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9:23 28.06.2025 •
British PM Starmer and war minister Healey give Zelensky new weapons to fight Russia. Everyone is delighted!
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Sensitive documents reviewed by The Grayzone indicate that the United Kingdom is the central architect behind Ukrainian military operations targeting Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. Among other explosive findings, the files reveal high-ranking British military and intelligence figures drew up detailed plans to “maximize attrition of [Moscow’s] Black Sea Fleet,” plotted to blow up the Kerch Bridge connecting Crimea to mainland Russia with fertilizer bombs, and even devised blueprints for a series of submersibles which would allow Ukrainian divers to plant mines on Russian ships and infrastructure.
Further machinations include an explicit “honey trap” plan which called for establishing a brothel secretly run by British intelligence in Crimea. There, Russian-speaking female Ukrainian agents would ply “drunken sailors” from the Russian navy for information.
The schemes were assembled by Project Alchemy, a secret British military planning cell whose existence was first exposed by The Grayzone.
Alchemy’s intelligence-aligned director, Dominic Morris, once embedded with British special forces in Afghanistan while serving as a “political officer” for the UK embassy. The first of the relevant files was sent on April 14, 2022 — the same day Ukraine achieved its most spectacular naval success of the war when it sank Russia’s flagship in the region, the Moskva.
That feat was cheered by Western media, with the New York Times heralding the ship’s destruction as a “signal triumph – a display of Ukrainian skill and Russian ineptitude.” As the previously-unpublished files show, admirers of the operation also included Project Alchemy’s Dominic Morris, who saw an opportunity to “defeat the entire Russian Black Sea Fleet” and immediately began crafting plans to sink the rest of Moscow’s warships.
The destruction of the Moskva purportedly both surprised and panicked the Biden administration, as they apparently didn’t believe Ukraine possessed missiles capable of striking such a target and, according to one mainstream report, “hadn’t intended to enable the Ukrainians to attack such a potent symbol of Russian power.” But the attack apparently convinced the White House and Pentagon to double down on their military support for Kiev – and as the documents show, it had the same effect across the pond.
The attack on the Moskva appeared to serve as a catalyst for Alchemy’s “Black Sea Operations,” which were already being assembled within a few hours of the news breaking. In a document dated the same day as the ship sank, Morris boasted that the “current situation in Ukraine gives the West an ideal opportunity to degrade Russian military capability by destroying as much Russian equipment as possible,” and went on to outline a series of multi-pronged and phased operations targeting Russia across the Black Sea. “Inflicting a high casualty rate must continue,” because “lots of dead soldiers returning to the mainland will have a big impact on public opinion” in Russia, Alchemy’s Morris declared.
Project Alchemy also proposed a joint UK-Ukrainian intelligence operation in which “female agents” were surreptitiously inserted into Russian navy “admin posts.” In phase one of the operation, Morris proposed “setting up a bar and brothel” in Crimea to “gain intelligence from drunken sailors,” and serve as a “honey trap” for military and intelligence officers. “The agents must be Russian speakers and attractive, able to manipulate, playing to the weakness of the average Russian male,” he stressed.
In the second phase, Morris proposed an “unconventional option” for blowing up Kerch Bridge, in which “a hijacked Russian flagged bulk carrier loaded with fertiliser rigged with explosives” would be parked under the Bridge and detonated. Morris “assessed this will be a significant kinetic event that will be able to blast four – six pillars on the bridge, rendering it unusable for a long period of time.” Given Kerch Bridge “was Putin’s crowning glory after taking Crimea,” he suggested its total destruction had the potential to foment a palace coup in the Kremlin.
The Kerch Bridge’s collapse, and the infiltration of spies into Crimea, would lay foundations for the third phase: the “main offensive” of seizing the peninsula. Alchemy’s previously established “honey traps” could establish covert “safe houses and weapon stores” in advance of the mission, Morris suggested. Next, “a direct attack against Sevastopol using a tanker fully laden with fuel into Strilets Bay.” This would be “in essence a fire ship creating further panic” and “sending a strong signal to the Russian Navy [that] nowhere is safe in the region.”
Finally, Morris advocated that Ukraine pursue a strategy of “containment” by seeking to “disrupt” and “capture/reflag the [Black Sea Fleet.]” The idea, the Alchemy chief explained, was “to target the Black Sea Fleet with the aim of destroying as many ships as possible,” as Moscow’s warships were “trapped with little places to hide” there. He urged the “use of civilian vessels retrofitted” with British-supplied weaponry, and proposed “ambushes using hijacked Russian ships to lure in a warship to be attacked by portable anti-ship missiles.”
While no such operation ever materialized, Sevastopol has been a consistent target of Kiev’s drone and missile blitzes throughout the conflict. In fact, the “Black Sea Operations” memo identified the Nakhimov Naval Academy in the Crimean capital as an ideal target for such attacks. The institution has been repeatedly rocked by Ukrainian strikes during this period. An incendiary strike on Kerch Bridge did come to pass in October 2022 – and as The Grayzone revealed at the time, it was almost certainly the outcome of blueprints prepared by Project Alchemy.
According to Alchemy, the sinking of more ships would “force the Russian navy farther away from the Ukraine coast or into port, opening the potential for the Ukrainian Navy to launch littoral, inshore, coastal and riverine raiding operations.” The cell noted “the exploitable sea area” was “relatively small” – “just 160 nautical miles from Odessa to Sevastopol as an example,” which was “well within the range of small assault crafts.”
Ukrainian marines and naval forces were to be equipped and trained by the British to allow for “ambushing… Russian engineer and Spetsnaz reconnaissance teams” and “harassing Russian forces in hit and run operations from the waterways.” These teams would also be charged with “[taking] out coastal radar stations,” and thus “blinding Russian forces.” As these stations were “likely to be well defended,” such attacks would “have to be well planned and hit at lightning speed to ensure success and escape,” Alchemy wrote, insisting that “agent[s] already inserted into Crimea” from mainland Russia would “provide intelligence for the naval commandos.”
A leaked Project Alchemy proposal from September 2022 outlined an elaborate scheme based on input from three unnamed British companies to target Russia’s Black Sea Fleet while harbored in Sevastopol, strike “civilian vessels” used by Russia to move troops and equipment in the Dnipro River, and carry out night-time raids on “other maritime environment [sic] being used” by Russian forces. The planned military campaign was known as “The Tauris Project.”
In Sevastopol the Black Sea Fleet could “easily be destroyed by combat swimmers delivered covertly” via crewed submersibles that allow divers to deploy underwater covertly, which are known in military parlance as Swimmer Delivery Vehicles (SDVs). As Alchemy explained, “Once the combat swimmers are in the port they can attach limpet mines to [Russian] ships and submarines before slipping silently back to Chornomorsk.”
Alchemy and its unnamed confederates thus designed an SDV “specifically for operating in the coastal area of Ukraine,” with “a superior range to reach Sevastopol from Chornomorsk.” The file suggested these vehicles could also be deployed along riverbanks to “destroy shipping and hit targets out of range of conventional weapon systems” and “provide intelligence on enemy movements.” Dubbed the Tauris 1, it purportedly boasted “state of the art” technology, and was “capable of operating surfaced or submerged.”
Even doggedly anti-Russian news outlets in Britain were forced to acknowledge the debacle, with The Telegraph lambasting the operation as a “failure” and noting that it was “not clear what the Ukrainian forces were attempting to achieve.” The suicidal raids have drawn comparisons to Kiev’s calamitous attempt to capture Krynky, which as The Grayzone revealed, was planned and directed by Project Alchemy.
In January 2025, a defense contractor and British government-funded think tank known as the Council on Geostrategy floated the idea of deploying a British naval task force to the region, to “reshape” its “geopolitics.” The Ministry of Defence then invited “industry partners from NATO, Ukraine, and Five-Eyes countries” to submit designs and plans for “the development of a versatile, fast, and low-observable maritime system designed for operations in Ukraine and beyond.”
Before the month was over, a UK minister confirmed in parliament that in an attempt “to support Ukraine,” the Ministry of Defence had developed two “new uncrewed maritime [systems]” that were “undergoing final testing,” which it dubbed ‘Snapper’ and ‘Wasp.’ The uniquely British obsession with exploiting the proxy war to obliterate Russia’s Black Sea Fleet may seem peculiar, given its relative lack of impact on the battlefield.
Project Alchemy’s files demonstrate a substantial role for the UK since the onset of the war.
…These documents leave no doubt about how Britain is engaged in subversive work against Russia in the Black Sea.
In this regard, Moscow is becoming increasingly aware that the British must be thrown out of the Black Sea, and the city of Odessa and the adjacent territories must be taken under its control in order to close the path to the Black Sea through Ukraine for British enemies.
Maybe London is missing the Oreshnik? But Oreshnik will never miss London…
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