The man is insistent: Our ship is in difficulty, so keep your distance, he instructs another vessel over the radio.
“Warship on your course,” he says. "I am drifting. I’m not under command.”
The broadcast, according to military officials, came from a Russian spy ship, the Kildin, as the vessel packed with intelligence-gathering equipment drifted temporarily out of control off the Syrian coast on Jan. 23, with flames and black fumes rising from its smokestack.
The Associated Press obtained audio of the broadcast, as well as video and photos showing the blaze, that three military officials said were gathered by a ship from a NATO nation operating nearby. The officials, also from a NATO country, spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity to discuss the fire and radio transmission that Russian authorities haven't publicly reported.
The audio provides an unusual peek inside Russia's fleet of spy ships that NATO nations are watching closely because of concerns that Moscow might sabotage underwater cables and pipelines amid tensions over the war in Ukraine. Even though the Kildin was in trouble, the secretive ship didn’t respond to an offer of help from the NATO vessel, the officials said.
The U.K. last month tracked another Russian vessel that it identified as a spy ship in the English Channel. The Defense Ministry said the Yantar “was caught loitering over critical undersea infrastructure" and that a Royal Navy submarine surfaced close to the ship “to warn it had been secretly monitoring its every move.”
Fire temporarily disables the ship
The 55-year-old Kildin gathers intelligence on NATO activities in the Mediterranean and had been operating near naval exercises by alliance member Turkey before the fire, according to the officials who spoke to the AP.
They said the blaze burned for at least four hours and that the Kildin’s crew removed the covers from lifeboats though they never put them to sea.
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The Kildin also hoisted two black balls from its masts — a maritime signal that the ship can no longer steer, the officials said.
They said the crew eventually regained control and that the Kildin is still stationed and gathering intelligence off the Syrian port of Tartus, accompanied by a frigate and a supply vessel. It is not clear what caused the blaze.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he wasn’t aware of a fire aboard the Kildin and didn’t say what the ship was doing at the time.
He dismissed suggestions that it reflected poorly on Russian naval readiness. “Assessing the state of the fleet based on the breakdown of one particular ship or one particular malfunction is not professional,” Peskov said.
Retired Vice Adm. Michel Olhagaray, a former head of France’s center for higher military studies, said that even though the Kildin regained steering, the fire highlights the logistical difficulties for Russia of maintaining naval forces in the Mediterranean, far from its bases in the Arctic and the Baltic Sea.
Moscow also is no longer able to use its Black Sea Fleet for Mediterranean patrols because during the Ukraine war Turkey isn’t allowing warships to pass through the Bosporus, which links the Black and Mediterranean seas.
“The maintenance of this Russian fleet, particularly in the Mediterranean, is extraordinarily complex,” Olhagaray said.
Audio captures radio exchanges
The audio gathered by the NATO ship is a 75-second radio exchange between the Kildin and a Togo-flagged cargo ship, Milla Moon, the officials said.
The AP also obtained a second recording of conversations among crew members aboard the NATO ship. In that, they can be heard identifying the exchange they’ve just monitored as being between the Kildin and a Togolese vessel. Military officials provided both recordings to the AP, which was not able to independently authenticate them.
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Ship-tracking websites that use the data vessels emit on their identity, position, speed and course show the Milla Moon lifted anchor off Tartus and started cruising northward along Syria's coast on Jan. 23. That was the day of the Kildin fire, also in waters off Tartus, the military officials said.
They said the Kildin at first identified itself to the Milla Moon as another ship, the Sky, and then asked to switch channels to continue the conversation.
After the switch, the man with accented English is then heard identifying his vessel as a warship.
“Motor vessel Milla Moon, this is warship on your course,” the voice can be heard saying on the clip. “Please hear me.”
He asks the Milla Moon to steer clear.
“I am drifting. I’m not under command," he says.
Milla Moon responds that it will plot a course away before signing off with, “You are welcome. Good watch. Goodbye.”