British Royal Navy's Type 45 destroyer HMS Defender arrives at the Black Sea port of Odessa, Ukraine, on June 18.SERGEY SMOLENTSEV/Reuters
Russia said on Wednesday it had fired warning shots and dropped bombs in the path of a British warship to chase it out of waters Moscow claims in the Black Sea off the coast of the Crimea peninsula.
Britain rejected Russia’s account of the incident, saying it believed any shots fired were a preannounced Russian “gunnery exercise,” and that no bombs had been dropped. But it confirmed that its destroyer, HMS Defender, had sailed through what it described as waters belonging to Ukraine.
The ship was “conducting an innocent passage through Ukrainian territorial waters in accordance with international law,” Britain’s Ministry of Defence said in a statement.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s spokesman said, “It’s incorrect to say either that it was fired upon or that the ship was in Russian waters.”
Military experts said whether the details of the Russian or British accounts were accurate, the incident appeared to represent an escalation in confrontation between the West and Russia over disputed sea lanes.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry called the passage of the British warship through the area an act of “blatant provocation” and said it would summon the British ambassador over the incident.
Russia seized and annexed the Crimea peninsula from Ukraine in 2014 and considers areas around the peninsula’s coast to be Russian waters. Western countries deem Crimea part of Ukraine and reject Russia’s claim to the seas around it.
“Innocent passage” is an internationally recognized right for ships to sail through territorial waters of a country provided they mean no harm.
“This was done to test Russian resolve over Crimea,” Mark Gray, a maritime security specialist and a retired colonel with Britain’s Royal Marines, told Reuters.
“Russia is trying to create facts on the ground and get them respected internationally, so that their annexation is in effect rubber-stamped by the world,” he said, comparing Moscow’s Black Sea claims to those of Beijing in the South China Sea, also rejected by the West.
“Nonetheless, the Russian response is extraordinarily robust, a tad undiplomatic and way over the top.”
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