“Warning” shots fired at a British warship by a Russian fighter jet and border guard ship. State media reported on Wednesday that according to the military, the British warship violated Russia’s borders in the Black Sea near annexed Crimea.
The Russian Navy’s Su-24 attack aircraft dropped four bombs along the path of the British Royal Navy’s HMS Defender destroyer. The state-run TASS news agency cited the Defense Ministry saying, they did it in order to “stop” it from further maneuvers after a border patrol ship fired warning shots.
The Defense Ministry was quoted saying the HMS Defender “did not respond to a warning” about the use of weapons in response to its movements.
The British destroyer left soon after the shots were fired, it said.
Earlier in June, the Royal Navy stated that HMS Defender “peeled away” from the U.K.’s carrier strike group in the Mediterranean “to carry out her own set of missions in the Black Sea.”
In comments to state-run RIA Novosti, Russian Senator Sergei Tsekov criticised the warship’s movements as a “flagrant violation of international norms.”
Crimea is still recognised as part of Ukraine by most countries.
Rob Lee, a doctoral student who follows Russian deployments at King’s College London’s war studies department stated, “[Russia has] conducted some very aggressive naval and aerial intercepts, but this would be new. And certainly a much bigger deal than normal aggressive intercepts. I’m wary of saying unprecedented, but I can’t remember this happening as long as I have been following this.”
Moscow likewise reacted politically (in its own way), first spoofing GPS signals to try and present Defender and a Dutch frigate as aggressively heading straight for the Russian Black Sea Fleet base at Sevastopol… 4/https://t.co/2oOcUPbo3G
— Mark Galeotti (@MarkGaleotti) June 23, 2021
Mark Galeotti, a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute and expert on Russian security affairs tweeted, “Moscow likewise reacted politically (in its own way), first spoofing GPS signals to try and present Defender and a Dutch frigate as aggressively heading straight for the Russian Black Sea Fleet base at Sevastopol… and now claiming — as they have in the past — to have ‘driven’ the Royal Navy away by aggressive operations.”
