In November-December 2020, corvettes "Steregushchiy", "Boikiy" and tanker "Kola" took part in an unusually intensive Russian naval activity in the North Sea and areas near the United Kingdom. The deployments could have been an answer to the sailing of US, British and Norwegian warships to the Barents Sea for the first time after the Cold War earlier in 2020. Destroyer "Severomorsk", accompanied by the tanker "Sergey Osipov" has been active in the area, as well and shortly afterwards destroyer "Vice-Admiral Kulakov", accompanied by the tanker "Akademik Pashin" and intelligence ship "Viktor Leonov". "Vice-Admiral Kulakov", unusually, sailed west of the United Kingdom, in the area where the Russian Navy hasn't been known to be active since 2009 (in 2012 there was a friendly port call of "Vice-Admiral Kulakov" to Cork). Russian ships in the area included also submarine "Staryy Oskol", tug "Kapitan Guryev" and patrol ship "Vasily Bykov".