LONDON, June 25. /TASS/. The incident involving Royal Navy destroyer HMS Defender could have triggered "unwarranted escalation", General Nick Carter, the chief of the UK defense staff, said on Friday.

"The thing that keeps me awake in bed at night is a miscalculation that comes from unwarranted escalation," he said. "The sort of thing we saw in the Black Sea on Wednesday is the sort of thing it could come from."

"It wouldn’t have done on that occasion, but it’s the type of thing one needs to think quite hard about," Carter said in an interview with The Daily Telegraph.

According to Carter, a "miscalculation" in the cat-and-mouse game with Russia could eventually lead to a full-blown war.

On June 23, the Russian Defense Ministry said that the Black Sea Fleet and the Federal Security Service (FSB) border guard service thwarted a violation of the Russian border by HMS Defender off Crimea’s Cape Fiolent. The destroyer reportedly traveled three kilometers into Russia’s territorial waters. A coastal guard ship fired warning shots, followed by several bombs dropped from a Su-24M plane ahead of the Defender, after which the destroyer left Russia’s territorial waters. The Russian defense ministry described the destroyer’s actions as a blatant violation of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and called on London to investigate the actions of the crew.

The British side claims that the destroyer was conducting "innocent passage through Ukrainian territorial waters". According to London, the Russian military did not fire any shots at the destroyer, but conducted "practice firing.".