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 As the previously-unpublished files show, admirers of the operation also included Project Alchemy’s Dominic Morris, who saw an opportunity to “defeat the entire Russian Black Sea Fleet” and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.
In response to an April 23, 2022 brief authored by a fellow cell member on the importance of Western powers supporting Ukrainian “land” operations, Morris declared “the sinking of Moskva” meant Kiev should focus predominantly on “maritime” operations instead. After complaining that “apart from a little bit of moving tanks and planes around a peaceful Europe,” NATO was “not doing any fighting,” Morris wrote that he saw a chance for the UK to eliminate every Russian vessel in the region without even going to war.
“You could defeat the entire Russian Black Sea Fleet” with “subthreshold options,” he wrote, referring to gray zone tactics which the British military has officially defined as “all activity up to, but not crossing, the legal definition of armed conflict.” Morris specifically proposed “commando raids” as “a fab subthreshold activity that will scare the shit out of” Russian President Vladimir Putin.
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.
In a secret memo one month later, Alchemy leader Dominic Morris stated approvingly that the “attack on Kerch” had “hurt” the Russians. Noting that a relatively high-ranking Russian politician was personally dispatched to oversee the Bridge’s reconstruction, Morris claimed this underlined the attack’s political significance to the Kremlin, and added: “It is not an easy repair, they need to replace road [sic] in each direction (ie the one that wasn’t hit) and bad weather is slowing them.”
On April 16, just two days after the Moskva went under, Alchemy’s plans had already morphed into a “CONOPS” – military jargon which the US Department of Defense defines as a “statement that clearly and concisely expresses what the joint force commander intends to accomplish and how it will be done using available resources.” The document, which is entitled “Building Ukraine [sic] Maritime Raiding Capability” and closely matches a secret British presentation previously exposed by The Grayzone, describes the Moskva’s sinking as “a significant blow to Russian naval capability” that left the rest of the Black Sea Fleet “vulnerable to missile attack.”
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.”
The battle plans specifically called for Ukrainian commandos to “Hunt and destroy any Russian patrol craft operating in Dniprovska Gulf and conduct beach reconnaissance from Kilburn [sic] Spit to Yahorlyk Bay to identify good landing locations for a larger assault force for a future counter attack.”
The Kinburn spit, a narrow sandbar which comprises the far western end of the Crimean peninsula, has been a frequent target of Ukrainian raids since Russia’s seizure of the territory.
In the document, Alchemy suggested “specialist training for chosen men” who spoke Russian to carry out “covert undercover missions.” They would also receive training in the use of small arms, sabotage “to disrupt civil installations such as electrical substations, railways, cyber, hacking skills, locksmith training, advanced unarmed combat,” and how “to identify high ranking military officers for assignation while off duty in Crimea.”
Ukraine trained in planting limpet mines
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.”
The document noted that Russia’s Navy “need to refuel and reprovision in-between deployments,” and Sevastopol “is the primary port” for this purpose. According to Alchemy, Sevastopol was the one place Moscow’s Kilo Class submarines were “vulnerable to attack,” because in other areas the crafts were “able to operate with impunity as Ukraine does not possess the subsurface capability to counter the threat.”
In Sevastopol, however, 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.”
The Tauris 1 would reportedly transport “one pilot and navigator plus four combat swimmers to remote locations on covert missions to include, surveillance, infiltration, mine clearance & mine laying,” with a system “designed to be fast when operating on the surface” – at up to 30 knots – and “ultra-quiet when submerged…with a very low radar signature when operating sub-surface at snorkeling depth.” Meanwhile, it could be parked on sea and riverbeds, or automatically surfaced via “a coded ping sequence.”
“We believe that the SDVs will give the Ukrainian Navy a huge advantage in disrupting, destroying key [Russian] assets and wider forces deployed in the south,” the document bragged. It foresaw 24 – 48 Ukrainian Marines and naval personnel being trained over “an eight-week course in a secret location in the UK,” overseen by a technical team and instructors comprising “former SDV pilots and navigators who served in the UK Special Forces community.” This would include “tactical training and limpet mine training.”
Britain exploits Ukraine for Black Sea control
The document predicted it would take a year to construct the Tauris 1 SDVs, at an eye-popping price of £6 – 8 million per vehicle. While there is no evidence that Kiev took Alchemy and its partners up on the proposition, there have been numerous examples of kamikaze Ukrainian commando raids on Russian-held territory, often using jet skis. In addition to the Kinburn Spit, the Tendra Spit, which sits 20 kilometers to its south, has also been a repeat target.
A typically ill-fated raid which took place on February 28, 2024 saw five Ukrainian assault boats immediately come under intensive Russian fire as they approached the Tendra Spit, leaving dozens dead and just one watercraft able to escape the scene.
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.
Elsewhere, British-backed attacks on Russia’s forces in the Black Sea have been more successful. In March 2024, following a series of well-publicized sinkings of Russian warships, the UK’s then-Defence Minister Grant Shapps boasted that drones and missiles supplied by London had helped Kiev “lay waste to nearly 30 per cent” of the Russian Navy stationed there. On top of weaponry, it’s likely the Ukrainian strikes relied heavily on targeting intelligence provided by Britain’s RC-135 spy planes, which ramped up surveillance of Russia assets in Black Sea following the proxy war’s outbreak.
Today, London remains determined to neutralize Russia’s presence in the Black Sea. 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.
However, the true motivation was clearly spelled out in a March 2022 Council on Geostrategy report, which declared that the hostilities in Ukraine meant London’s “stake in the Black Sea region has been elevated.” The paper detailed how control of the region was essential for Britain’s intended “tilt” to the Indo-Pacific, which was laid out in the official July 2021 “integrated review” of UK security and defense strategy. As the Council on Geostrategy explained, “any power controlling the Black Sea would be able to exert significant pressure on the key maritime communication lines from Europe to the Indo-Pacific.”
This February, a spate of explosions was reported on tankers in the Mediterranean which had recently stopped at Russian ports. Italian investigators suspect Kiev was responsible for carrying out at least one of these incidents using limpet mines — the same weapon they were trained to use by British intelligence.
Three years after the Moskva’s sinking, Russia still maintains several naval assets in the Black Sea. However, its fleet is unable to leave the confines of Moscow-controlled waters in the east. Just how much responsibility Britain bears for this feat remains unclear, but Project Alchemy’s files demonstrate a substantial role for the UK since the onset of the war.
