A British aircraft carrier has been deployed to waters off Russia's Far East coast for military drills with Japanese fighter jets as part of a new strategic alignment between London and Tokyo.

The joint naval and air exercise in the Sea of Japan—known in the two Koreas as the East Sea—comes five months into the U.K. Carrier Strike Group's mission to the Pacific region.

The Russian Defense Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Why It Matters

Britain dispatched the HMS Prince of Wales from Portsmouth in April for operations across the Mediterranean, Middle East, Southeast Asia, Australia and Japan as part of a pan-European initiative that seeks to maintain a naval presence in the Indo-Pacific through sequential deployments of aircraft carriers .

The U.

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