Two Russian warships have been intercepted by the Royal Navy in the English Channel in the past two weeks.
The two ships in question are Russian corvette RFN Stoikiy and tanker Yelnya tanker.
Stoikiy was last seen in May, sailing through the English Chanell to meet two merchant ships headed to the Baltic Sea — Sparta IV and General Skobeley.
Both sailed west through the Dover Strait into the English Channel in the last two weeks, and were tracked by British patrol ship HMS Severn.
The Severn eventually handed over monitoring duties to an unidentified NATO ally off the coast of Brittany.
Yantar was spotted off the coast of Scotland.
It used lasers to disrupt RAF pilots tracking its movements.
“We see you. We know what you’re doing. We are ready”, UK Defence Secretary John Healey signalled to Russia, and called this “Russian aggression across the board”.
Healey also reported a 30% increase in Russian vessels threatening UK waters in the past two years.
He has altered the Royal Navy’s rules of engagement, specifically so it could follow the Yantar “when it is in our wider waters”.
In addition to the ships stationed around the UK coast, Britain has deployed three Poseidon surveillance aircraft to Iceland as part of a NATO mission patrolling for Russian ships and submarines in the North Atlantic and Arctic.
