4 NATO warships arrive in Black Sea Port of Odessa, Ukraine, to stay until April 20

Four NATO warships have entered the Port of Odessa, according to the Ukrainian Navy. The ships will remain until April 20, as NATO and Ukrainian marines engage in military competitions and peer learning.

According to the statement from the Ukrainian Navy, the ships will stay in Odessa until April 20. During their visit, the crew and commanders will meet with the command of the Ukrainian Navy, the heads of the Odessa Regional State Administration, and the Odessa City Council.

“The program of the visit also includes drills aimed at testing the durability of the ships, visits aboard NATO ships by Ukrainian Navy servicemen and sports competitions between them and the ships’ crew,” the press service stated.

Last month, NATO member nations agreed to increase the alliance’s presence in the Black Sea at a ministerial meeting of the bloc on February 16.

“We agreed on two additional maritime measures: an increased NATO naval presence in the Black Sea for enhanced training, exercises and situational awareness, and a maritime coordination function for our Standing Naval Forces when operating with other Allied forces in the Black Sea region,” Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg announced at the time.

Poroshenko Orders Ukrainian Military Focus on Crimea, Black Sea

Ukraine is planning a "substantial enhancement" of its military position around the Black Sea and on the border of Crimea as part of a strategy of regaining the territory that Russia annexed two years ago.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko announced the initiative on Friday, commemorating the second anniverary of the Russian annexation. "Crimea was, is and will be an integral part of the Ukrainian state and the country-criminal will be forced to return the loot," Poroshenko said.

"I am confident that we will certainly return these two administrative territories under the Ukrainian sovereignty. This extremely complex and promising process has already begun. Today, I have instructed to organize a special session of the National Security and Defense Council to clarify our strategy for the reintegration of Crimea," he said.

This strategy will include building up Ukraine's military capacity along the Black Sea and the Kherson oblast, which borders Crimea, Poroshenko added: "The Ministry of Defense and the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine are instructed to submit proposals for substantial enhancement of military capacity of Ukraine in Kherson region and along the entire Black Sea coast. Russia has increased its military presence in the region, completes the peninsula’s transformation from a flourishing international resort into a big military base, which poses a nuclear threat not only to Ukraine, but also to all countries of the Black Sea region."

This would appear to be somewhat of a shift in Ukraine's military strategy, which has, understandably, been focused on fighting a civil war with pro-Russia militants in the eastern part of the country. Ukraine has lately been working on developing a new overall military strategy, which has been criticized from some quarters for an excessive focus on the so-called "anti-terror operation" in the Donbass and ignoring other potential Russian threats.

Also this week, Ukraine's interior minister Arsen Avakov said that his ministry is preparing new units that will be able to take back Crimea. "We need a new army, a new national guard, new police. That's what the government of Ukraine is doing right now. And you have to understand that. We should rebuild them and then, when we want, Crimea will be with us. I have no doubts about that," he said in an interview with Ukrainian television station 1+1.

This plan will include Crimean Tatars, as well, Avakov added. "Together with Mustafa Cemilov and Refat Chubarov [Crimean Tatar politcal leaders] we're preparing guys as special separate units of the national guard. The project is being prepared in order to be ready to return Crimea to us. I'm sure that it will happen when we're strong, and when we're ready."

Meanwhile, Russia continues to strengthen its military position in Crimea, and the U.S. is stepping up its efforts to train and equip the Ukrainian armed forces. U.S. ambassador to Kyiv Geoffrey Pyatt said last week that the U.S. plans to give Ukraine $335 million in training and equipment to Ukraine this year, compared with $266 million in such aid over the past two years.

Turkey grants US warship permission to enter Black Sea

 

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Turkey has given a US Navy Warship the green light to pass through the Bosphorus within the next two days as tensions in Ukraine’s Crimea region continue to divide world powers.
 

Turkish sources, speaking with the Hurriyet Daily News on Wednesday, declined to elaborate on the name of the US warship. The same officials told the daily on condition of anonymity that the ship in question was not the USS George H.W. Bush nuclear aircraft carrier as suggested in some news reports, as it did not meet the standards specified by the 1936 Montreux Convention in terms of weight.
 

The US vessel to pass through the straits will meet the convention’s standards, the sources said.
 

On Wednesday, the Russian Black Sea Fleet Staff confirmed to the Itar-Tass news agency that a US destroyer was expected to enter the Black Sea later this week.
 

On Sunday, Tass reported that the guided-missile frigate USS Taylor, one of two Navy ships assigned to the Black Sea during the Sochi Winter Olympics was still in the Turkish Black Sea port of Samsun. The frigate was deployed on February 5 along with the amphibious command ship, USS Mount Whitney. According to the Montreux Convention, warships of countries which do not border the Black Sea cannot remain in the waters for longer than 21 days. While the USS Mount Whitney left on February 25, the USS Taylor remained at the Turkish port, ostensibly for repairs after running aground on February 12.
 

Meanwhile, it was reported on Tuesday that two Russian warships entered the Black Sea through the Bosphorus. The 150 'Saratov' landing ship and the 156 'Yamal' assault ship crossed the strait around 05:30 GMT, en route to the Black Sea, the Anadolu Agency (AA) reported.
 

No coastguard boats were seen escorting the ships. The Ukrainian Hetman Sahaydachny followed shortly thereafter, crossing the Dardanelles Strait off Turkey's west coast. Two coastguard vessels were reported by AA to be escorting the ship.
 

The vessel, which had participated in NATO-led Ocean Shield and Atalanta counter-piracy operations, reportedly docked near Odessa port on Wednesday, says the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine.

 

The traffic through the Turkish straits comes as tensions between the West and Russia over recent events in Crimea, a Ukrainian peninsula located on the northern coast of the Black Sea, continue to simmer.
 

Russia currently leases a military wharf and shore installations in the Crimean port of Sevastopol. The Ukrainian government agreed to extend Russia’s lease on the territory in 2010, allowing the Russian Black Sea Fleet to effectively stay in Crimea until 2047.
 

Five Russian naval units are currently stationed in the port city of Sevastopol, including the 30th Surface Ship Division, the 41st Missile Boat Brigade, the 247th Separate Submarine Division, the 68th Harbor Defense Ship, and the 422nd Separate Hydrographic Ship Division.
 

On Wednesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that the military personnel of the Black Sea Fleet are “in their deployment sites" and “additional vigilance measures were taken to safeguard the sites.”
 

“We will do everything to prevent bloodshed," he said, speaking ahead of his first face-to-face meeting with his US counterpart, John Kerry, since the crisis erupted.

 

Over a week after the government of Viktor Yanukovich was toppled by violent street protests, fears of deepening political and social strife have been particularly acute in Ukraine’s pro-Russian east and south.
 

One day after voting to oust Yanukovich, a newly reconfigured parliament did away with a 2012 law on minority languages, which permitted the use of two official languages in regions where the size of an ethnic minority exceeds 10 percent.
 

Apart from the Russian-majority regions affected by this law, Hungarian, Moldovan and Romanian also lost their status as official languages in several towns in Western Ukraine.
 

Authorities in the Ukrainian Autonomous Republic of Crimea – where over half the population is ethnically Russian – requested Moscow’s assistance following the legal downgrade of the Russian language.
 

Western states have accused Russia of militarily intervening in Crimea and called on Russian troops to return to their Black Sea bases. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) recently dispatched military observers to Kiev. The observers from the pan-European security body are en route to Crimea, where they will monitor the situation on the ground.
 

On Wednesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov reiterated President Putin’s previous words that Russian troops had not actually been deployed from their bases in Crimea. Lavrov said that forces with unmarked uniforms which had taken de-facto control over Crimea are self-defense units that are not under Russia’s auspices.
 

"If they are the self-defense forces created by the inhabitants of Crimea, we have no authority over them," Lavrov told a news conference in Madrid after a meeting with Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo.
 

"They do not receive orders [from us]," he said.
 

On Saturday, the Russian Federation Council – the upper house of the Federal Assembly of Russia – approved President Vladimir Putin’s request to send the country’s military forces to Ukraine to ensure peace and order in the region “until the socio-political situation in the country is stabilized.”

According to the bilateral agreement concerning Russia's Black Sea Fleet military bases in Crimea, Moscow is allowed to have up to 25,000 troops in Ukraine.

Warships En Route to Ukraine and Russia test-Launches 'Advanced' Ballistic Missile

Two Russian warships crossed Turkey's Bosphorus Strait early Tuesday headed towards the Black Sea, Turkish media reported.

 

The reported ship movements came with Russia and the West locked in a standoff over Ukraine's Crimean peninsula on the Black Sea.

 

Turkey's state run Anatolia news agency, carrying a picture of one of the warships, said Russia had "summoned" the vessels back to its Black Sea fleet to strengthen its military presence in Crimea.

A Ukranian vessel was also seen crossing the Dardanelles Strait off Turkey's west coast and was expected to cross into the Black Sea, the agency said.

 

The Turkish military also said that it scrambled eight F-16 jets on Monday after a Russian spy plane was detected flying parallel to its Black Sea coast.

 

Turkey, a NATO ally, has repeatedly voiced fears about the fate of the Turkish-speaking Tatar minority in Crimea, which was part of the Ottoman Empire until it was conquered by Russia in the late 18th century.

 

Also on Tuesday, Russia carried out a successful test launch of an "advanced" intercontinental ballistic missile, state news agencies reported amid a fierce standoff between Moscow and the West over Ukraine.

 

"The purpose of the launch is to test the advanced payload of the intercontinental ballistic missile," Russia's three main news agencies quoted a top defense official as saying.

 

But the official said Russia informed the United States earlier this week that it would carry out the test launch.

 

"We have been notified of this test earlier this week. It's not unexpected," the defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Agence France Presse.

 

He said the launch involved the RS-12M Topol -- a road-mobile missile last reportedly tested by Russia on December 28.

 

The missile was first put into service in the 1980s and then repeatedly modified. It is referred to as the SS-25 Sickle by NATO and has a reported maximum range of 10,000 kilometers (6,200 miles).

 

The defense official provided no details of the missile's advanced features, saying only that it was launched from Russia's Kapustin Yar rocket launch site near the southern city of Volgograd.

 

The missile successfully hit its target in the Sary Shagan ballistic missile test range that Russia leases in Kazakhstan.

 

Russia has been testing warheads that could evade a missile defense shield the United States is deploying together with NATO in Europe over Russia's strong objections.

 

The Russian defense official said the test was designed to check the warhead's ability to "penetrate missile defense systems".

 

Meanwhile, Russian forces fired warning shots on Ukrainian soldiers at a base near Sevastopol as tensions flared in the standoff over Crimea.

 

Pro-Russian troops guarding an airfield in Belbek, near Sevastopol, fired the shots in the air as a column of about 300 Ukrainian troops approached around 9:00 am local time (0700 GMT), Oleksey Khramov, an officer at the base, told AFP.

 

"They fired several shots into the air and said they would open fire if they continued to approach," he said.

 

The Ukrainian soldiers, who were unarmed, then stopped to avoid a confrontation, he said.

In footage of the incident shown on Britain's Sky Television, a pro-Russian soldier told the approaching Ukrainians: "Hold back. I want your officer here! We'll be shooting your legs."

A Ukrainian soldier replied: "You will pay for this, you'll be held responsible."

 

The Russian soldier told the Ukrainian soldiers to "calm down" and accused them of "deliberately provoking us".

 

An AFP reporter at the base said the column of troops had since returned inside the administrative base of the Sevastopol tactical aviation brigade in Belbek, where dozens of Ukrainian soldiers are holed up refusing to abandon their posts.

 

Russian forces have surrounded Ukrainian military bases across Crimea as the Russian-speaking autonomous region has been thrown into turmoil following the ouster last month of Moscow-backed president Viktor Yanukovych.

 

Tensions are high, but fears of an imminent assault by Russian forces did not materialize overnight.

"The night was quiet," Vladyslav Seleznyov, the defense ministry spokesman for Crimea, told AFP in the regional capital Simferopol.

 

Ukrainian officials said Monday that Russia had given Ukrainian soldiers in Crimea an ultimatum to surrender or face an all-out assault, although Russia denounced the claim as "complete nonsense".

"No more declarations have been made by the Russian side," Seleznyov said.

 

In Sevastopol, a bastion of pro-Kremlin sentiment, pro-Russian activists had surrounded the headquarters of the Ukrainian navy in Crimea.

 

An AFP reporter said about 100 pro-Russia activists were gathered outside the offices and formed a human chain, as Russian forces with automatic rifles stood nearby.

 

Seleznyov said Russian vessels were also blocking Ukrainian warships from trying to leave the port, which has been the home of the Russian navy's Black Sea fleet for some 250 years.

 

The Ukrainian defense ministry says several thousand Russian troops have been sent by the Kremlin to Crimea.

 

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday denied that Russian forces were operating in Crimea, saying that only "local forces of self-defense" were surrounding Ukrainian military bases.

 

Armed men believed to be under Moscow's orders last week seized key government buildings in Crimea and airports on the peninsula.

 

Regional lawmakers deposed the Kiev-supporting prime minister and have called for a referendum on March 30 on proclaiming greater autonomy for Crimea.