Vladimir Putin announces naval expansion against the United States and NATO

Russia intends to strengthen its positions in the Arctic economically and militarily and considers the United States’ desire to dominate the oceans and the expansion of NATO as the main threats, according to a new Russian naval doctrine, signed this Sunday by the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, on the occasion of the Day of the Russian Navy.

With the equestrian statue of Peter the Great on his back, it was not in vain that he was the czar who 300 years ago turned Russia into an empire with a powerful navy with access to the Baltic, Putin exposed his ambitions for greatness just as the West has condemned him to isolation.

To avoid this ostracism, Moscow yesterday announced plans to create naval bases and supply centers from the eastern Mediterranean to the Asia-Pacific region, the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf, an effort that will be supported by the construction of aircraft carriers.

The 55-page document, which contains the doctrine alluded to by the Russian president, denounces the United States’ desire to “dominate in world waters” and the “approaching of NATO’s military infrastructure to Russian borders”, calling these moves “major threats” to Russia.

In addition, Moscow considers the Atlantic Alliance, its old Cold War enemy, as an existential threat and justified its offensive in Ukraine, above all by the Atlanticist ambitions of kyiv and the Western political and military support for the neighboring country.

The Arctic is “becoming a region of international competition, not only from the economic point of view, but also from the military point of view,” stipulates this military doctrine, spread with great fanfare during the celebration of a naval parade in St. Petersburg (northwest).

One of the Russian priorities is to become one of the leaders in exploration and exploitation of the resources of the Arctic territory, especially of the Russian continental shelf, to which other countries such as the US, Canada, Norway or Denmark aspire.

Meanwhile, the war between Russian and Ukrainian troops continues unstoppable. Faced with the upsurge in fighting in Donbas, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called on residents of the kyiv-controlled area of ​​the Donetsk region to leave the territory.

Both the Ukrainian General Staff and the Institute of War Studies reported bloody Russian artillery and aviation bombardments, although the enemy has not made any significant progress in Donbas, or in the Kharkov region, or in the south, in Kherson.

At press time, Ukraine on Sunday denied carrying out a drone attack on the Russian Black Sea Fleet headquarters in Crimea, calling the Russian accusation a “deliberate provocation.”

The fighting continues, as do the mutual accusations of war crimes.

Putin, who announced in 2018 an unprecedented rearmament program with hypersonic weapons, announced yesterday that “in the coming months” the Navy will receive the new Zircon hypersonic cruise missiles, and stressed that “they have no analogues in the world”, since its capacity is practically unlimited.

The Admiral Gorshkov frigate will carry said weapons and its destination sea will be determined depending on Russia’s security, explained the Russian president.

With a maximum range of about 1,000 kilometers, the Zircon cruise missiles belong to a family of new weapons developed by Russia that Putin calls “invincible.” They have been tested since October 2020.

Source-larepublica.pe