Russia sent a fleet of more than 20 warships on Tuesday to launch multiple cruise missiles into the Black Sea – days after President Biden’s rebuttal demand that the country halt its military offensive against neighboring Ukraine.
A video released by the TASS news agency, a state-owned company largely known as a propaganda outlet for the Kremlin, showed Admiral Essen, a huge Russian navy frigate, launching a series of missiles into the air.
The agency described it as ‘a joint exercise’.
News of the “exercise” comes amid mounting tensions in the region, with Biden declaring a national emergency last Thursday, imposing sanctions on more than three dozen people in Russia and expelling ten diplomats.
At the same time, he scrapped plans to send two American warships to the Black Sea.
Russian President Vladimir Putin then closed the Kerch Strait to foreign warships until next fall.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia has supported pro-Russian insurgents in neighboring republics – including supporting Allied breakaway states in Georgia and Moldova.
Putin led the annexation of Crimea in 2014 without Ukraine’s consent in a rare current border change by force.
The deployment of Russian forces is often obscure, but Putin’s government is said to have sent troops to Crimea to facilitate the 2014 annexation and secretly supported a few breakaway provinces in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine .
The Kremlin has continued to increase its military presence in the region, particularly with its naval vessels in the Black Sea.
Over the weekend, it sent two more warships and 15 smaller ships to join the fleet it already has on that waterway.
The military moves come amid a tit-for-tat between Washington and Moscow over sanctions and other diplomatic squabbles.
After Biden announced a slew of new US sanctions against Russia late last week, Moscow responded by saying it would expel 10 US diplomats in retaliation.
However, US Ambassador to Russia John Sullivan, appointed under former President Donald Trump and so far detained by Biden, was not on that list.
Late last week, the Kremlin urged the Biden administration to recall Sullivan to the US for personal talks about the heightened tensions between the two countries, something the ambassador initially refused.
Sullivan succumbed 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 to my new colleagues in the Biden administration in Washington about the current state of bilateral relations between the United States and Russia,” he said.
“Plus, I haven’t seen my family for over a year, and that’s another big reason for me to return home for a visit,” he continued. “I will return to Moscow in the coming weeks for a meeting between Presidents Biden and Putin.”
With pole wires