Warships are on move in the Pacific, Baltic and Northern fleets, as well as the Caspian flotlilla. Russia on Wednesday started exercise July Storm with 150 warships and supply vessels, 120 aircraft, 10 coastal missile systems and 15,000 military personnel, the Defense Ministry reported.
The Northern Fleet’s headquarter in Severomorsk has not yet detailed how many of its navy ships that are participating, but a video posted by the press service shows the frigate Admiral Golovko and the cruiser Marshal Ustinov both sailing out the Kola Bay with course for the Barents Sea.
A different sequence of the video shows two minesweepers sailing out from the naval town of Polyarny.
Exercise July Storm happens in the period from July 23 to 27 and is headed by Admiral Moiseev, the former chief of the Northern Fleet that last year was appointed by Vladimir Putin to be the top commander of the Russian Navy.
Last December, Moiseev warned about unfriendly states increasing the military presence in the Arctic. “The Arctic is one of the key regions where the confrontation of the world’s leading states is unfolding,” he said at the time. […]
About half of the area is in Russian exclusive economic zone, while the other is in Norwegian waters. The area covers most of the southern part of the previous disputed waters between Norway and Russia.
An agreement on a maritime delimitation line for the Barents Sea and the Arctic Ocean between the two countries was signed in 2010. Läs artikel