Prime Minister Keir Starmer has described the firing of warning shots by a Russian warship near a British pleasure yacht as reckless and deeply concerning. Speaking from the G7 summit on Wednesday, Starmer warned that the UK is dealing with proxy attacks from Russia every single day.
The incident occurred Tuesday morning in the English Channel. The Ministry of Defence assessed that the Russian frigate fired the shots within a few hundred metres of the UK-flagged civilian yacht, which was drifting.
Russia stated that the shots were fired to divert the yacht and occurred outside of UK territorial waters. The British defence ministry described the event as an isolated incident, stating there is no suspected link to the boarding of an oil tanker suspected of belonging to Russia's shadow fleet by British commandos over the weekend.