HMS Defender, Russia and all that stuff

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HMS Defender, Russia and all that stuff

#1 Post by Boac » Fri Jun 25, 2021 8:06 am

While the propaganda war rolls ever on, the 'success' of the ship's passage is beyond dispute. I wonder why all the media luvvies were on board............?

Anyway, according to Reuters, Russia has now declared that it WILL attack any ship doing the same - that is exercising the internationally agreed (except Russia, of course) "United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS)" right of 'innocent passage'. (One could argue that a military heavily armed ship might not be execrising 'innocent passage', of course..... :)) )

Surely this requires the UK and/or France to issue a similar warning to any Russian vessel ('innocently') transiting the Channel?

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Re: HMS Defender, Russia and all that stuff

#2 Post by Undried Plum » Fri Jun 25, 2021 11:40 am

What an absolute **** the propaganda side of this long-planned provocation turned out to be!

One half of Integrity Initiative claims that warning shots were fired. The other half claims that they were not. There is no happy medium between those two versions of reality. One or the other, not both or half of one and half of another.

Then the other part of the **** was whether to invoke mercantile maritime laws of "innocent passage" or whether to say that Russia never owned their territory in Crimea anyway so it should no longer belong to Russia.

As a long time-served mariner, let me tell you something about "Innocent Passage". It does not involve getting tooled up with a Destroyer and piping ACTION STATIONS ACTION STATIONS ACTION STATIONS before the incursion into Russian sovereign territory. It does not involve a civilian supernumary dressing up in anti-flash hood and gauntlets and dramatically ducking beneath the bridge windows.

The MoD agitprop wonks in Main Building claim that the following did not happen:

https://www.rt.com/russia/527511-defend ... ots-video/

You decide whether it did or did not happen.

If you want to see the sort of ***** that these pirates get up to: take a look at the AIS trace of Defender immediately after she was chased out of Russian Federation territory. As if by magic, she suddenly teleported herself to Bahraini waters. Bear in mind that AIS is a SOLAS maritime safety tool, just like ADSB is meant to be a safety device, and not a propaganda tool of deception. Deliberately transmitting false co-ords on AIS or ADSB really ought to be made a felony under International Law.

I hate to see my own side behaving like **** pirates, but they are.

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Re: HMS Defender, Russia and all that stuff

#3 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Fri Jun 25, 2021 3:54 pm

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Re: HMS Defender, Russia and all that stuff

#4 Post by ian16th » Fri Jun 25, 2021 5:38 pm

Behind paywall.
Cynicism improves with age

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Re: HMS Defender, Russia and all that stuff

#5 Post by Undried Plum » Fri Jun 25, 2021 6:45 pm

Ah, well

That's OK ,then.

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Re: HMS Defender, Russia and all that stuff

#6 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Sat Jun 26, 2021 3:00 am

ian16th wrote:
Fri Jun 25, 2021 5:38 pm
Behind paywall.
When the news broke, it was hard to believe. Not the fact of there having been an incident involving Russia and a British warship in the Black Sea – that was all too credible – but what was claimed and denied.

Russia said that its forces had fired warning shots and dropped bombs in the path of the warship, HMS Defender. The British responded by saying that, no, they hadn’t. This was the first time – in many years of following the ups and (usually) downs of UK-Russia relations – that I can recall Russia claiming what could be seen as an aggressive and warlike act, and the UK denying that Russia had done anything untoward.

The first explanation from the Ministry of Defence (MoD) was that the ship had received advance warning of a Russian exercise and that, in so far as there had been any firing, it had nothing to do with the ship. The second version offered vivid footage of British dering-do in the face of vain Russian attempts to force a change of course – or so it seemed, from the reports of journalists on board.

Some headlines positively oozed British defiance in the face of unwarranted Russian aggression. It all looked rather serious on the BBC News at 10pm, except that the crew members interviewed by the public broadcaster’s defence correspondent seemed, as I read their expressions, to be treating it as a bit of a lark – or maybe it was just the famed national stiff upper lip. At any rate, it was clear: the start of the third world war this was not. Not even close.

So what was it? Strip away the propaganda (on both sides), and the bare facts would appear to be these. HMS Defender had been visiting Ukraine’s main port of Odessa and from there the ship was to sail to Georgia – like Ukraine, a now independent former Soviet state with aspirations to join the Nato alliance. It could have taken a more southerly route, which would have left it in international waters. Instead, it hugged the coast of Crimea, entering waters that are legally considered Ukraine’s, but which Moscow regards as Russian since it annexed Crimea in 2014.
In taking this route, the UK warship set out deliberately to make a point. This is not my scurrilous subjective interpretation. In his first dispatch from HM Defender, the BBC’s Jonathan Beale stated: “We have just completed a transit through Russian-occupied Crimea’s territorial waters. This was a deliberate move by the royal navy warship which is on its way to Georgia.” You cannot really get clearer than that.

In other words, the point of taking this route was entirely political. It was to demonstrate that the UK does not accept Russia’s claim to Crimea and would assert its right – under international maritime law – to what it called “innocent passage”. This is the same provision that permits Russian and other foreign warships to sail through the English Channel.
The Channel, though, is not – at least not yet – disputed waters, and it is hard to believe that HMS Defender would have skirted danger in this way without the say-so of either the top brass or, probably, the prime minister himself. In principle, this was risky stuff.

In practice, however, something about the way this played out suggests a measure of complicity and bluff all round. The Russian navy may have hyped its response – whether to please its masters in the Kremlin or to fit a prepared script. And the MoD may have kept up its denials until the ship was out of potential danger – at which point it became the latest standard-bearer for plucky little Britain. Cue growls in Moscow, which dubbed the ship "HMS Provocateur", cheers in Ukraine and congratulations (and future medals?) from London.

There might also have been an extra dimension. The defence secretary, Ben Wallace, alluded to an incident last October, when – according to Russia – another UK warship, HMS Dragon, had been forced to alter its course through the Black Sea. Russia had flaunted this as a victory, while the MoD denied any course change. How better to expunge what may or may not have been a loss of British face by repeating that voyage – and essentially daring Russia to respond. Was that HMS Defender’s aim? If so, it would appear, mission accomplished; tots of rum all around. All’s well that ends well.

Except that these are perilous games. Near misses and misunderstandings and how to avoid them were a major topic at the recent US-Russia summit, as the military well knows that this is how wars can begin. And here, just a week later, to confirm all the mutual stereotypes, was a deliberate provocation of Russia by a UK warship. To the UK it reinforced the image of Russia as prone to needless aggression against a principled Britain committed to upholding the “rule of law”, while it allowed the Russian armed forces to show themselves defending the national honour against a pesky little Britain still harbouring great-power delusions.

Not only are such games dangerous, however, they rarely happen outside a political context. And that political context happens to be particularly volatile at present, albeit not obviously so. The early summit meeting that took place in Geneva between Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin altered the context for more than those two major players. It had implications for Ukraine, for the EU – and, above all, perhaps, for the UK.

Since the fall of Viktor Yanukovych and everything that followed in 2014, Ukraine has been – even more than it ever was – a pawn in the post-Soviet powerplay between Nato, the US and Russia. The Biden-Putin rapprochement threatens to leave Ukraine out on a limb, or at least to force Kyiv to present its case for support in its own right, rather than as a bulwark against Russia. That might suit President Zelensky, but it will not suit many of those with influence in Ukraine, for whom the anti-Russia card has been a winner.

For the EU, the prospect of slightly warmer, if not completely normal, US-Russia relations potentially changes the internal dynamics, in strengthening the hand of those, such as France and Germany, who want to improve EU-Russia relations, against the Baltic states and Poland. The hardliners’ position had already been weakened by Biden’s decision not to try to stop the completion of the Germany-Russia Nordstream-2 gas pipeline, and before that by the departure of the UK, which left them without their reliable anti-Russia cheerleader. The EU summit, currently in progress, has Russia policy on the agenda.

And finally, the UK. The prospect of a Biden-Putin accommodation, and the distinct warming of US-EU relations following Biden’s visit to Brussels, leaves the UK potentially lonely in its cold-shouldering of Putin’s Russia – for all the bonhomie between Boris Johnson and Biden at the G7.

In this context, the mission of HMS Defender sent certain signals. It showed that someone still cares about Ukraine and Georgia even if US support wanes; it showed the UK as a doughty naval power undaunted by Russia, and it illustrated the UK’s value to Nato and Global Britain’s readiness to patrol international seaways (though good luck trying the Crimea approach in parts of the South China Sea).

The double message from the shots that were clearly fired in the vicinity of HMS Defender, but played down by the UK MoD, however, could also herald a change in calculations in London. In the wake of the US-Russia summit, Ben Wallace floated the possibility of a Johnson-Putin meeting, telling Sky News: “Boris Johnson is clearly open to meet anyone where there is an important step to be made and stepping towards normalising relations with Russia will obviously and hopefully come, but it comes following certain actions.” We will see what those “actions” might be. But it never harms to play to the hawks at home, especially not if considering a major U-turn.
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Re: HMS Defender, Russia and all that stuff

#7 Post by FD2 » Sun Jun 27, 2021 12:07 am

When their pathetic excuse for a carrier and its tug belched their way through the English Channel on its way to bomb some Syrian citizens I have no doubt they didn't bother to go to any alert state because they knew very well they would not get a hostile reception, despite being only a couple of miles from the English coast. Next time it happens MOD (N) should declare a major exercise when they get to the Portland areas and harass the hell out of them. The RN response was, I think, a distant pass by a fishery protection vessel. (-|

Innocent passage is innocent passage but only a fool would not have his ship closed up in case the belligerent new locals did something stupid, because 'Action Stations' also means securing for damage control watertight integrity, for those of us who have served any time in Her Majesty's ships know full well. 'RT' (Russia Today - the thug Putin's mouthpiece) is not, imo, a credible source of information as it proved when they tried to obscure the facts behind the shooting down of the Malaysian Airways 777 with a Buk missile. I expect they will all be attending the trial in the Netherlands to plead their cases. :ymdevil:

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Re: HMS Defender, Russia and all that stuff

#8 Post by Boac » Sun Jun 27, 2021 7:59 am

The news that a classified MOD int brief on the planned passage of the convoy was 'lost' and dumped behind a Kent bus-stop is most re-assuring.

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Re: HMS Defender, Russia and all that stuff

#9 Post by Rossian » Sun Jun 27, 2021 9:24 am

Re #8 - is this another Captain West moment from....... how many years ago??

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Re: HMS Defender, Russia and all that stuff

#10 Post by FD2 » Sun Jun 27, 2021 10:23 am

The loss or theft of those classified papers is quite an odd coincidence. Let's hope it is just another Alan West moment and not something more devious. Why dump them where they would most likely be found rather than burn or shred them?

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Re: HMS Defender, Russia and all that stuff

#11 Post by G-CPTN » Sun Jun 27, 2021 11:17 am


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Re: HMS Defender, Russia and all that stuff

#12 Post by Pontius Navigator » Sun Jun 27, 2021 12:46 pm

Rossian wrote:
Sun Jun 27, 2021 9:24 am
Re #8 - is this another Captain West moment from....... how many years ago??

The Ancient Mariner
I wonder what was on Paddy Hines laptop all those years ago. The fall guy, a wg cdr, was subsequently promoted.

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Re: HMS Defender, Russia and all that stuff

#13 Post by Undried Plum » Sun Jun 27, 2021 3:31 pm

FD2 wrote:
Sun Jun 27, 2021 10:23 am
The loss or theft of those classified papers is quite an odd coincidence. Let's hope it is just another Alan West moment and not something more devious. Why dump them where they would most likely be found rather than burn or shred them?
How else would you get the papers into the hands of the BBC if you wanted to 'leak' them?

Artfully crumpled of course, just as you would expect of papers dropped accidentally in a bus shelter.

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Re: HMS Defender, Russia and all that stuff

#14 Post by Boac » Sun Jun 27, 2021 3:34 pm

It's obvious budgets are tightening up in the Ministry - leaks used to be left in Trains and Taxis, but now the poor sods have to go by bus.
Someone needs to tell Rory that 'gullible' is not in the OED? From BBC News:

Mr Stewart, who was the Tories' International Development Secretary from May to July 2019, said in a tweet: "I definitely did not know that there were cameras in any of my ministerial offices (in fact I was told - when I asked if there were any cameras - that there were not cameras in my office in DfiD)."

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Re: HMS Defender, Russia and all that stuff

#15 Post by FD2 » Sun Jun 27, 2021 7:18 pm

UP - Exactly the conclusion I wanted people to draw for themselves! Once the details had been seen they would be left to be discovered in order to try and cause maximum embarrassment and the offenders are one or even several steps ahead of the game.

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Re: HMS Defender, Russia and all that stuff

#16 Post by Boac » Sun Jun 27, 2021 7:38 pm

All this 'leaking' stuff is not relevant: The papers were classified, some with the highest UK rating. The papers were, I understand numbered and the 'owner' quickly owned up to their loss. Why they were 'out of the office' needs to be established. How he/she came to 'lose' them likewise. The 'Defender' bit is pure froth (although I'm not sure we know the date of 'loss'.) The rest of the contents are of more concern and less 'tabloid -worthy'. There is more to unroll here.

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Re: HMS Defender, Russia and all that stuff

#17 Post by Undried Plum » Sun Jun 27, 2021 7:53 pm

What is abundantly clear is that MoD Main Building lied through their teeth. The denial that warning shots were fired was a flat out lie. The denial that four bombs were dropped ahead of the vessel was probably a lie too.

The pirates had been transmitting systematically false co-ords on AIS, a maritime safety aid equivalent to ADSB, before during and after the incursion into Russian territory. They still are. I promise you that Defender not not really hove to off Berry Head this evening and she wasn't close to Manama the day before yesterday.

If their line is that this was innocent passage, the arming of weapons before the port course change and run into the territorial zone makes a lie of it. If they say they don’t acknowledge the Russian maritime zone off Crimea and planned to ignore it, then this was a military and political challenge, not innocent passage. If they failed to fly the Russian Federation flag from their foremast, then it was a contemptible gross discourtesy that was clearly an act of military aggression. If they say Russian firing was not directed at them, and the aerial bombs dropped were also not targeted at the vessel, then this is transparent evasion — both Russian weapons were used as warning shots, so that, by custom and meaning, the warning was directed at the vessels, the weapons away from them.

They're playing a bloody dangerous game. The Russian Defence Ministry has declared that next time the warning shots will be onto the foc'stle and the flight deck. They'll use inert shells of course, but a four and a half inch brick will make a nasty mess of those flimsy decks and will tear through the superstructure like it's made of paper.

Remember that a point in geospace located 11nm off St Abbs is just as much UK territory as a point in the middle of Lake Windermere or Oxford Circus. The same is true of Russian territory or any other territory. It's their country, not ours. When the British, French and Ottoman empires eventually fought their way into Sevastopol what did they do? They looted the town and used vast amounts of gunpowder to demolish the port facilities and then buggered off back home. It was returned to Russian control and ownership and remained so all the way through the following century, including the Yalta chat. Even the Ukrainian navy respects Russian ownership of Crimea. That's why they never play a stupid trick like putting a warship into Russian territory and claiming that it's been conquered by Ukraine. They're not that **** stupid. We are, it seems.

Do you think we would tolerate it if a Russky or a Chinky or an Iranian warship charged through the Solent to go Northabout the Isle of Wight? Do you think we would tolerate an Argie frigate charging through Falkland Sound? Do you think the Septics would tolerate a Russian warship charging through Long Island Sound and out through the East River claiming innocent passage? Neither do I.

If the Militant nutjobs of Main Building and Downing Street think that they have somehow got away with it, then things are likely to get very nasty when they try such nonsense in the territorial waters of those Chinese islands later in the year.

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Re: HMS Defender, Russia and all that stuff

#18 Post by Boac » Sun Jun 27, 2021 8:00 pm

Do you think we would tolerate it if a Russky or a Chinky or an Iranian warship charged through the Solent to go Northabout the Isle of Wight?
We DO actually tolerate the 'Russky' navy in our territorial waters. I cannot see the connection though to the Isle of Wight?

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Re: HMS Defender, Russia and all that stuff

#19 Post by Undried Plum » Sun Jun 27, 2021 8:14 pm

The Straights of Dover are a totally different geographical situation to the coast of Crimea. Not relevant as the Black Sea is so large that there exists an infinite choice of routes which do not not involve a hostile military incursion into Russian territory.

Defender, or any other British war canoe, had no business in Russian territory. That part of the world has never been part of the British Empire and is not part of the British Commonwealth.

Accompanied as it was by daily shrill anti-Russian propaganda in the UKUSA MSM, it was clearly an aggressive military escalation and was worlds apart from proper "innocent passage" which exists for the benefit of merchant vessels to carry out world trade.

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Re: HMS Defender, Russia and all that stuff

#20 Post by Boac » Sun Jun 27, 2021 8:19 pm

It is not 'Russian Territory' - unless you work for Vlad, of course? The waters were, internationally, Ukranian. Ukraine continues to claim Crimea as an integral part of its territory, supported by most foreign governments and United Nations General Assembly Resolution. You disagree?

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