A Russian spy ship was on the edge of United Kingdom waters, British defense officials said.

John Healey, the U.K.’s defense secretary, said it was the second time the ship, the Yantar, had been deployed to U.K. waters, SKY News reported. 

“This is a vessel designed for gathering intelligence and mapping our undersea cables,” he said during a news conference. “We deployed a Royal Navy frigate and RAF planes to monitor and track this vessel’s every move, during which the Yantar directed lasers at our pilots.”

US SCRAMBLES FIGHTER JETS TO TRACK 4TH RUSSIAN SPY PLANE NEAR ALASKA IN LESS THAN WEEK

Healey warned Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying, “We see you, we know what you’re doing and if the Yantar travels south this week, we are ready.”

The U.K. plans to build a number of factories to make munitions and military explosives. The first one is expected to break ground next year. 

NATO SCRAMBLES WARPLANES AS RUSSIA HITS NEAR ROMANIAN BORDER IN UKRAINE

Healey issued his warning after a report by the Commons Defence Committee, which said the U.K. “lacks a plan for defending the homeland and overseas territories” and urged the government to launch a “coordinated effort to communicate with the public on the level of threat we face,” the news outlet reported. 

The Yantar isn’t just part of a naval operation but part of Moscow’s Main Directorate of Deep-Sea Research, or GUGI, which primarily works in surveillance in peacetime and sabotage during conflicts. 

“That is why we’ve been determined. Whenever the Yantar comes into British wider waters, we track it, we deter it, and we say to Putin, ‘We are ready, and we do that alongside allies,’” said Healey. 

Arms sales by Italian companies to Ukraine have reached a total of just over €643 million since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.

That’s a figure outlined in the Annual Report on Authorised Transit, Import and Export of Armaments which was submitted to parliament in spring. The document is a legal requirement, essential to ensure transparency on what for some is a particularly delicate economic activity.

According to the report, export authorisations to Ukraine grew significantly between 2022 and 2023, from just €3.8 million covering four authorisations to more than €417 million for 15 authorisations.

That value then dropped to just over €222 million in 2024 for just seven authorisations.

The report doesn’t specifiy which companies applied to export arms to Ukraine, nor is it known whether the transactions were actually carried out, although it is assumed that a large part of these sales actually went through.

Therefore, the report doesn’t help shine a light on which Italian manufacturers exported armaments to Ukraine.

However, it is known that the main players in the sector in Italy are RWM, Rehinmetall Italia and Leonardo. Euronews tried to contact Leonardo, asking if it was possible to find out if and what armaments had been sold to Ukraine, but there was no immediate answer.

Which kinda of weapons have been sold by Italian companies?

What is indicated in the report, however, is the type of armaments that have been exported.

In 2023, the €417 million of exports to Ukraine covered seven different categories: weapon systems above 12.7mm calibre, ammunition, fire direction equipment, land vehicles, toxic, chemical, biological, tear gas, radioactive materials, explosives and military fuels and finally electronic equipment.

As far as 2024 is concerned, the list is restricted to the first four categories.

However, these are not the only Italian arms that have reached Ukrainian territory. Those in the report to parliament are in fact only sales by Italian companies to Ukraine.

They do not, therefore, include military aid that has been granted as part of the aid packages prepared by the European Union, the next of which, the twelfth, is scheduled for early December.

‘Little transparency on the part of Italy’

“On this part, which is not covered by the report law 185/90, there has been little transparency on the part of Italy. Unlike what other European nations have decided,our country has in fact preferred not to provide any information about what has actually been supplied by our armed forces,” said Francesco Vignarca, spokesperson and activist of the Italian Network for Peace and Disarmament.

The information available is generally coming from the battlefield, based on what was actually seen at the Russian-Ukrainian front.

“It is difficult to estimate quantities and figures because many of these sales are secret,” said Eleaonora Tafuro Ambrosetti of the Ispi Institute for International Policy Studies.

“Between 2023 and 2024,” she adds, “Italy would have supplied Ukraine with Samp-T air defence batteries.”

Information kept secret so as not to give Russia an advantage

In comments to Euroenews, the press office of the Italian Defence Ministry confirmed that the “content” of Italian supplies as part of the packages to Kyiv is deliberately kept secret.

“Both Minister (Guido) Crosetto and his predecessor chose the same line, designed not to provide a technical advantage to Russia regarding what is on the battlefield. Only Copasir (the Parliamentary Committee for the Security of the Republic) is aware of this, but it too is required to maintain secrecy,” the ministry said.

It is even more difficult to quantify the value of what has been granted from the Italian armed forces’ arsenal.

“The mechanism envisaged by the European Union worked like this: each country that granted arms received a payment back from the EU itself, through the European Peace Facility fund. After a short time, however, it was clarified by Brussels that these funds would not be such as to allow the stocks to be replenished,” Francesco Vignarca of the Italian Network for Peace and Disarmament said.

This means that if a country sent more or less outdated equipment and vehicles to Ukraine and then wanted to buy new ones, it had to pay the difference between what it received from the EU and the purchase price.

This was stated by Defence Minister Guido Crosetto in a hearing before the joint Defence and Foreign Affairs Committees of the House and Senate. Even on this, however, no official figures were provided.

Italy contributed to the European Peace Facility

The Milex Observatory on Italian Military Expenditure indicated that “the only case ‘in the clear’ is that of artillery munitions.”

This accounts for €14.5 million that Article 33 of the Labour Decree of 2023 allocated to Agenzia Industrie Difesato “reinforce (munition) production to continue to respond to supplies to the Ukrainian armed forces without depleting national reserves.”

For the rest, as noted on several occasions by the Senate Budget Service and the Court of Auditors, there is little clarity as to how the disposals to Kyiv affect defence planning on the acquisition of armaments and related ammunitions.

Then there is the fact that Italy has granted €1.4 billion to the European Peace Facility**,** out of the total of €11.1 billion it has collected so far for Ukraine.

In the absence of precise data on how much the same fund has granted to Italy for the weapon systems it has sent, it is in short difficult to understand what the real cost of military support for Ukraine has been.

An estimate published in March 2023 by Milex, based on accessible sources, put the outlay for stockpile replenishment alone at around €1 billion.

ANKARA/KYIV, Nov 19 (Reuters) – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy held talks with Turkey’s president on Wednesday and was due to meet U.S. Army officials in Kyiv on Thursday, as word emerged that Washington was discussing possible peace conditions with Russia.

A senior Ukrainian official told Reuters that Kyiv had received “signals” about a set of U.S. proposals to end the war that Washington has discussed with Russia. Ukraine has had no role in preparing the proposals, the source said.

Sign up here.

Signs of a renewed U.S.-led push to end the war triggered the biggest jump in Ukraine’s government bond prices in months on Wednesday.

Efforts to revive peace negotiations appear to be gaining momentum although Moscow has shown no sign of changing its terms for ending the war.

UKRAINE’S TOP PRIORITY IS ENDING WAR

Zelenskiy has remained focused on the war effort and said on Tuesday he was preparing to “reinvigorate negotiations” and discuss with Erdogan how to bring a “just peace” to Ukraine.

“Doing everything possible to bring the end of the war closer is Ukraine’s top priority,” he said on Tuesday.

Russian forces control about 19% of Ukrainian territory and are grinding forwards, while carrying out frequent attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure as winter approaches.

Turkey, a NATO member that has remained close to both sides, hosted an initial round of peace talks in the early weeks of the war in 2022, the only such talks until this year when U.S. President Donald Trump launched a new bid to end the fighting.

The Kremlin said Russian representatives would not be involved in the talks but that President Vladimir Putin was open to conversations with the United States and Turkey about the results of the discussions.

Asked about the report, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday: “So far there are no innovations on this that can be reported to you.”

PUTIN’S CONDITIONS

Putin has long demanded Kyiv renounce plans to join the U.S.-led NATO military alliance and withdraw its troops from four provinces Moscow claims as part of Russia. Moscow has given no indication that it has dropped any of those demands and Ukraine says it will not accept them.

A U.S. delegation led by Army Secretary Dan Driscoll is in Kyiv on a “fact-finding mission”, the U.S. embassy in Kyiv said. Army Chief of Staff General Randy George is also in the delegation and he and Driscoll will meet Zelenskiy on Thursday, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters.

A Turkish source said U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff could also visit Turkey, but there was no announcement of such a visit from U.S. officials. Another source, at the Turkish Foreign Ministry, said Turkish officials would meet only Zelenskiy, and Witkoff was not expected to be part of the Ankara meetings.

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