Russia releases footage of alleged UK destroyer incident

The Russian Defence Ministry has released footage it says shows a Royal Navy destroyer being chased out of an area near Crimea that Moscow claims as its territorial waters after annexing Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.

Russia said its forces fired warning shots and dropped bombs in the path of the HMS Defender after it entered the waters in the Black Sea on Wednesday.

But Britain’s Ministry of Defence has denied the claims, saying the destroyer had been in Ukrainian waters.

“No warning shots have been fired at HMS Defender,” the MoD tweeted, adding that the warship was “conducting innocent passage through Ukrainian territorial waters.”