Russia next week will dispatch a flotilla of warships, including its navy flagship, to Syria, where the U.S. has already deployed a naval force.
A battle group, consisting of three vessels led by the heavy aircraft-carrying missile cruiser, Admiral Kuznetsov, will embark on a two-month voyage to the Mediterranean on December 6, a defence official told the Interfax news agency on Wednesday.
The news came shortly after the U.S. nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS George HW Bush anchored off Syria, along with additional vessels. Moscow has denounced the U.S. move as destabilising.
“Such steps are creating additional tensions in a region that is already overheated and are not facilitating at all the search for political settlement,” said the Russian Foreign Ministry on Thursday.
The defence official in Moscow insisted that the Russian Navy mission has no connection with the ongoing crisis in the region and was planned long ago. He said the warships will conduct drills in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean far from Syrian shores and will return to their Northern Fleet base in early February. However, the ships will call on the Russian naval base in the Syrian port of Tartus to replenish supplies of food and fuel.
A former naval commander said Moscow was sending a message to the U.S. and European leaders.
“Having any military force other than NATO's is very useful for the region because it will prevent the outbreak of armed conflict,” former Chief of Naval Staff, Admiral Viktor Kravchenko, told a Russian daily.
Last week unconfirmed reports said three Russian warships had already anchored near Syrian shores, but Russian officials refused to confirm or deny the reports.
Russia is dispatching warships to Syria at a time of renewed tension in Russian-American relations. Source