Russia is sharply
upgrading the firepower of its Baltic Fleet by adding warships armed with
long-range cruise missiles to counter NATO's build-up in the region, Russian
media reported on Wednesday.
There was no
official confirmation from Moscow, but the reports will raise tensions in the
Baltic, already heightened since Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea, and cause
particular alarm in Poland and Lithuania which border Russia's base there.
The reported
deployment comes as NATO is planning its biggest military build-up on Russia's
borders since the Cold War to deter possible Russian aggression.
Russia's daily
Izvestia newspaper cited a military source as saying that the first two of five
ships, the Serpukhov and the Zeleny Dol, had already entered the Baltic Sea and
would soon become part of a newly formed division in Kaliningrad, Russia's
European exclave sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania.
Another source
familiar with the situation told the Interfax news agency that the two warships
would be joining the Baltic Fleet in the coming days.
"With the
appearance of two small missile ships armed with the Kalibr cruise missiles the
Fleet's potential targeting range will be significantly expanded in the
northern European military theater," the source told Interfax.
Russia's
Defence Ministry, which said earlier this month the two ships were en route to
the Mediterranean, did not respond to a request for comment, but NATO and the
Swedish military confirmed the two warships had entered the Baltic.
"NATO
navies are monitoring this activity near our borders," said Dylan White,
the alliance's acting spokesman.
The Buyan-M
class corvettes are armed with nuclear-capable Kalibr cruise missiles, known by
the NATO code name Sizzler, which the Russian military says have a range of at
least 1,500 km (930 miles).
Though
variants of the missile are capable of carrying nuclear warheads, the ships are
believed to be carrying conventional warheads.
"The
addition of Kalibr missiles would increase the strike range not just of the
Baltic Fleet, but of Russian forces in the Baltic region, fivefold," said
Ben Nimmo, a defense analyst at the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic
Research Lab, who has been tracking the ships' progress.
"The two
small corvettes, with their modern, nuclear-capable missiles, may yet have an
impact out of proportion to their size in the Baltic."
SWEDEN, POLAND
WORRIED
Izvestia said
Russia's Baltic Fleet would probably receive a further three such small
warships armed with the same missiles by the end of 2020.
It said the
Baltic Fleet's coastal defenses would also be beefed up with the Bastion and
Bal land-based missile systems. The Bastion is a mobile defense system armed
with two anti-ship missiles with a range of up to 300 km (188 miles). The Bal
anti-ship missile has a similar range.
Sweden's
Defence Minister said his country was worried by the presence of the warships
in the Baltic Sea, complaining the move was likely to keep tension in the
region high.
"This is
... worrying and is not something that helps to reduce tensions in our
region," Defence Minister Peter Hultqvist told Sweden's national TT news
agency. "This affects all the countries round the Baltic."
Swedish media
said the Kalibr missiles had the range to hit targets across the Nordic region.
The Russian Defence Ministry said in August that the two corvettes had been
used to fire cruise missiles at militants in Syria.
Polish Defence
Minister Antoni Macierewicz, in Brussels for a NATO meeting, called the
deployment "an obvious cause for concern," the PAP news agency
reported. "Moving such ships into the Baltic changes the balance of
power," he said.
Earlier this
month, Russia moved nuclear-capable Iskander-M missiles into Kaliningrad
leading to protests from Lithuania and Poland.
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