A spy ship or reconnaissance vessel is a dedicated ship intended to gather intelligence, usually by means of sophisticated electronic eavesdropping. In a wider sense, any ship intended to gather information could be considered a spy ship.

The Yuriy Ivanov class is a type of Russian SIGINT intelligence collection ship. The ship is designed by the JSC Central Design Bureau "Iceberg". The displacement of the ship is more than 4,000 tons, the cruising range not less than 8,000 miles (13,000 km) and its armament consists of light anti-aircraft weapons. The ship on its performance characteristics and capabilities is considerably superior to similar vessels of previous generations mainly due to the versatility and high level of automation and systems integration. The vessels of this class are designed for providing communication. The first ship, Yuriy Ivanov, was laid down in 2004 and was launched on 30 September 2013. The second ship, Ivan Khurs, was launched on 16 May 2017. Russia originally planned to build at least four such ships by 2020, but this date was later pushed back to 2025.