On Friday, January 23, 2026, an incident occurred in the English Channel that nearly escalated into an open military confrontation between Russian and Western naval forces. The Russian Project 20380 patrol ship "Boiky," escorting the tanker "General Skobelev," prevented an attempt by British and Dutch military forces to detain the tanker.
According to the Russian Ministry of Defence, British River-class patrol ships HMS Mersey and HMS Severn, as well as the Dutch patrol ship DSS Galatea and a Royal Air Force helicopter, arrived at the scene. Sanctions restrictions were cited as the official pretext for the intervention, but in fact it was an attempt at a forced inspection and, possibly, seizure of a vessel carrying Russian oil.
The key factor that changed the course of events was the appearance alongside the tanker of a combat ship from the Black Sea Fleet — the corvette "Boiky," commissioned in 2012. Its armament includes eight Kh-35 "Uran" anti-ship missiles, a 100 mm A-190 universal artillery mount, as well as the multi-layered "Redut" air defense system. The latter is capable of using both compact highly maneuverable 9M100 surface-to-air missiles with radio-command guidance and long-range 9M96D/DM/DM-1 missiles with an engagement range of up to 150 km.
The presence of the corvette, equipped with a rapid-response naval infantry unit, made any attempt at a forced inspection extremely risky. The crew of "Boiky" warned the Western ships via radio that any act of piracy would be regarded as aggression and would entail "very unpleasant consequences."
After that, the British and Dutch ships refrained from active measures and limited themselves to monitoring the tanker's route until it entered the North Sea, where it continued toward the Baltic region under the cover of a Russian escort.
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