The U.S. Sixth Fleet announced on Twitter yesterday that the USS Mount Whitney, its flagship, had entered the Black Sea for joint exercises with NATO members. TASS reported, that Russia’s “Black Sea Fleet has begun monitoring the actions of the U.S. Navy ship Mount Whitney, which entered the Black Sea on Nov. 4,” the Russian National Defense Control Center said.
Meanwhile, both Romania and Ukraine are demanding that the U.S. increase its military presence in the Black Sea region. According to a report in Defense News, the ambassadors in Washington of both countries sent letters to the U.S. Senate’s Europe and Regional Security Cooperation subcommittee ahead of a hearing it held last week on the Black Sea. “`Russia has established the large anti-access/area-denial (A2AD) exclusion zone on [the Black Sea]‚’ Ukraine’s envoy Oksana Markarova wrote in her Oct. 29 letter, adding that Moscow uses the area as a springboard for its Syria operations. ‘NATO’s ability to defend its member-states and provide possible assistance to the third countries (Ukraine and Georgia) has been severely undermined,’” wrote Joe Gould in Defense News yesterday. To respond to Russia’s alleged aggression in the region, Markarova demanded that NATO expand its rotating naval presence “to support the freedom of navigation and facilitate trade routes.”
Romanian Ambassador to Washington Andrei Muraru stated that Bucharest is already spending $3 billion at its Mihail Kogalniceanu Air Base in order to host a larger NATO military presence than the rotational presence it hosts now. “Credible deterrence can be assured only through solid presence,” Muraru wrote in an Oct. 26 letter to the Senate subcommittee. “Increasing U.S. military presence in Romania in all domains—land, air, and sea—including a U.S. command and control structure.”
