The fleet of ships of war Russia who left Havana last Monday, June 17, after staying in the Cuban capital for five days, in a demonstration of force by the Kremlin, remained off the coast of Florida this Wednesday.
According to satellite tracking sites and open intelligence reports consulted by DIARIO DE CUBA, the naval group, made up of the frigate Almirante Gorshkov, the tanker Pashin and the rescue tug Nikolai Chiker, It was in the early morning of June 19 almost off West Palm Beach.
For its part, the nuclear-powered submarine Kazan, the most tactically significant piece of the Russian military deployment, due to its high capacity to remain invisible to radars, would have abandoned formation to return to the north of the Atlantic Ocean. an unidentified US government official told the newspaper The New Herald.
The movements of the Russian naval group are closely followed by around a dozen naval and air assets from the US and Canada.which have been deployed since last week off the coast of Cuba and accompanied the Kremlin flotilla in its movement southwards near the US coast before arriving in Havana.
Among the assets deployed around the Russian warships are the Royal Canadian Air Force patrol plane, CP-140 Aurora, as well as the Ville de Quebec warships, also from Canada; the Coast Guard cutter Stone and the guided missile destroyers USS Truxtun, USS Donald Cook and USS Delbert D. Black, the latter, all from the United States.
This deployment was joined by the HMCS Margaret Brooke, from Canada, which arrived in Havana on a military mission, as defined by the Minister of Defense of that country, two days after the arrival of the Russian flotilla to the Island. The frigate of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member country left the Cuban capital on Monday the 17th, just hours after the departure of the naval group from Moscow.
On Tuesday, June 18, during a public appearance, Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, Pentagon press secretary, said “we will continue to monitor” Russia’s military assets.
Regarding the proximity of the flotilla to US territory, he assured that “we do not see any threat to the homeland and this type of exercises is not new. We have seen them happen over the years. So there is nothing worrying from our perspective. point of view, but, again, we will continue to monitor,” he insisted.
Also on Wednesday, the commander-in-chief of the Russian Navy, Alexander Moiseev, asserted that the campaign of Russian ships in Cuba had the desired effect and that the Kremlin “will continue the practice of sailing ships to distant maritime zones.”
Confirming that the visit to Cuba was a propaganda operation, The military man said that “the proximity of the detachment of ships of the Northern Fleet (to the borders) of our current opponent irritates someone. For us this is a very important component, and we trusted the actions of our forces. In addition, it shows support for the Republic of Cuba, which is close to us. “The campaign had an effect.”
“Navy ships, just as they solved problems in distant maritime zones in areas important to us, will continue to solve them,” he added, quoted by the Russian agency Interfax.
Moiseev added that, for Russia, the practice of moving naval forces and submarines to remote maritime zones in operationally important areas “was, is and will be.”
According to Russian media, Admiral Gorshkov is the first carrier of Zircon hypersonic missiles and also carries Kalibr cruise missiles in its arsenal, while The Kazan multipurpose submarine is equipped with long-range precision weapons.
Before their arrival in Cuba, the Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of the Cuban regime assured that none of these means carried nuclear weapons. Moscow never confirmed or denied this information.
