The Morning Brew: There is a Russian spy ship patrolling off the U.S. East Coast
Friday is here, and a Russian spy ship is near.
The Russian spy ship patrolling off the U.S. East Coast
There's a Russian spy ship off the coast of Connecticut.
Members of Congress sounded the alarm Thursday that the vessel called the Viktor Leonov could be collecting information on Naval Submarine Base New London, according to CBS News.
U.S. territory extends 12 miles from the mainland, meaning the vessel is in international waters, CBS reported.
Its route would have taken it past several major Navy installations, but Michael Petersen, director of the Russian Maritime Studies Institute, doubts the ship picked up a lot of sensitive information.
“When we know that that vessel is in range, it’s highly unlikely that we’re using radio or radar waves or any other kind of electronic emissions that this vessel is capable of picking up,” Petersen said.
According to The Virginian Pilot:
The U.S. Navy conducts similar intelligence-gathering operations against Russian military targets, such as its submarine bases, from international waters.
The spy ship is the latest in a series of provocations from the Kremlin. In a freewheeling news conference Thursday, reporters asked Trump how he would respond to the developments, according to U.S. News and World Report.
"I don't want to be one of these guys that say, 'Yes, here's what we're going to do,'" Trump told the outlet. "I don't have to do that."
The questions were in response to reports that emerged this week that Russia secretly deployed two batteries of what U.S. officials call SSC-X-8 cruise missiles, one to southern Russia near Volgograd and another to an area defense officials wouldn't reveal, according to The New York Times. At the time of Trump's news conference, a Russian intelligence-gathering ship was still 30 miles off the coast of Connecticut near a U.S. submarine base but in international waters. Earlier on Thursday, the Defense Department released photos of a Russian Su-24 fighter jet buzzing the USS Porter in the Black Sea last week.
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Juliana Keeping is on the enterprise reporting team for The Oklahoman and NewsOK.com. Keeping joined the staff of The Oklahoman in 2012. Prior to that time, she worked in the Chicago media at the SouthtownStar, winning a Peter Lisagor Award... Read more ›