“But actually, he’s causing real damage, I think in the long run, to Russia – but he’s very dangerous in the meantime.
Vladimir Putin may come to regret close ties with Xi Jinping’s China, said Lord West (Image: Getty)
“He wants to turn the clock to where it was with a Russia that was head of a thing called a Soviet Union, which was hugely powerful and when the only other superpower was the Americans.
“But the world has changed. The Chinese now are a superpower and he’s working with Xi Jinping, for example, because China has helped him in the war in Ukraine.
“But it’s what I’d call dancing with the devil. Because China looks at the vast areas of Siberia with all the national resources and think ‘that should belong to us’.
“They even produce maps with the names in Chinese. So he should be careful what he wishes for.”
Former Defence Committee chairman Tobias Ellwood told Express.co.uk: “I did warn that Russia would take advantage of elections in both Britain and America to provoke and test our resilience.
“And this is a perfect example of it. We must remain vigilant and not waver in robustly responding.”
Kazan was spotted by an RAF Poseidon P8 anti-submarine aircraft on June 5 after it dropped sonar buoys used to detect subsurface activity.
The submarine was expected to sail to Venezuela and Guyana, where Royal Navy patrol ship HMS Trent had been deployed recently.
A Royal Navy spokesman said: “The Royal Navy routinely monitors UK territorial waters and the adjacent sea areas to ensure compliance with maritime law, to deter malign activity and to protect our national interests.”
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