Russia conducts live fire exercise near US-led naval drill

Russian warships have carried out a live fire training exercise in the Black Sea, the country’s Black Sea fleet said on Thursday, as Ukraine and NATO countries held military drills in the same wider area, Reuters reported on Thursday.

The Sea Breeze drills, led by Ukraine and the United States, follow a spike in tensions between NATO and Moscow after Russia last week said it had fired warning shots and dropped bombs in the path of a British warship to expel it from its territorial waters near Crimea.

However, London rejected Moscow’s account of the incident near the peninsula, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

Moscow had called for the Sea Breeze exercise to be canceled before it began, and the Russian defense ministry has said it will react to safeguard national security if necessary.