The British armed forces intercepted a Russian shadow fleet vessel in the Channel in the early hours of Sunday, Keir Starmer has confirmed.<\/p>\n
The Ministry of Defence said Royal Marine commandos and specially trained law enforcement officers from the National Crime Agency boarded a sanctioned oil tanker during a six-hour operation \u2013 the first UK-led operation of its kind.<\/p>\n
The vessel Smyrtos will be provisionally moved to an anchorage off the south coast of England and be monitored for any environmental or safety concerns.<\/p>\n
According to the MoD, the operation was supported by aircraft from the Maritime Air Group (chinooks, Merlin Mk4 and Wildcat), an RAF P-8 aircraft, and HMS Sutherland and HMS Ledbury.<\/p>\n
Starmer said in a statement: \u201cThis operation delivers yet another blow to Russia and reminds those fuelling (President Vladimir) Putin\u2019s war in Ukraine that they cannot hide.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to pay tribute to all those involved, including our armed forces and law enforcement officers who keep this country safe 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.\u201d<\/p>\n
The defence secretary, Dan Jarvis, said: \u201cOperations like this require skill, professionalism and courage. I pay tribute to our armed forces personnel and all those involved.<\/p>\n
\u201cRussia relies on its shadow fleet to fund their conflict in Ukraine and our interdiction delivers a blow to Putin\u2019s illegal war.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The British armed forces intercepted a Russian shadow fleet vessel in the Channel in the early hours of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":637946,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-637945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=637945"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637945\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/637946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=637945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=637945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=637945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}