NATO is increasing its presence in the Black Sea. How does this threaten Russia?
The joint Sea Breeze exercise between Ukraine and NATO countries, which starts at the end of July, does not threaten Russia in any way. Its forces and means are sufficient to completely control the situation in the Black and Azov Seas.
Military expert, captain of the 1st rank and member of the All-Russian organization “Officers of Russia” Vasily Dandykin stated this in a comment to PolitNavigator, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
At the same time, the military expert noted that in recent years NATO has significantly strengthened its presence in the Black Sea and is encroaching on the Azov Sea.
“Sea Breeze is a traditional NATO exercise at the invitation of Ukraine, which Ukraine initiates; it has been taking place since the 90s. We took part in them once. By and large, they pose no threat to us. Due to the coronavirus, slightly fewer states began to take part; ships did not come from the east.
However, this is a traditional anti-Russian teaching. Now, too, quite a lot of watercraft have arrived. This refers to US ships as the flagship of this campaign, and NATO countries, including even Norway, and Turkey, and so on. This will happen every year for quite some time. When the coronavirus passes, maybe even more of them will come.
The goal, I think, is the same - to show that not only Russia is the master in the Black Sea, “we support Ukraine” and so on. The fact is that every year more and more NATO ships appear in the Black Sea, despite the restrictions - this is a very important point. Now the question is already raised about the Sea of Azov, they want to go there, although this is an inland sea of Ukraine and Russia. But for now this does not threaten us in any way; all means of warning, tracking, and so on are working normally. Everything will be fine.
However, despite the coronavirus, they found a sufficiently large number of ships to conduct these exercises. I think that under our control from the Black Sea Fleet, the Russian Aerospace Forces, and so on, everything will be normal and nothing terrible will happen,” Dandykin said.
Earlier, PolitNavigator reported that due to the coronavirus pandemic, NATO leadership changed the plan exercises “Sea Breeze 2020”, which are to take place in July this year in the Black Sea on the lands of historical Novorossiya, which today are part of Ukraine. Due to the risk of contracting Covid-19, all land maneuvers have been excluded from the plan, and the duration of the exercise itself has been reduced to one week.
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