{"id":237260,"date":"2021-06-27T07:20:51","date_gmt":"2021-06-27T07:20:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=237260"},"modified":"2021-06-28T07:30:48","modified_gmt":"2021-06-28T07:30:48","slug":"nato-openly-identifies-russia-as-target-of-impending-black-sea-war-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=237260","title":{"rendered":"NATO Openly Identifies Russia as Target of Impending Black Sea War Games"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rick Rozoff \u2013 Anti-War.com June 25, 2021<\/strong><\/h1>\n
\"\"<\/a>

USS Porter with other ships during exercise Sea Breeze in the Black Sea, July 25, 2020. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n

NATO\u2019s military arm, Supreme Headquarters Allied Command Europe (SHAPE) in Mons, Belgium (marking its 70th anniversary this year), issued a press release on the Sea Breeze war games that will begin in the Black Sea on June 28<\/a>. Coming as they do immediately on the heels on what may have proven a dangerous contretemps between a British guided-missile destroyer and a Russian border vessel and attack aircraft off the coast of Crimea, this year\u2019s Sea Breeze, the 25th iteration, is fraught with more significance and will be monitored more closely on the Russian side than its predecessors.<\/p>\n

The NATO fact sheet repeats what has been disclosed by the co-sponsor of the exercise, the U.S. Navy Sixth Fleet, and other sources:<\/p>\n

\u2013 That over 30 (32 by one count) nations will participate in the event, more than in any previous version<\/p>\n

\u2013 That those nations are situated on all six populated continents<\/p>\n

\u2013 That 5,000 troops, 32 ships, 40 aircraft and 18 special operations and diving units will be involved<\/p>\n

The Ukrainian navy is the co-host of the exercise; only three months after its current<\/a> and first president<\/a> were openly claiming there was a danger of world war as a result of Russian military maneuvers \u2013 in Russia.<\/p>\n

The NATO release of June 25 contains a paragraph that could not be more transparent in disclosing the geopolitical context within which the upcoming war games are to be conducted:<\/p>\n

\u201cSince Russia\u2019s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, NATO has increased its presence in the Black Sea. NATO supports Ukraine\u2019s sovereignty and territorial integrity within its internationally recognized borders, extending to its territorial waters. NATO does not and will not recognize Russia\u2019s illegal and illegitimate annexation of Crimea and denounces its temporary occupation.\u201d<\/p>\n

After the encounter between HMS Defender<\/em> and a Russian Sukhoi Su-24 earlier this week, the Russian government appealed to the U.S., Ukraine and NATO to postpone if not cancel this year\u2019s Sea Breeze. It appears that plea has fallen on deaf ears.<\/p>\n

Though the expression has often been used in the past, the world may be ready to witness a Sarajevo moment.<\/p>\n

Rick Rozoff is a contributing editor at Antiwar.com. He has been involved in anti-war and anti-interventionist work in various capacities for forty years. He lives in Chicago, Illinois. He is the manager of Stop NATO<\/a>. This originally appeared at Anti-Bellum<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

USS Ross in Souda Bay, Greece, shortly before sailing into the Black Sea in 2019. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n

US missile destroyer enters the Black Sea<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Kommersant \u2013 June 26, 2021 Machine translation from Russian<\/h2>\n

A US Navy missile destroyer has entered the Black Sea for the multinational exercise Sea Breeze, the US 6th Operational Fleet has announced.\u00a0As previously reported, 32 countries will take part in these exercises.<\/p>\n

“The US missile destroyer USS Ross sailed… to the Black Sea to participate in the annual Sea Breeze exercise of more than 30 countries from around the world,” the navy said on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This week in the Black Sea there was an incident with the British destroyer Defender, which invaded the territorial waters of Russia off the Crimean Cape Fiolent.\u00a0The Black Sea Fleet and the border Guard Service opened fire in the direction of the vessel.\u00a0Today, on June 26, ships of the permanent formation of the Russian Navy\u00a0conduct<\/a>\u00a0missile firing in the Mediterranean Sea a few dozen kilometers from the aircraft carrier strike group of Great Britain.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The recent face-off between HMS Defender and the Russian Navy may be a forerunner of similar confrontations. Like the Royal Navy ship\u2019s passage through contested territorial waters, the joint NATO and Ukrainian Navy drills scheduled to take place soon in the Black Sea will be a direct challenge to Moscow<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[91],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-237260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-russia"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=237260"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237260\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":237280,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237260\/revisions\/237280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=237260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=237260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=237260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}