NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has casually blasted President Vladimir Putin’s naval fleet amid reports a Kremlin submarine is currently making its way across the Mediterranean at a glacial pace. “[A] lone and broken Russian submarine limping home,” as Rutte described the vessel, known as the Novorossiysk and which has made the trip mostly at surface level, suggesting a problem with its systems. “Now, in effect, there is hardly any Russian naval presence in the Mediterranean left,” Rutte added. Commander Arlo Abrahamson, a spokesperson for the alliance’s Maritime Command, confirmed the vessel has surfaced “numerous times” since turning back off the coast of Western Europe. “Allies have been keeping a close watch on this submarine during its transit,” he added in a statement Monday, with those efforts reported to have involved around a dozen warships dispatched from six alliance countries. Russia’s naval presence in the region has faced increasing obstacles over the past few years, following the ouster of Moscow-allied Syrian president Bashar al-Assad in 2024 and a series of costly military defeats in the Black Sea amid Putin’s war in Ukraine.
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