Foreign Policy: By Providing Targeting Data to the Houthis, Russia is Waging an Undeclared War on Western Shipping

The American magazine Foreign Policy said that Russia is waging an undeclared war on Western shipping, considering that providing the Houthis with targeting data represents "crossing all red lines of maritime law."

The magazine published an analysis by writer Elizabeth Braw, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, who pointed out that Russia and China benefited from Houthi attacks on shipping in the Red Sea because the militias avoided their ships. But it turns out that Moscow was more than just a passive beneficiary. As the Wall Street Journal recently reported, Russia was providing the Houthis with targeting data for their attacks.

"Now that Russia has crossed this red line of actively assisting in attacks on Western shipping, other hostile states may begin sharing military data with proxies of their choosing," the analysis, translated by Yemen Youth Net, added.

The active support of one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council for attacks on global shipping is described as a flagrant violation of maritime rules, which give commercial ships the freedom and right to sail not only on the high seas but also through other countries' waters and through internationally recognized straits without fear of, let alone experience, acts of aggression.

The Houthis, as you will recall, began their campaign against commercial shipping in the Red Sea last November, when they hit a series of ships linked to Israel, allegedly in support of the people of Gaza.

When the United States and Britain, and then the European Union, intervened to support navigation in the Red Sea by sending warships to protect commercial ships (of all nationalities), the group began attacking ships linked to these countries as well.

As such, the group continues to launch a number of attacks on ships in the Red Sea every month. Most of the time, Western naval vessels succeed in thwarting the attacks, but several merchant ships have been attacked, two of which have been sunk.

But with the exception of a Russian ship that was attacked — perhaps by mistake — last May, Russian and Chinese ships survived.

The group has had great success thanks to sophisticated missiles and drones supplied by Iran. But having high-performance weapons is of little use if they hit the wrong target, and the Houthis lack the technology to discern a ship’s coordinates. And here, as it turns out, Russia has turned out to be a very useful ally.

The Russian coordinates thus helped the Houthis continue their attacks even as Western naval vessels tried to thwart them. “The targeting covers a wide range of complexity,” says Duncan Potts, a retired vice admiral in the British Royal Navy.

Hitting a fixed target on the ground can be as easy as using information on Google Maps. At the other end, you have moving entities like ships at sea.

Hitting them requires high-quality, accurate, real-time targeting data that uses information from multiple sources. Such targeting is extremely complex even for Western navies.”

Since ships are moving, targeting data typically requires real-time information. While the details of the data provided by the Russians are not available, it is highly likely that real-time data will be included. In any case, Potts said, “This is a significant and notable development, but it doesn’t surprise me.”

The fact that Russia is providing the Houthis with specific information about the exact presence of ships in the Red Sea makes this strategic waterway even more dangerous for ships linked to the West.

“If you are a Western-linked merchant ship travelling through the Red Sea with any naval escort available, you will not indicate your location using GPS ,” says Niels Christian Wang, a retired admiral and former commander of the Danish Navy.

“This means the Houthis will have a hard time knowing which ships are coming and where they are, so this data will be very useful,” he added. (Western navies in the Red Sea escort ships regardless of their flag registration or country of ownership.)

But it’s not clear exactly what data the Russians are providing. “The Russians may help the Houthis get the right maritime picture to ensure that Russian ships are not hit, but they may also be providing data to help the Houthis hit Western targets,” Wang says.

“It's one thing to provide data to help protect your ships, but it's another thing to give them data to help them attack Western ships.”

In any case, the group’s attacks have already caused a significant drop in traffic in the Red Sea and the Suez Canal to the north. From May 2023 to this May, traffic through the Suez Canal fell by 64.3 percent, an Egyptian newspaper reported.

The number of ships passing through the canal per month decreased from 2,396 ships in May 2023 to 1,111 ships in May of this year.

Most ships bound for the West instead sail around the Cape of Good Hope, but this involves an extra 10-12 days of sailing and a 50% increase in cost.

Only a handful of Western shipping lines and insurers still dare to send their ships through the Suez Canal and the Red Sea—but Western naval vessels must remain there to provide a measure of order. In recent months, the Houthis have attacked these ships, too.

Russia’s provision of targeting data could be followed by further support for the Houthis. According to Disruptive Industries ( DI ), a British technology company specializing in closed-source global threat detection, there is extensive, unseen Russian activity in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen that has been ongoing for some time.

Sharing targeting data is tantamount to direct participation in the conflict. That’s why Western countries have refrained from sharing targeting data with Ukraine, a country defending itself against invaders. In September, Russian President Vladimir Putin weighed in on the issue.

Western approval of the use of long-range missiles provided by Western countries that could hit Russia would mean involvement in the conflict because Western military personnel would have to provide targeting data.

"It is a matter of deciding whether NATO countries are directly involved in a military conflict or not," Putin told Russian state television.

By that point, Russia had already begun sharing targeting data with the Houthis. “The Houthi attacks certainly fit into Russia’s desire to divert the world’s attention from Ukraine,” Wang said. “One almost suspects that this is part of a plot. It is in Russia’s interest for such attacks to occur.”

Now that the Kremlin has crossed this red line in the Red Sea with impunity, it may decide to share targeting data with other non-state actors. Other regimes may do the same.

Imagine, for example, a Chinese-linked militant group in Myanmar or Indonesia targeting commercial ships in nearby waters with the help of targeting data from the People’s Liberation Army Navy. Western governments, shipping companies, and others will need to pay close attention.

Currently, the ongoing attacks on Western ships pose a tremendous risk to Western-linked merchant ships in the Red Sea and Western naval vessels there to protect shipping.

The discovery that Russia is providing targeting data could persuade the few remaining Western shipping lines still sending ships through the Red Sea to abandon it (and the Suez Canal) altogether. One of the oldest modern shipping routes may be abandoned—until Russia and the Houthis are persuaded.