Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday accused the United States of involvement in last week’s incident in the Black Sea involving a British destroyer.
“It was a provocation, a complex provocation carried out not only by the British but also by the Americans,” Putin asserted during an annual event in which he answers questions from the public.
Thus, he commented that the destroyer ‘HMS Defender’ entered “Russian territorial waters on June 23 in the evening, but before that, in the morning, a US spy plane had taken off from a NATO airfield in Greece”, according to information from the Sputnik news agency.
“It was obvious that the destroyer entered Russian territory for military purposes, trying to discover with the help of the spy plane the actions of the Russian forces,” he has asserted.
The Russian Ministry of Defense then denounced that the British destroyer entered three kilometers into Russian territorial waters near Crimea, an intrusion that has been rejected by the UK government.
According to the Russian version, a Su-24 fighter carried out a warning bombardment against the vessel. However, London assured that the destroyer was carrying out a peaceful voyage in Ukrainian territorial waters in accordance with international law.
Following this, the Russian authorities summoned the UK military attaché in Moscow and asked the British government to open a “thorough” investigation into what happened in order to “avoid such incidents in the future”.
