Royal Navy tracks Russian warship and oil tanker through English Channel

Britain's Royal Navy shadowed Russian vessels sailing through the English Channel in a two-day operation coordinated with NATO allies, the navy said on Friday.

It comes as the military alliance steps up monitoring of Russian shipping.

The navy said two patrol ships, supported by a Wildcat helicopter, were dispatched to intercept the Russian warship Boikiy and accompanying oil tanker MT General Skobelev as they headed north, before handing the monitoring over to a NATO ally.

The operation comes a day after Britain said it provided support to a French operation to board a sanctioned Russian oil tanker as it passed through the Straits of Gibraltar, in a bid to choke off the funds that fuel Russian's invasion of Ukraine.

Britain's navy routinely conducts shadowing missions to monitor any potential threats to national security, including to critical infrastructure such as undersea cables or pipelines.

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Also on Friday Russian Tu-22M3 long-range strategic bomber planes carried out a scheduled patrol over neutral waters of the Baltic Sea, the Defence Ministry reported via its Telegram channel. The bombers were accompanied by Sukhoi Su-35S and Su-30SM fighter jets, the ministry said.

Russia regularly conducts such patrols as a show of strength. The announcement was made minutes after President Vladimir Putin began a meeting with three U.S. envoys in the Kremlin to discuss proposals for ending the war in Ukraine.

Ukraine is under mounting U.S. pressure to reach a peace deal in the war triggered by Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022, with Moscow demanding Kyiv cede its entire eastern industrial area of Donbas before it stops fighting.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the territorial dispute would be a top priority of the next round of talks in the United Arab Emirates.

"The question of Donbas is key. It will be discussed how the three sides..., see this in Abu Dhabi today and tomorrow," he said, responding to questions in a WhatsApp media chat a day after talks with U.S. President Donald Trump at the World Economic Forum in Davos that both leaders described as positive.

The talks in the Gulf were due to begin on Friday evening, a Zelenskiy aide said, and resume on Saturday morning.