A Royal Navy patrol ship has intercepted two Russian warships in the English Channel , the Ministry of Defence has said.

It comes after Defence Secretary John Healey announced last Wednesday that lasers from spy ship the Yantar were directed at RAF pilots tracking its movements off the coast of Scotland.

In the latest incident, HMS Severn headed off the RFN Stoikiy, a corvette and Yelnya, a tanker, as they sailed west through the Dover Strait in a “round-the-clock shadowing operation”.

Severn later handed over monitoring duties to a NATO ally off the coast of Brittany, France, the MoD said, but continued to watch from a distance and remained ready to respond to any unexpected activity in the past fortnight.

Defence Secretary John Healey had branded the Yantar’s move “deeply dan

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