To describe HMS Trent as a “warship” is a bit of a stretch. It is actually an offshore patrol boat that is more commonly used for intercepting contraband and illegal fishing vessels. It is only armed with machine guns and has no missiles. It’s as harmless as a rowing boat armed with a catapult, as one wag put it.

Russian naval defenses have been tracking the British boat since it entered the Black Sea on Sunday through the Bosphorus Strait. But the Russians say it poses “no serious threat”.

Indeed, former Black Sea Fleet commander Admiral Vladimir Komoyedov is quoted as joking: “I would not even say that the British would be able to tickle our nerves. Maybe, only the heel, a little.”

To fully appreciate the joke, we should recall that last month British media reported that the Royal Navy was planning to send two heavy warships to the Black Sea. Those vessels were a Type-45 guided-missile destroyer and an anti-submarine frigate.

© CC BY-SA 3.0 / BERTIL VIDET / BOSPHORUS

Russian Diplomatic Source Says UK Warship Passage to Black Sea is Aimed at Intimidation

In other words, a patrol boat appearing in the Black Sea marks a serious climb down by the Brits. It looks like the wannabe Lord Nelsons at the British Ministry of Defense have come to their senses and realized that the previously reported plan was a reckless escalation with Russia. 

Amid growing tensions between the NATO military alliance and Russia over the conflict in Ukraine, Moscow last month ordered the closure of sea routes off Crimea and Russia. The Black Sea Fleet also conducted large naval drills involving more than 40 warships armed with advanced anti-ship and anti-aircraft missiles.

It seems hardly a coincidence that at that critical juncture last month, the Biden administration abruptly cancelled the planned deployment of two destroyers to the Black Sea, the USS Donald Cook and USS Roosevelt. No reason was given for the cancellation, but it seems that Washington decided it was better to de-escalate.

Earlier this month, the Americans deployed a coast guard patrol boat, USCG Hamilton to the Black Sea.

© REUTERS / YORUK ISIK

U.S. Coast Guard Legend-class national security cutter USCGC Hamilton (WMSL 753) sets sail in the Bosphorus, on its way to the Black Sea, in Istanbul, Turkey April 27, 2021.

Now it seems the Brits are following in the wake of the US Navy’s decision to scale back on warships by sending in a patrol boat in place of destroyers.

International military vessels are permitted in the Black Sea under the 1936 Montreux Treaty. But the number and tonnage are limited given the national security concerns of littoral states.

However, with heightened tensions over Ukraine, the moves by the US and Britain to despatch serious warships to the Black Sea in the name of countering “Russian aggression” was a ludicrous provocation that could have potentially triggered all-out confrontation.

No doubt, Russia’s demonstration of its formidable naval power in the Black Sea gave Washington and London pause for thought. This reminds one of the maxim: the only language idiots understand is force.

HMS Trent, the British patrol boat, is keeping to the Turkish side of the Black Sea as it heads to the port of Odessa. Russia’s navy is closely monitoring its movement, not out of any immediate security concern, but the surveillance and locked-on weapons systems will let the Brits know of what their warships will face.

© SPUTNIK / GEORGIY ZIMAREV

Video: Russian Cruiser Moskva Test-Fires Vulkan Missile in Black Sea for 1st Time

When it was reported last month that two Royal Navy warships were heading to the Black Sea the purported assignment was part of a larger Carrier Strike Group, led by the aircraft carrier Queen Elizabeth. The battle group is due to sail from Britain to the Pacific next week. It remains to be seen if the guided-missile destroyer and anti-submarine frigate will detour from the group into the Black Sea, as was previously reported. 

But that seems unlikely now. The Brits seem to have received the message, like the Americans, that Russia is in no mood for entertaining saber-rattling on its doorstep. Especially by washed-up empires trying to inflate their ego in today’s world.

The collapsing state of British society and economy is the absurd backdrop to its navy sailing around the world as if it was the 19th century of Rule Britannia. After all the bluster, sending a puny patrol boat to the Black Sea is the sensible metaphor for running up a white flag.

The views and opinions expressed in the article do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.

Talk about “Mad Dogs and Englishmen”, the proposed British military intervention is a reckless provocation in a situation that is already spiralling out of control.

Violence is exploding in Ukraine’s seven-year civil war between the NATO-backed Kiev regime and ethnic Russians in the eastern Donbas region; Russia has mobilized its army for defence drills, and the US and European Union are expelling Russian diplomats, and vice versa.

Then the British announce they are sending warships to the Black Sea in the coming weeks to “defend” Ukraine against alleged Russian aggression, according to media reports.

Moscow has declared it is going to close off parts of the Black Sea in Russia’s territorial waters to foreign shipping as part of defensive measures. This includes the sea around Crimea, the peninsula which joined the Russian Federation after a referendum in March 2014.

Since the US, Britain, and EU refuse to recognize Crimea as legitimate Russian territory – always referring to it as “annexed” by Russia from Ukraine – it is possible that British warships will try to ignore Moscow’s naval restrictions in the Black Sea. If an incursion occurs, it could spark a military confrontation between Russia and NATO-member Britain. Then in that case all bets are off for a wider war between nuclear powers.

The folly evokes the Charge of the Light Brigade when British cavalry was slaughtered during the 1853-56 Crimean War fighting against Russia.

© AFP 2021 / PETRUT CALINESCU

US Reportedly Dropped Plans to Send Warships to Black Sea Amid ‘Concerns’ About Russia’s Reaction

The utter madness of it is highlighted by the social crisis unfolding in Britain from the coronavirus pandemic. Millions of people are out of work, the economy has tanked and the public health service is overwhelmed from over-worked and under-paid staff. The buffoonish prime minister Boris Johnson and his sleazy Tory government – scandalized by corruption and cronyism – are planning to slash £30 billion ($40 billion) from the National Health Service.

And yet in the midst of this social disaster, the British rulers are prioritizing the dispatch of warships “to confront” Russia in the Black Sea. The criminal recklessness of it is astounding. Of course, part to the logic is to distract public anger with an overseas adventure, in a time-honoured British imperialist fashion.

But there is also the effort by the British elite to promote “Global Britain” in the era of Brexit. That is, to revamp Britain’s image as a global power by conjuring notions of “Rule Britannia, Britannia Rules the Waves”. There’s nothing like a bit of swashbuckling and sabre-rattling to burnish British national pride and advertise Britain as a relevant global player.

The corrupt and inept British rulers are exploiting the conflict in the Ukraine and tensions with Russia as a vanity opportunity to project British “Greatness”.

In a recent foreign policy review, the British government labelled Russia as “an acute threat”. And it made all sorts of bravado statements about “deterring” Russia’s “hostility”. Moscow slammed the British depictions as baseless slander, demonizing Russia without any foundation.

Britain has already sent naval forces to “support” the Kiev regime and recently deployed SAS commando units to back the Ukrainian army in its fight against ethnic Russians defending their Donbas territory.

It is also indicative of British dirty tricks that the latest claims by the Czech Republic of Russian malign conduct were prompted by an investigation by Bellingcat, the supposed private media group. Bellingcat (or rather more appropriately “Smellingrat”) is a front for British MI6 military intelligence. The Brits are claiming that the alleged Russian operatives were the same men who were allegedly involved in poisoning Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, England, in 2018.

The tenuous accusations against Russia, which Moscow has condemned as a “dirty fabrication”, have led to the expulsion of Russian diplomats from the Czech Republic and calls for more expulsions across the European Union. The tit-for-tat sanctions on diplomats is provoking tensions that already are inflamed over Ukraine.

Britain’s foreign minister Dominic Raab said: “The UK stands in full support of our Czech allies, who have exposed the lengths that the GRU [Russian military intelligence] will go to in their attempts to conduct dangerous and malign operations – and highlights a disturbing pattern of behaviour following the attack in Salisbury.”

The British are past masters in the black arts of disinformation and psychological warfare. Doubtless, the British ruling class sees an opportune way to advance British interests in today’s economically challenging climate – especially post-Brexit and with the pandemic raging – by posturing as a “defender of democracy” against “evil Russia”.

It’s a cynical morality play that the British establishment is expert at. But their cynicism – as seen in sowing two world wars – is once again endangering global security and peace.

The views and opinions expressed in the article do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.

For others, however, the “Beeb”, as the organization is innocently referred to, has a much more sinister role in serving British imperial interests, or what is euphemistically called “soft power”.

Established in 1927 by order of the British monarchy, the BBC is funded out of the pockets of taxpayers – by law. Failure by any household to buy an annual “TV license” to support the corporation can result in a jail sentence.

If that sounds slightly Orwellian, then what about more ignoble episodes in the BBC’s history when it functioned as a conduit for British military intelligence? Such as its role in facilitating the 1953 coup in Iran where it played a crucial part in disseminating MI6 and CIA disinformation, as documented by historian Mark Curtis.

© AP PHOTO / EUGENE HOSHIKO

EU Urges China to Reverse BBC World News Ban, Reports Say

Today, a similar role appears to be played by the BBC in destabilizing China. The Beijing government has lambasted the British outlet for a series of reports which it condemned as “fake news”. The news organization’s correspondent in China, John Sudworth, this week fled to the breakaway island territory of Taiwan. He claims to have escaped scrutiny by state security services. But the Chinese authorities say the BBC man has evaded complaints from citizens who claim to have been slandered in his reports.

By its own admission, the BBC reporting on alleged human rights abuses in China’s northwest region of Xinjiang has relied on the “research” of the German academic, Adrian Zenz. It turns out that Zenz is more of an anti-communist ideologue than bona fide academic. His purported research claiming genocide against Uyghur people in Xinjiang has been discredited as fabrication and distortion. But, as China’s foreign ministry has pointed out, the BBC and its correspondent indulged in their own distortions about what is happening in that nation.

Videos of vocational training centers and factories are edited in such a way as to portray the locations as detention centers or “concentration camps”. Darkening video filters are used to give images a sinister aspect. Grim music accompanies images as sound track to convey to the viewer the perception of something pernicious.

Other editing tricks include showing an anti-terror drill by security forces as if it is repression against civilians.

In another “report”, the BBC set up an executive of the German carmaker Volkswagen which has an assembly plant in Xinjiang. The reporter snidely refers to the company’s past involvement in slave labor in Nazi Germany, inferring without evidence that similar practices are happening in China today.

The BBC along with American media are pushing a narrative alleging “genocide” against Uyghur muslims in Xinjiang, even though the population is growing robustly and prospering. Based on these “reports”, the United States, Canada, Britain and European Union are invoking condemnations and sanctions against China for its supposed human rights violations.

China has rejected these claims, saying they are purposed to give Western states a pretext to smear and undermine a geopolitical rival. The same toxic technique of propaganda followed by punitive attacks is used against Russia and other Western-designated enemies.

The British Bombast Corporation has dubious expertise in the black arts. For some reason, the BBC like much of the British establishment has the knack of presenting itself as a paragon of virtue, reason and civility. That patina of British genteelness gives the corporation an advantage in information warfare. “Oh my dear boy, what, us in engage in lies and falsehoods? That’s preposterous!”

© AP PHOTO / EUGENE HOSHIKO

China Denounces US Claim About Forced Labour of Uyghurs at Cotton Facility in Xinjiang

Oh yeah, who is being preposterous? Two episodes during the war in Syria revealed the reprehensible ability of the BBC. In a documentary entitled Saving Syria’s Children, the corporation was later exposed for fabricating an airstrike with napalm in Aleppo in 2013 which it blamed on the Syrian government forces. Independent journalists Jonathan Cook and Robert Stuart separately debunked the BBC’s Ian Pannell as a fabricator. There was no such attack with napalm as alleged.

In a second flagrant fabrication, the BBC’s own producer in Syria Riam Dalati disclosed that its reporting on chemical weapons allegedly used by Syrian government forces in Douma in 2018 was also a fake.

This kind of disinformation and propaganda has been cited by Washington, London and the European Union to impose crippling sanctions on Syria even as that nation struggles to recover from 10 years of war, a war that NATO powers covertly instigated for regime change using terrorist proxies from all over the world. Among those terrorist proxies in Syria were thousands of Uyghur jihadists from China’s Xinjiang.

There’s wheels within wheels, and the BBC is an important cog in the Western imperialist machine. Instead of the world’s most trusted news source, perhaps its motto should be “the world’s most busted news source”.

The views and opinions expressed in the article do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.