The Royal Navy’s HMS Trent, seen here arriving in Plymouth on the 10th August on our live webcam, was only hours earlier shadowing a Russian naval group in the English Channel with a Wildcat helicopter from 815 NAS joining in to provide air support.
Portsmouth-based OPV Trent was intercepting the Russian destroyer RFS Vice Admiral Kulakov and tracking its movement down the Channel.
The Russian destroyer was escorting a ’shadow fleet’ of sanctioned oil tankers, which included over 12 such ships passing through the Dover Strait in a 24-hour period on the 9th to 10th August, where other NATO allies were also monitoring.
HMS Trent only recently returned to UK waters after four years serving extensively in the Mediterranean and off West Africa and a maintenance period in Malta.
The Trent will soon be preparing to deploy to the Caribbean later this year.
