Admiral Nicolas Vaujour, Chief of Staff of the French Navy, has warned that the Russian military presence off the coast of France is constant. “Every week approximately one Russian ship or submarine passes by our coasts”he stated during an interview on the nightly news of France 2.
Invited to the ’20 Heures’ program on the occasion of the four years since the beginning of the conflict in , Vaujour took stock of the maritime front. As he explained, Moscow has suffered significant naval setbacks since 2022. Among them, the loss of the cruiser Moskva in the Black Sea and the reduction of its room for maneuver in strategic areas such as Sevastopol or the Baltic.
In his opinion, what happens in It does not only concern kyiv: it directly affects European security. In the maritime sphere, he maintained, Russia “has lost a lot at sea,” although it maintains sustained and visible activity near French waters.
Frequent meetings and deterrence maneuvers
The head of the Navy — who commands 41,000 sailors — described almost permanent contact with Russian units. In the Baltic Sea, he said, attitudes are especially tense, with air and naval maneuvers considered “unacceptable“.
The french answer It goes through a clear demonstration of presence: interceptions, tracking of submarines and close maneuvers to mark boundaries. When they consider that a ship is approaching too close, they make deterrent movements and demand that it move away.
In the Atlantic, he acknowledged, the situation is more complex: submarines are not always clearly detectable. “That’s just the tip of the iceberg,” came to explain, alluding to a less visible dimension of the confrontation.
The “hybrid war” under water
Beyond the visible vessels, Vaujour pointed to covert actions difficult to formally attribute: drones flying over allied territories, damaged submarine cables or oil tankers that drag anchors for kilometers, affecting critical infrastructure. Operations that, according to what he indicated, seek to destabilize without leaving a direct trace.
The “ghost” fleet and sanctions
Another front is the economic. The admiral referred to the call made up of around a thousand ships that would try to evade European sanctions on Russian oil. As he explained, the objective is to weaken the business model of the shipowners who collaborate with this system, thus hindering their financial viability. In this sense, France, he assured, works together with other state agencies and in coordination with allies to reinforce this fence.
