MOSCOW, June 25. Spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova is certain that the actions of the British destroyer that sailed into the Russian territorial waters could not have been greenlighted without the US approval.
She pointed out that the press services of the White House and the Pentagon had recommended reporters to ask London about the warship incident in the Black Sea.
“Why so? The ship was still in the northwest part of the Black Sea waters in preparations for the Sea Breeze drills held under the US command. American experts note that special ops unit of the US, the UK and Ukraine were engaged in trainings aboard the ship at the time of the incident. In these conditions, it is impossible that the ‘peaceful passage’ of the British destroyer was not agreed with the ‘big brother’,” she wrote on her Telegram channel on Thursday.
On Wednesday, the Russian Defense Ministry announced that the Russian Black Sea Fleet together with the Federal Security Service Border Control prevented the UK’s HMS Defender destroyer from violating Russian borders near Cape Fiolent in Crimea. The destroyer had travelled three kilometers deep into the Russian territorial waters when it was warned about the possible use of force but did not respond. A border guard ship fired warning shots, while an SU-24M bomber was forces to drop warning bombs ahead of the destroyer before the ship turned back and left the Russian waters. The Russian Defense Ministry qualified the British ship’s actions as a crude violation of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and urged London to investigate the actions of the destroyer’s crew.
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