On the back of a bus stop in Kent, England, a pile of documents was found on Tuesday this week, almost fifty pages in total, which obviously should not be there.
According to BBC The documents contained several classified and sensitive details – including the British vessel “HMS Defender”, which this week was located in or near Crimea, and a probable reaction to the ship’s passage through Ukrainian waters.
The documents also include plans for a possible British military presence in Afghanistan after the US-led NATO operation ends there.
British authorities say they have launched an internal investigation.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Defense tells the channel that an employee has reported having lost sensitive defense documents, but does not want to comment on the matter further.
Disagree
On Wednesday afternoon, the Foreign Ministry in Moscow summoned the British ambassador to the carpet as a result of the incident where a British naval ship went into what Russia believes is their sea area outside Crimea.
The Russian Defense Ministry announced that warning shots were fired at the ship from both sea and air, and demanded that the British investigate a British naval ship’s “dangerous” behavior on the Crimean peninsula in the Black Sea, while the British deny having done anything wrong.
Russia expert and director at Fridtjof Nansen’s Institute, Iver Neumann, stressed earlier this week that one still does not know exactly what happened.
– But it is interesting because almost no one recognizes that Crimea is Russian. British naval vessels appear to have crossed a contested border, and then the Russians must respond. This is a concrete way for the Russians to show that Crimea belongs to them. At the same time, Britain is there to show that not everyone else thinks the same, Neumann said.
– Expectation
In documents found at the bus stop in Kent, the British Ministry of Defense wrote that “an innocent passage through Ukrainian territorial waters, with weapons covered and the ship’s helicopter stowed in the hangar, was carried out with the expectation that Russia could respond aggressively”, writes BBC.
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