UK Navy Intercepts, Shadows Russian Warships In English Channel

The UK military continues monitoring and shadowing Russian ‘research vessels’ as well as naval ships off Britain’s waters which are widely understood to be Russian Navy intelligence collection ships.

In the latest development, British media reported Sunday that the Royal Navy recently intercepted two Russian naval vessels as they passed through the English Channel, according to a statement by the UK Defense Ministry.

The ships have been identified as the corvette Stoikiy and the tanker Yelnya, the former which is part of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. The Royal Navy’s patrol vessel HMS Severn was dispatched to shadow the Russian vessels as they moved west through the Dover Strait – which is the northwest part of the channel just before entering the North Sea.

BBC and CNN have indicated that for part of the shadow mission, monitoring of the Russian ships was handed off to NATO partner assets.

“In addition to the ships stationed around the UK coast, Britain has deployed three Poseidon surveillance aircraft to Iceland as part of a NATO mission patrolling for Russian ships and submarines in the North Atlantic and Arctic, the ministry said,” CNN writes.

Britain’s military has indicated that its HMS Severn continued tracking the corvette Stoikiy ”from a distance” and at all times remained prepared to react to “any unexpected activity”.

Russia’s embassy in London has meanwhile emphasized that Russian vessels international waters in reality “pose no threat to Britain’s security.” This comes after alleged incidents where Russian vessels aimed lasers as British warplanes operating above to monitor the ships’ activities.

And last week the embassy firmly stated, “London, with its Russophobic path and increasing militaristic hysteria leads to further degradation European security, providing the premise for new dangerous situations.”

Western allies believe Russian naval ‘research vessels’ like the Yantar are assisting with Moscow-backed ‘sabotage campaigns’ in northern European waters. For example the last couple years have seen allegations of Russian vessels cutting telecoms cables under the North Sea and elsewhere.

“We call on the British side to hold off taking any destructive steps which might aggravate the crisis situation on the European continent,” the embassy added.

A view from HMS Severn as it tracks Russia’s RFN Stoikiy in the English Channel.
MoD pic.twitter.com/wGsLO006Nc

— Massimo Frantarelli (@MrFrantarelli) November 24, 2025

Russian officials and institutions have been under intense scrutiny in the UK ever since the Ukraine war began, and relations are steadily worsening. London officials believe that Russian government-linked entities in Britain could be involved in ‘sabotage operations’ targeting NATO and Europe’s defense sector.