A Russian Karakurt-class corvette (archive image): A British couple had to evade a warship in the English Channel.Image: imago/Alexander Kazakov
A Russian warship fires at a British yacht in the English Channel. The retired couple on board thinks the action is completely exaggerated.
June 17, 2026, 11:10June 17, 2026, 11:10
Crew members of a British-registered yacht have criticized warning shots fired at their ship by a Russian warship as unjustified. British retired couple Jane and Alan Kelvey described the incident as “surreal” in an interview with the BBC on Tuesday.
Jane Kelvey told the British broadcaster that after the horn of the Russian warship “Admiral Grigorovich” sounded five times, they “immediately turned the yacht two degrees toward the harbor so that they could see that we had made a deliberate change of course, so we had seen her.” About a minute later, the Russians’ horn sounded five more times and immediately afterwards the ship’s crew fired “four to five small-caliber shots.”
“That wasn’t directed at us – we think they were warning shots in the air,” said Jane Kelvey. She rejected Russia’s accusation that her yacht was on a “dangerous” collision course. Her husband described the shots as “unnecessary.”
No injuries, no damage
According to a British Defense Ministry official, the incident occurred about 20 nautical miles south of the Isle of Wight, just outside British territorial waters. The crew of the yacht reported the distance to the Russian warship as 450 meters. There were no injuries or damage.
The incident occurred against the backdrop of massive tensions between Russia and Western states over Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. Just on Sunday, the British Navy captured an oil tanker in the English Channel that was believed to be part of the Russian shadow fleet. British soldiers boarded the sanctioned oil tanker “Smyrtos” by
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