Russian research vessel Yantar

Yantar (Янтарь) is a special purpose intelligence collection ship built for the Russian Navy. The ship has been operated by the Russian Navy's Main Directorate of Underwater Research (GUGI) since 2015 and is reportedly a spy ship. The vessel's home port is Severomorsk, where it is attached to the Northern Fleet. It is the lead ship of its class, with two sister ships. Almaz was launched in 2019 and was intended to serve with the Pacific Fleet, and Burilichev was laid down in 2021.

Design and construction
Yantar was designed by the CMDB Almaz Design Bureau in St. Petersburg, and the hull was laid down on 8 July 2010. It was launched in December 2012, and concluded its sea trials in May 2015. The ship has a length of 108 m and a full displacement of 5,736 tons. It uses diesel-electric propulsion for a top speed of approximately 15 kn. It officially has a complement of 60. The ship was built at the Yantar Shipyard in Kaliningrad.

Roles
Yantar can act as a mothership to mini-subs. The United States Navy has stated that the submersibles are able to sever cables miles beneath the ocean's surface. The submersibles are reportedly capable of operating at depths of up to 6,000 m. The submersibles are reportedly the project 16810 Rus-class submersible and the project 16811 Konsul-class submersible.

According to Alexei Burilichev, head of the Russian Defense Ministry's deepwater research department, Yantar is an oceanic research complex.

Activities
Yantar has been reported in position near undersea telecommunications cables.

In September 2015, Yantar was spotted off the coast of Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

In late October 2015, US intelligence sources reported that the vessel was inside Norwegian territorial waters for the first time, heading north along the Norwegian coast. The NJHQ stated that they were aware of the vessel and were monitoring all traffic along the coast.

Summer 2016, Yantar was anchored outside Nuuk, Greenland.

In 2017, Yantar was active in the eastern Mediterranean, near an undersea cable linking Israel to Cyprus. It was also reportedly used to recover "secret equipment" from crashed Su-33 and MiG-29 aircraft.

On 23 November 2017, upon an order of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Yantar and the specialists of the Russian Navy's 328th expedition search and rescue unit were sent to Argentina's coast to search for the Argentine submarine ARA San Juan that went missing on 15 November 2017.

In Summer 2018, she was deployed to Mediterranean off the Syrian coast.

In November 2019, Yantar visited Trinidad and Tobago.

In February 2020, Yantar was found near the Rio de Janeiro submarine cables by the Brazilian Navy. The crew evaded questions about their intentions and turned off the ship's identification systems. In late March, Yantar was anchored off the Baie de la Seine, a few weeks before the Suffren first sea trial from Cherbourg.

In August 2021, Yantar was spotted off the coast of Ireland, running parallel to AEConnect-1 and the expected route of the Celtic Norse submarine communications cable, as well as taking up a stationary position between them for most of the day. Yantar subsequently entered the English Channel in mid-September.

On 11 and 12 September 2023, while being followed by the Norwegian Coast Guard vessel NOCGV Barentshav in the Fram Strait, Yantar closely followed RV Kronprins Haakon for 16.5 hours. The Russian ship was operating without AIS and would overtly copy all of the research vessel's stops and movements, at one point closing to a distance of 200–370 metres. While the Norwegian Polar Institute characterised the incident as "harassment", and the Royal Norwegian Navy reportedly keeps a close eye on the Russian intelligence vessel, all relevant Norwegian authorities assessed that Yantar acted in accordance with international maritime law.

Almaz
A Project 22010-class sister ship Almaz (01604) was laid down at the Yantar Shipyard in Kaliningrad on 9 June 2016. The Russian state news agency TASS reported that after a technical launch in early October 2019, the vessel was intended to monitor rocket launches of the Vostochny Cosmodrome from the Pacific Ocean.

Burilichev
On 5 February 2021, the third ship of the series was reportedly laid down in the Vyborg Shipyard under the name Vice-admiral Burilichev, to honor a former head of the GUGI, Alexey Vitalyevich Burilichev, who died in November 2020 due to coronavirus.