It was just after 11.40am on Tuesday when Jane and Alan Kelvey, sailing their 40-foot yacht Bright Future from Lymington to Cherbourg, heard five blasts from a horn. They saw a ship with Cyrillic writing in the distance – the Russian frigate Admiral Grigorovich. “We immediately turned two degrees to port so they could see we had made a deliberate change of course,” Jane Kelvey told BBC Newsnight. A minute later came another five blasts, then four to five shots of small arms fire. “It wasn’t aimed at us – it was warning fire that went up in the air, we believe,” she said. The couple, both in their 70s, were around 20 nautical miles south of the Isle of Wight, outside UK territorial waters but fewer than 40 miles from Normandy.
The incident, which prompted the Royal Navy to send HMS Tyne and HMS Mersey to the scene, has been described as extraordinary. Admiral Lord West, former First Sea Lord, said: “Never in my 61 years in the Navy have I ever come across this before. It’s absolutely extraordinary behaviour.” The Ministry of Defence said the warning shots were “an attempt to prevent a possible collision”, while Russia’s defence ministry claimed the yacht was on a “dangerous approach”. The Kelveys disputed that. “We were definitely not on a collision course,” Jane said. “As far as we were concerned, it wasn’t an incident until the gunfire started.” She added: “It was a bit scary. I crouched down. I didn’t think our safety was in danger. But it was certainly unusual.”
“A retired British couple faced warning shots from a Russian warship off the Isle of Wight, calling the incident 'scary' and 'surreal'.”
The yacht continued to Cherbourg, where the couple docked visibly shaken. When a fellow sailor joked she should have fired back, Jane replied: “I would have if we’d had something.” No injuries or damage were reported. The Admiral Grigorovich had been under surveillance by HMS Mersey, and just a day earlier it had been shadowed by two Royal Navy ships, according to Channel 4 News.
The confrontation comes amid heightened tensions between London and Moscow, driven by the UK’s support for Ukraine and sanctions on Russia. On Sunday, Royal Marines and NCA officers boarded the sanctioned shadow fleet tanker Smyrtos in the Channel. Its captain, Indian national Ajay Pant, appeared in court on Tuesday charged with breaching sanctions by carrying 98,000 tonnes of oil. Shadow defence secretary James Cartlidge said the warning shots were “very concerning” and that the UK should “be in no doubt that Russia poses a direct threat”. The MoD said it is investigating the incident but views it as isolated and not linked to the Smyrtos seizure.
For the Kelveys, the memory is unsettling. “As we sailed away, we said to each other, ‘What the hell just happened?’” Jane recalled.