Russia sent a fleet of more than 20 warships on Tuesday to launch several cruise missiles into the Black Sea – days after defying President Biden’s call for the nation to drop its military offensive against neighboring Ukraine.
The video released by the TASS news agency, a state-run wire service largely known as a propaganda point for the Kremlin, showed Admiral Essen a massive Russian naval frigate launching a series of missiles into the air.
The agency described it as “a joint exercise”.
News of this “exercise” comes amid rising tensions in the region, with Biden declaring a national emergency last Thursday, imposing sanctions on more than three dozen people in Russia and expelling 10 diplomats.
At the same time, he canceled plans to send two American warships to the Black Sea.
Russian President Vladimir Putin subsequently closed the Kerch Strait for foreign warships until next fall.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia has supported pro-Russian insurgents in neighboring republics – including the support of separatist allies in Georgia and Moldova.
Putin presided over the annexation of Crimea in 2014 without Ukraine’s consent to a rare current change of the border by force.
The deployment of Russian troops is often troubled, but Putin’s government is believed to have deployed troops in Crimea to facilitate the 2014 annexation and secretly supported a pair of separatist provinces in the eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region.
The Kremlin continued to increase its military presence in the region, especially with its naval ships in the Black Sea.
Over the weekend, he sent two more warships and 15 smaller ships to join the fleet he already has on that waterway.
The military moves amid a head-to-head between Washington and Moscow for sanctions and other diplomatic lines.
After Biden announced a series of new US sanctions on Russia late last week, Moscow responded by saying it would expel 10 US diplomats in retaliation.
However, it did not include the US ambassador to Russia, John Sullivan, appointed under former President Donald Trump and detained by Biden until now.
Late last week, the Kremlin called on the Biden administration to summon Sullivan back to the United States for in-person talks on rising tensions between the two countries, which the ambassador initially refused.
Sullivan gave in on Monday, saying in a statement that he would come home for a week while promising to return.
“I think it is important for me to speak directly with my new colleagues in the Biden administration in Washington about the current state of bilateral relations between the United States and Russia,” he said in a statement.
“I haven’t seen my family in over a year, and that’s another important reason I’m coming home for a visit,” he said. “I will return to Moscow in the coming weeks, before any meeting between Presidents Biden and Putin.”
Wired Post