The Times newspaper on Wednesday, August 4, named a high-ranking employee of the British Ministry of Defense who lost secret documents about the destroyer Defender near a bus stop in Kent.
This employee turned out to be 51-year-old Angus Lapsley, who worked for a long time in the Foreign Ministry of the kingdom.
It is noted that Lapsley was temporarily acting as the head of the Department of the Ministry of Defense responsible for relations with NATO and security policy in the Euro-Atlantic region during the incident. Checking the circumstances of the loss of documents showed that there were no traces of espionage in the case.
Currently, the employee has returned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but he has been restricted access to state secrets.
According to the publication, Lapsley could have been appointed to the post of British permanent representative to NATO. After the incident, his chances of taking any significant post have significantly decreased, the newspaper emphasizes.
According to the Times, many officials in the Ministry of Defense did not understand at all why the employee who allowed the loss of secret documents was not fired.
On June 23, the Black Sea Fleet of the Navy together with the border service of the FSB of Russia stopped the violation of the Russian state border by a British destroyer. The ship crossed the state border of the Russian Federation and entered the territorial sea near Cape Fiolent for 3 km.
The Russian Defense Ministry regarded the incident as a gross violation of the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and called on the British side to conduct a thorough investigation of the actions of the Defender crew. The official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, stressed that the incident is a classic provocation.
At the same time, on July 1, it became known that the British Ministry of Defense deliberately sent the destroyer Defender to the shores of the Crimea in order to provoke Russia. This is evidenced by secret documents that were found at a bus stop in Kent.
