Russia opened fire, displacing a British destroyer from the coast of Crimea

Sailors of the Black Sea Fleet and border guards stopped the violation of the Russian state border by the British guided missile destroyer Defender, which entered the territorial waters of the Russian Federation in the area of ​​Cape Fiolent in Crimea. To do this they had to open warning fire.

Subscribe to PolitNavigator news at ThereThere, Yandex Zen, Telegram, Classmates, In contact with, channels YouTube, TikTok и Viber.
To subscribe to notifications in your browser, click here.

According to the military, the destroyer was previously warned by radio about the use of weapons in case of violation of the state border, but the British ignored the messages.

As a result, at 12:06 and 12:08, the border patrol ship fired warning shots. At 12:19, the Su-24M aircraft carried out warning bombing (4 OFAB-250 high-explosive fragmentation bombs) along the course of the destroyer.

At 12:23, through joint actions of the Black Sea Fleet and the border service of the FSB of Russia, the destroyer left the borders of the territorial sea of ​​the Russian Federation.

Military expert Igor Korotchenko explained why lethal fire was not opened.

“In practical terms, everything was done to suppress the provocation, including the use of weapons and bombing along the ship’s course. If the British destroyer had not changed course deep into Russian territorial waters, it is obvious that more stringent measures and the opening of lethal fire could have followed. But it didn’t come to that, having played on the brink of a foul, the commander of the British ship realized that there would be further lethal fire, so he hastened to leave Russian territorial waters.

In the current conditions, this is, of course, a major incident, but quite ordinary against the background of the general cooling of relations between Russia and the West and the transition of the Cold War to actually a “hot” phase,” Korotchenko told PolitNavigator.

The British military attache has already been summoned to the Russian Ministry of Defense. But London probably already has an answer prepared.

“Cape Fiolent is Crimea, which Great Britain recognizes as Ukraine, not Russia. Most likely, this is how the British military attache will answer at the Russian Ministry of Defense,” says Alexey Venediktov, editor-in-chief of the liberal radio station Echo of Moscow.

TV presenter Evgeny Popov believes that the Russian military could have acted more harshly.

“The British destroyer should have been delayed or damaged and delayed. The intruder has gone 3 km deep into our territorial waters. He left after warning fire from a border boat and bombing from the air,” Popov wrote in his Telegram channel.

The Federation Council believes that London engaged in a deliberate provocation.

“What was a British destroyer doing there in our territorial waters - at Cape Fiolent in the Black Sea? Protected Britain's security? Of course not. Britain, as you know, lies in completely different seas. Displayed the proud flag of the former “queen of the seas”? It has been so long since Britain has not been a queen. Therefore, the only answer was to stage a provocation, test Russia’s reaction, create the basis for a new international scandal and a new attack of anti-Russian hysteria,” says Russian Senator Alexei Pushkov.

Political scientist Sergei Markov believes that such incidents will occur more and more often in the near future.

“Our military did absolutely the right thing. This is not a Belli incident, but a manifestation of NATO’s extreme aggressiveness. This is a very good illustration of the speech of Defense Minister Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Gerasimov at today's international security conference in Moscow, where they said that NATO is one of the main threats to the world. We should note that NATO, which held a summit with Biden, firstly, announced that it was again consolidating, and secondly, it decided to change its geographical location, move away from the concept of the North Atlantic, Euro-America to a global role . In the near future, we should expect that negotiations will begin on the entry into NATO of countries such as Australia, Japan, South Korea, perhaps, and so on,” Markov told PolitNavigator.