Russia to monitor US Arctic submarine exercises: report

Russia’s navy will monitor submarine exercises by the US navy to be held under the Arctic Ocean later this month, a Russian navy spokesman told the RIA-Novosti state news agency on Thursday.

“Any activities by foreign submarines in the immediate vicinity of Russia’s maritime borders naturally require increased attention by the navy,” said the spokesman for Russia’s Pacific Fleet, based in the port of Vladivostok.

Such monitoring is especially important “considering that during the last exercises there was an incident with a British submarine,” he told RIA-Novosti, referring to a 2007 accident in the Arctic that killed two British sailors.

The comments came after the Navy Times publication reported Tuesday that two nuclear-powered attack submarines were headed to waters off Alaska to participate in Ice Exercise (ICEX) 2009.

At the previous ICEX in 2007, two British sailors were killed and a third injured in an explosion and fire caused by a malfunctioning air-purification system aboard the HMS Tireless, a hunter-killer submarine.

No British submarines are participating in this year’s exercises, the Navy Times said, identifying the two US subs as the Helena and the Annapolis.