A bunch of classified documents of the uk government, containing highly confidential details about British military and policy , were found at a stop in Kent, southeast of London, news agencies reported on Sunday. The 50-page document was discovered with the assistance of an anonymous tip to British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). the united kingdom government said that it had been investigating how the documents landed there, adding that an indoor inquiry had been embarked on the matter.
According to press agency AFP, the documents found at the stop contained 50 pages of top-secret information about Britain's ministry of defence, including a possible military presence in Afghanistan at the top of NATO operations there. Primarily, however, the papers addressed the Russian reaction to the passage of a British warship through Ukrainian waters off the coast of Crimea.
The warship in context may be a British navy destroyer named the HMS Defender, which is sailing on the brink of the coast of Crimea, as per the BBC. Russia had annexed Crimea from Ukraine back in 2014, so it saw British destroyer's presence within the Black Sea as a violation of its body of water and fired a series of warning shots in retaliation, the broadcaster added.
It is to be noted that Russia's annexation of Crimea has still not been recognised by a huge majority of the international community. The UK, however, had denied any malintent and said the ship was simply making "an innocent passage through Ukrainian body of water in accordance with law of nations".
Now, the retrieved documents seem to point out that Britain already knew the type of reaction it might provoke from Russia and yet continued to pursue its course, lest an alternate route made Moscow consider the united kingdom as "being scared/running away". The papers also revealed that by letting the warship take this route, the united kingdom government was, after all, hoping to realize a chance to "engage with the Ukrainian government... in what the united kingdom recognises as Ukrainian body of water."
The secret documents retrieved at the Kent stop were reported lost from the Ministry of Defence last week, the govt said, adding that investigation is underway into the matter. "It should not be ready to happen," Brandon Lewis, minister for Northern Ireland , was quoted as saying. "It was properly reported at the time... there's an indoor investigation into that situation," he added.
