Russia calls on the United Kingdom to stop provocations after the incident with the HMS Defender warship, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said, adding that the Black Sea is not a place for “such games.”

“You need to speak as directly as possible with provocateurs, substantively explaining on your fingers that next time they should leave their provocations aside and not meddle in here … And the risks of conflict as a result of this may increase even more. The Black Sea is not the place where such games are permissible,” Ryabkov said in an interview with the Mezhdunarodnaya Zhizn magazine, published on Tuesday.

On 23 June, the Russian Defence Ministry said that UK Navy’s Defender destroyer entered the country’s territorial waters near Cape Fiolent in Crimea. Russia’s Black Sea Fleet and the border security forces had to fire warning shots to divert the destroyer.

The military also scrambled Su-24M fighter to drop bombs in the path of HMS Defender, in order to force the British destroyer to leave the Russian waters after it ignored other warnings telling it to do so.