Russian Navy

British warships will sail for the Black Sea in May amid rising tensions between Ukraine and Russia, the Sunday Times newspaper has reported.

The deployment is aimed at showing solidarity with Ukraine and Britain's NATO allies, the newspaper reported.

Three Russian navy submarines punched their way through several feet of sea ice in the Arctic to surface simultaneously within a few hundred feet of each other — one of the first times the tricky naval maneuver has been achieved.

Russian jokesters Vladimir Kuznetsov and Alexey Stolyarov have released audio recorded in January

A whale found on the coast of Norway, carrying a special Russian harness and probably trained by the Russian navy, said a Norwegian expert, quoted by the BBC.

Marine biologist Professor Awund Rickardsen explained that the harness has a GoPro camera holder and a label that points to St. Petersburg. Norwegian fisherman managed to remove it from the whale.

Russia is holding naval and surface-to-air missile drills in the Black Sea region amid tensions with Ukraine and the West over the capture of three Ukrainian naval ships and their crews off the coast of Crimea last month, Reuters reported.

US defense authorities and NATO are monitoring the presence of over a dozen Russian warships in the Eastern Mediterranean, CNN has reported, adding that allied vessels from the Netherlands, Canada, Greece and Spain have been keeping an eye on their Russian counterparts.

A 56-year-old Bulgarian sailor was killed in a fire on board the ferry "The heroes of Sevastopol", which is currently in the Georgian port of Poti, the BNR reported.

The incident is yet to be investigated, but a short circuit in one of the cabins is suspected to be the cause. The sailor suffocated from the smoke during the fire while the ferry was passing by Sochi.

Residents of St. Petersburg have paid homage to sailors from the Kursk nuclear submarine, which sank in the Barents Sea exactly 17 years earlier.

Since 1980, Russia celebrates its Navy Day on the last Sunday of July. Navy Day in Russia was established in 1939. This year, the celebrations organized on the 30th of July covered the whole Russian coast line from Vladivostok in the far east to St. Petersburg in the west, from Severomorsk in the north to Sevastapol in Crimea.

The navies of Russia and China will hold a joint exercise in the Baltic Sea. According to Russian expert Vladimir Terekhov, the drills will send a clear political signal to the West.

On July 21-28, the Russian and Chinese navies will hold the first stage of the Joint Sea 2017 exercise in the Baltic Sea.