Russian Frigate Tracked 20 Miles From UK Coast

The Royal Navy has revealed it intercepted a Russian frigate and monitored her passage through the English Channel.

HMS Argyll, a Type 23 frigate with advanced Artisan radar, used a Lynx helicopter and sensors to locate and monitor the Russian warship as it passed within 20 miles of the Kent coast in the Strait of Dover.

The Russian ship Yaroslav Mudryy is a Neustrashimy class frigate and was accompanied by her tanker the Kola while on the way back from a Mediterranean deployment.

It is due to arrive in its home port of Baltiysk, Russia, next weekend after a 25,000-mile, six-month tour which saw it visit Spain, Malta, Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Oman, Cyprus and Syria.

According to the Russian Navy's website, the ship is the second in a series designed for protection of combat ships from attacks, for search, detection and tracking of submarines and for attacking enemy ships and covering landing operations.

A Royal Navy spokeswoman would not comment on how long the ship was tracked for but said it took over from French surveillance and tracked the Russians around the UK coast.

The HMS Argyll is based in Plymouth and is the longest-serving frigate of her type in the Royal Navy.

Among her deployments was to the Caribbean and North Atlantic on a patrol mission, where her crew seized £77m of drugs.

The majority of the crew had returned from a deployment just before Christmas.

Commander Paul Hammond, commanding officer of HMS Argyll, said: "We are one of the Royal Navy’s high readiness ships and we knew we could be called upon to respond a range of duties, such as monitoring a Russian warship, at short notice."

The spokeswoman said the Russian ship's movement through British waters on its way home was "not hostile or out of routine".

She added: "Under the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea (1982), right of innocent passage to all warships through territorial waters is allowed, provided it is not prejudicial to peace, good order or security of the coastal state.

"Submarines and other underwater vehicles are required to navigate on the surface and to show their flag."

News of last weekend's intercept comes just a few months after NATO warned that the planes of its member states had been scrambled 400 times in 11 months as they responded to a 50% rise in suspicious Russian military air activity around Europe when compared with the same period in 2013.

That includes a number of high-profile incidents where RAF jets have intercepted Russian aircraft approaching UK airspace .