Six landing ships of the Northern and Baltic fleets of Russia are moving towards Ukraine. Three of them – “Peter Morgunov”, “George the Victorious”, “Olenegorsky Miner” – have already passed the Bosphorus and entered the Black Sea.
That’s according to Yoruk Isik, Bosphorus Observeranalytic.
#Ukraine Crisis: #RussianNavy #СФ Northern Fleet’s Kola based 121st Landing Ship Brigade vessels #ВМФ Project775 Ropucha class LSTM Georgy Pobedonosets 016 & Olenegorsky Gornyak 012 and Project 11711 Ivan Gren class Pyotr Morgunov 117 transited Bosphorus and entered the Black Sea pic.twitter.com/5EfxSSdSuS
— Yörük Işık (@YorukIsik) February 9, 2022
Three more remained: “Korolev”, “Minsk” and “Kaliningrad”.
Russian Ministry of Defense states that this is also “for military exercises.”
But there are number of problems.
Main is – thatRussia is going to block part of the Black and Azov Seas, allegedly ostensibly for missile and artillery exercises from21:00 (UTC) Feb 13 till 21:00 (UTC) Feb 19.According to Andriy Klymenko, chief editor of Black Sea News, there are no corridors for the passage of merchant ships. He also said that this had never happened in the last 8 years.
