The United States will send two warships to the Black Sea next week amid a Russian concentration of military forces along its border with Ukraine, the Turkish government said Friday.
NATO ally Turkey said the two U.S. warships would reach the Black Sea from Wednesday to Thursday after Washington notified the measure in Ankara just over two weeks ago.
“He sent us a statement 15 days ago through diplomatic channels that two U.S. warships would pass into the Black Sea, in accordance with the Montreux Convention,” a 1936 treaty that gave Ankara control of the Strait of the United States. seas, according to Turkey’s foreign ministry, Reuters reports. “The ships will remain in the Black Sea until May 4.”
Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby would not confirm the specific move on Friday and told reporters that the Department of Defense routinely sends ships to the region.
“This is nothing new,” Kirby said.
The Navy often sails its ships across the Black Sea (a body of water along almost the entire southern border of Ukraine), but the new move indicates in Moscow that Washington is aware of recent Russian aggressions.
Kirby on Friday referred several times to Russia’s recent actions in eastern Ukraine as an “accumulation” of forces rather than training, as Moscow insisted.
Fighting between separatists backed by Moscow and Ukrainian soldiers in eastern Ukraine resumed last month, ending a ceasefire between the two groups last summer. The action makes NATO countries worried, and the US European Command raises its alert status to the highest level.
Russia, in turn, has accused NATO countries that do not share a coastline with the Black Sea of increasing naval activity.
The White House said this week that Russia has placed more troops on Ukraine’s eastern border than at any time since 2014, when it annexed Crimea to Ukraine.