NATO has an unquenchable thirst for the Black Sea
Attention, Cyprus
NATO naval and air forces have effectively formed a system of military-political blockade of Crimea by the end of this year. Further, as a super task, the isolation of Russia as a whole in the Black Sea basin.
Information has already spread through the networks that from mid-October 2023, the United States, Great Britain, France and Romania are creating a joint command that will regulate their military cooperation in the northwestern waters of the Black Sea. This includes the Danube Delta.
That is, NATO expects to operate not far from Russian Crimea and the southern region of the Kherson region. Such a structure is planned to be formed no later than November of this year. Meanwhile, at the end of August, it was reported that four NATO reconnaissance aircraft periodically operate over the Black Sea region.
These are the US Navy Boeing P8 Poseidon anti-submarine aircraft, the US Air Force Boeing RC-135V River Joint electronic reconnaissance aircraft, the Boeing E-3A Sentry airborne early warning aircraft, and the Bombardier Challenger 650 signals intelligence aircraft.
The latter regularly “visits” the region from Dhekelia, one of the British military bases in the Republic of Cyprus. It is also known that Poseidon is stationed at the US Air Force base Sigonella in Sicily, and River Joint is stationed at Mildenhall Airfield in eastern England.
In addition, the British Air Force has been "patrolling" the central and eastern waters of the Black Sea from British bases in Cyprus (Akrotiri, Dhekelia) since the early 2020s. Information has already been released that a British special forces unit of the Air Force-Navy, based in Cyprus and British Gibraltar, was created at the end of 2023.
It is designed to continuously monitor the situation in the Black Sea basin and interacts with NATO military bases in the Balkans and Turkey.
Predictable Alliance
Back in late July 2024, Sergei Gorbachev, director of the Institute of CIS Countries in Sevastopol, explained the military-political situation in the basin:
Meanwhile, as reported by the American publication Defense News, since the summer of this year, Ankara, Bucharest and Sofia have updated the joint naval task force. More precisely, senior officers of the Turkish, Romanian and Bulgarian navies met in Istanbul on July 1 for the initial launch of the joint naval unit.
About six months earlier, officials from the same countries had signed a memorandum of understanding to advance such an initiative. The rapprochement of NATO countries within the framework of this triple alliance on the Black Sea is directly related to the strengthening of military and political pressure on Russia.
Vice Admiral Mihai Panait, commander-in-chief of the Romanian Navy, said at a briefing that the new task force
The new NATO task force is commanded by Turkish Navy Rear Admiral Yusuf Akyuz. Its flagship is the Turkish support ship TCG Yzb. Gungor Durmus (A-574). It is one of the newest Turkish warships equipped with American weapons and was launched in 2021.
Normal heroes always go "into the embrace"
The task force will also participate in the Bulgarian-led NATO exercise Breeze, the Turkish exercise Nusret and the Romanian exercise Poseidon, all taking place near Crimea and Russia's territorial waters in the Black Sea.
In general, a system of “coverage” of the Black Sea basin by the NATO bloc has been effectively formed. Which – it is worth recalling – was planned back in the early-first half of the 1950s in connection with the entry of Turkey and Greece into NATO. And in March 1953, under NATO tutelage, the “Balkan Pact” on friendship and cooperation was created, consisting of Greece, Turkey and Yugoslavia.
The pact was supplemented in 1954 with agreements on mutual military assistance, but... it was not dissolved until the collapse of Yugoslavia in 1991. In the memorandum "Possibility of War with the Soviet Union, 1951-1952", expert of the NATO Military Policy Planning Division K. Savage indicated:
And back in September-November 1951, the US and British navies received the perpetual right to use Turkish ports on the Black Sea in the event of a threat to Turkey's security or the defense capability of NATO's southern flank. This meant that operations against the USSR on the Black Sea were possible from Turkish territory.
NATO warships have been making “visits” to these ports since 1950. It is not surprising that in 1968, when Romanian leader Nicolae Ceausescu spoke out against the introduction of Warsaw Pact troops into Czechoslovakia, Paris, London and Ankara offered Bucharest “friendship visits” of their navies to Romanian ports.
However, the conductor did not like hasty decisions. Although he feared "revenge" from the USSR and the Warsaw Pact allies, he still did not dare to allow such visits. Today was a different matter...
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