Photo: A frame from the video
The British television and radio corporation BBC has published excerpts from secret documents concerning the passage of the British destroyer HMS Defender near the coast of Crimea. Recall that the Russian military had to open a warning fire on the course of the British ship in order to prevent violations of the Russian border.
As noted in the message, the folder with secret documents was found the day before the incident. She was lying at a bus stop in Kent in the south-east of England. The folder was lost by a high-ranking employee of the British Ministry of Defense, and the man who found it handed it to the BBC editorial office.
It follows from the documents that the UK specifically decided to send a destroyer along the coast of Crimea to demonstrate support for Kiev and show that London is not afraid to use the waters that it considers Ukrainian, since it does not recognize the annexation of Crimea to Russia.
The operation itself to move the destroyer in the Black Sea was called ” Operation Ditroit”. At the same time, two options for the ship’s movement were considered.
The documents emphasize that the route near the coast of Crimea “will provide an opportunity to interact with the government of Ukraine”…& gt; in the territorial waters of Ukraine recognized by the UK”. At the same time, the British military analyzed several options for Russia’s response actions from “safe and professional” to “unsafe and unprofessional”.
The British Ministry of Defense decided not to send the destroyer along the second path, which ran far from the Crimea, so that Russia could not say that the UK is ” afraid” or recognizes the Crimea as Russian.
As a result, the choice was made in the direction of the first option.
Earlier, The Daily Telegraph newspaper reported that the decision on the passage of a destroyer near the Crimea was left to Prime Minister Boris Johnson.