Events such as this week's incident in the Black Sea involving a Royal Navy vessel could lead to a miscalculation that triggers a full-blown war as a result of an "unwarranted escalation" between the UK and Russia, Gen. Nick Carter, the UK chief of defense staff, said on Friday, as quoted by UK media outlets
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 25th June, 2021) Events such as this week's incident in the Black Sea involving a Royal Navy vessel could lead to a miscalculation that triggers a full-blown war as a result of an "unwarranted escalation" between the UK and Russia, Gen. Nick Carter, the UK chief of defense staff, said on Friday, as quoted by UK media outlets.
On Wednesday, the Russian Defense Ministry reported that a UK destroyer had crossed the Russian border and went three kilometers into Russian waters in the area of Cape Fiolent in Crimea. After that, a Russian border patrol ship fired a warning shot, and a Su-24M aircraft carried out a "warning bombing" along the path of the destroyer.
UK defense officials have denied that any warning shots were fired, but Carter said that events such as these could escalate tensions further.
"The thing that keeps me awake in bed at night is a miscalculation that comes from unwarranted escalation. The sort of thing we saw in the Black Sea on Wednesday is the sort of thing it could come from," Carter said, as quoted by the Daily Telegraph.
The chief of the UK defense staff said that both sides were playing a cat and mouse game, the newspaper reported.
The armed forces of Russia and China are also "evolving at pace," Carter was quoted as saying, adding that these were "worrisome" developments for the United Kingdom.
The UK ambassador in Moscow, Deborah Bronnert, was summoned to the Russian Foreign Ministry on Thursday following the incident in the Black Sea one day earlier.
