Last week, a Nato source told BBC Verify that the Admiral Grigorovich had been ordered by Moscow to escort shadow fleet vessels through the Channel.
The frigate is understood to have been operating in the area for some time and had been repeatedly re-supplied by a repair vessel.
Satellite images reviewed by BBC Verify have shown the repair vessel, the PM-82, operating between the Channel and the North Sea in recent months.
Nato officials believe the PM-82 delivered food, water and other supplies to the Admiral Grigorovich, allowing it to stay at sea for extended periods of time and lead Russian convoys though the Channel.
In April, the frigate was reported to have escorted six shadow fleet vessels through the waterway while being monitored by the Royal Navy.
The Royal Navy said in a statement that in April the Grigorovich escorted Russian-flagged vessels heading to and from the Atlantic, Mediterranean and Baltic, including “one submarine and around six merchant and support vessels”.
The response of the Admiral Grigorovich in today’s incident, while graduated and, in the context of a more contested space, probably proportional, appears to have been over the top in this case.
James Parkin, a former Royal Navy rear admiral, says the use of armed force is a last resort, reserved only for self-defence.
“I would not be surprised if it was a miscalculation, rather than a deliberate act to try and fire on a British yacht very close to British waters,” he told BBC News.
Coming just two days after Royal Marines seized the Smyrtos, the tanker suspected of being part of Russia’s “shadow fleet”, it is hard not to see a connection.
“The seizure of the Smyrtos is a huge embarrassment for the Russians,” Parkin said, “particularly because there is a Russian navy ship in the English Channel who is only there to stop this kind of thing happening.”
Coming at a time of heightened tension between the UK and Russia, and on the day when two departing UK defence ministers, in their resignation speeches, sounded the alarm about Russia’s increasingly aggressive behaviour, this relatively minor incident has, perhaps inevitably, been magnified.
