Russia said on Thursday that the actions of the United States and Britain in the Red Sea are only worsening the situation, and the worst predictions are coming true.

This came in a speech by Dmitry Polyansky, First Deputy Permanent Representative of Russia to the United Nations, in a special session of the UN Security Council.

He said that the United States only knows “gunboat diplomacy” in a comment about military operations against the Houthis in Yemen.

He added: “We have warned from the beginning that such actions violate international law. We do not support that, nor do we support gunboat diplomacy.”

He continued: “This is the choice of the United States and the United Kingdom. We are absolutely certain that this will not contribute to resolving the situation, but will only exacerbate it. I believe at the present time that the worst predictions about what is happening in the Red Sea are coming true.”

The Russian envoy added that the United States and the United Kingdom “are obstructing the settlement efforts led by the United Nations envoy to Yemen.”

He said that Washington and London are fanning the fire in Yemen “instead of working to reduce the escalation in the region.”

While the Russian envoy was speaking, the Houthi leader, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, said in a televised speech that his group would prevent ships from passing through more shipping lanes.

At the same session, the United States and the United Kingdom called for a United Nations maritime inspectorate to do more to prevent Iranian missiles from reaching Houthi-controlled ports in western Yemen.

This comes after American officials admitted that air attacks against the Houthis had failed, with the continued smuggling of Iranian weapons to the armed group. It also comes amid deepening diplomatic divisions over how to deal with Houthi strikes, with Chinese and Russian envoys insisting that the US and UK do not have a UN mandate to launch repeated attacks on Houthi missile sites.