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The US navy has increased its presence in the Black Sea days after President Biden warned Moscow that he would “act firmly” against Russian aggression in the region.

The USS Porter, a guided missile destroyer, entered the sea late last week, joining another, the USS Donald Cook, and a refuelling ship, the USNS Laramie. The vessels have joined Nato patrols and exercises in the area.

It is the largest deployment of the US navy in the Black Sea since 2017, and it has prompted Russia to deploy a Bastion missile defence system to Crimea, the peninsula it annexed from Ukraine in 2014. The Russian navy also deployed one of its warships, the Admiral Makarov, to conduct its own exercises in the area, including locking onto air targets and jamming electronic communications.

In a statement, the US sixth fleet said: “The ultimate goal of these operations is to refine joint air defence procedures to better defend US navy ships.”

A Nato spokesman said that the alliance had increased its presence in the Black Sea “in response to Russia’s illegal and illegitimate annexation of Crimea from Ukraine and its ongoing military build-up”.

Three of the six states with coastlines on the Black Sea — Turkey, Romania and Bulgaria — are Nato members, while Ukraine and Georgia co-operate with the alliance, regularly joining its military exercises in the region.

Russia, the sixth state bordering the sea, began expanding its footprint in 2008 when it annexed two regions of Georgia, including the Abkhazia, a coastal province. Moscow’s seizure of Crimea has allowed it to build up the strength of its Black Sea fleet, which is based in the city of Sevastopol, and which it has used to support its military operations in Syria.

Russia has also militarised the Crimean peninsula, stationing more than 30,000 troops there since 2014, a nearly threefold increase. It has also built a bridge across the Kerch Strait connecting the east of the peninsula to the Russian mainland, which has restricted shipping access into the Sea of Azov despite a 2003 treaty between Moscow and Kiev that guarantees unimpeded access.

In November 2018, Russia captured three Ukrainian naval vessels in the strait, holding their 24 crew for eight months until they were returned to Ukraine in a prisoner swap. The ships were handed back to Ukraine in November 2019.

Biden spoke with President Putin by telephone last Tuesday for the first time since he entered the White House. According to a readout of the conversation, Biden raised concerns about a number of alleged Russian actions, including interference in the 2020 US election, and restated Washington’s backing for Ukraine. It marks a departure from the presidency of Donald Trump, who often appeared willing to overlook Putin’s aggressions in the region.

Nato has been increasing its patrols and exercises in the Black Sea in recent years, and has deployed fighter jets to the Mihail Kogalniceanu airbase close to the Romanian city of Constanta.

However, Turkey’s warming relationship with Russia in recent years has caused headaches for the alliance, particularly with its purchase of the S-400 missile defence system, which Ankara tested in Sinop, a city on the Black Sea coast, in October.

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A Russian fighter jet flew low over the Black Sea on January 31, near the USS Donald Cook, a naval missile destroyer operating in the Black Sea, according to a tweet from US Naval Forces Europe-Africa/US 6th Fleet, which tweeted video of the incident.
Source: CNN

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