Russian battleship fired warning shots on a Black Sea area near Crimea on Wednesday and a Russian warplane launched bombs to forcibly force a British destroyer to disperse.
This was the first occasion that Moscow used live ammo to stop NATO warship after the cold war, illustrating greater risks of military events in the midst of rising tensions between Russia and the West.
The Russian Ministry of Defense reported that the Russian Warship has fired warning fire after a notice of intrusion in Russia's territorial waters is ignored by the British missile destroyer Defender. He said a Russian bomber of Su-24 dropped four bombs in front of the British navy to urge the ship to change direction. The British warship exited the Russian waters a few minutes later, the ministry said.
In order to protest over the British destructor maneuver, the Russian defense ministry has called the UK military union in Moscow.
The UK Defense Ministry stated that the reports were known but had no immediate reaction.
HMS Defender, a destroyer of type 45, is now in the Indo-Pacific part of the UK carrier strike group. However, at the beginning of this month, it was revealed that it will temporarily disintegrate from the group and carry out its own Black Sea missions.
In 2014 Russia annexed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula to the length of the Black Sea Coast of the peninsula. This move was not recognized by most countries around the globe. Russia has often choked and casts it as destabilizing on NATO warship visits near Crimea.
NATO countries Turkey, Romania, and Bulgaria are all on the Black Sea, but the war vessels from the USA, the United Kingdom, and other NATO allies also visited Ukraine more and more frequently.
Gen. Valery Gerasimov, Chief of State of the Russian army, severely condemned NATO military preparations near the Russian waters on a Wednesday right before the incident.
Gerasimov said at a Moscow International Security Conference hosted by the Russian Ministry of Defense that "moves by U.S. warships and their allies are clearly provocative. "It generates preconditions for events and does not help to alleviate military tensions."
In October, he accused British destroyer Dragon of entering the river in the neighborhood of Crimea, and in November the American destroyer John McCain violated Japanese Russian borders.
In April, Russia put limits on the movement of foreign navy ships near Crimea until November, with loud concerns from the Ukrainian and Western countries. Russia has refused the criticism, noting that the limitation of commercial shipping would not interfere.
Russia also strengthened its soldiers on the Ukraine border earlier this year and cautioned Ukrainian authorities not to use force in retrenching the grip over the East, where more than 14,000 people have been murdered in seven years in a battle with Russia-backed separatists. After a rampant move, Moscow withdrew some of their forces, but Ukrainian officials said their majority was still in existence.
