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A Russian warship fired warning shots at a British yacht after they sailed near each other in in the English Channel, it has emerged. The coastguard received reports from a British-flagged civilian vessel sailing near the Admiral Grigorovich, a Russian frigate, on Monday afternoon.
The Russian sailors are alleged to have fired warning shots after the yacht reportedly sailed close to the military ship. The Grigorovich is one of Vladimir Putin’s Black Sea fleet and has been present in British waters for some weeks.
The warship has been escorting oil tankers and loitering near a wind farm off the Suffolk coast. Two Royal Navy vessels, HMS Mersey and HMS Tyne, followed the ship through the Channel on Monday afternoon before the warning shots were fired.
The incident comes after Keir Starmer ordered a team of Royal Marines to board a Russian shadow tanker, the Smyrtos, in the early hours of Sunday morning.
British authorities have impounded the ship off the south coast of England pending an investigation into sanctions-busting.
It comes as two pawns for a Russian-speaking mastermind have been convicted over a series of arson attacks on property associated with Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer. Last May, a Toyota Rav4 previously owned by Sir Keir was set on fire in a street in Kentish Town, north London.
Days later, two houses were torched, including a north London residence inhabited by the Prime Minister’s sister-in-law and her family, which he still owns. The attacks, carried out in the dead of night while people were asleep, posed a serious threat to life and left residents terrified, the Old Bailey heard.
Ukrainian Roman Lavrynovych, 22, and Romanian Stanislav Carpiuc, 27, were found guilty of conspiring to damage property after a jury deliberated for seven-and-a-half hours. Co-defendant Petro Pochynok, 35, was acquitted of the same charge.
Lavrynovych was also found guilty of damaging two properties by fire, being reckless as to whether life was endangered on May 11 and 12 last year.
Mr Justice Garnham remanded the defendants into custody to be sentenced on Friday. Police apprehended the defendants within a week of the attacks ordered by an elusive Telegram contact known as El Money.
The anonymous Russian speaker had offered Lavrynovych £3,000 in cryptocurrency if the fires were filmed and made the news.
Following the convictions, Commander Helen Flanagan, head of Counter Terrorism Policing (CTP) London, said there was nothing to suggest El Money was a “state threat”.
However, the intent behind the attacks was to “cause concern” and “disruption” in the community within the UK and “fear” for the Prime Minister, she stated.
She told the Press Association: “I think the intentions of the defendants was clearly to take payment, and to carry out a crime for money.
“There was no ideological motivation around that, and there’s no evidence to suggest that they knew who they were targeting, and that that was the Prime Minister or properties linked to the Prime Minister.
“However, clearly the intention from the online tasker was to create fear, both for the victim and the Prime Minister, and cause uncertainty, unrest, for the UK.”