LVIV, Ukraine — Russia has deployed two more patrol boats to the Azov Sea, adding to an already powerful fleet threatening Ukraine’s security in the region, the head of Ukraine’s State Border Service said at the Lviv Security Forum on Oct. 25
Colonel General Petro Tsyhykal during a panel discussion at the forum said that the Russian vessels, the Syktyvkar and Kizlyar, had been transported through Russia’s inland waters by Oct. 24 to the port city of Azov near Rostov-on-Don on the eastern coast of the sea.
According to information from open sources, both vessels are 375-ton, Svetlyak-class missile-carrying patrol boats, built in the Soviet Union and Russia since 1988.
Moreover, the general added, in addition to that, Russia is currently transporting to the Azov Sea another, larger vessel — the Steregushiy, a 1,800-ton missile corvette.
“According to our data, the Steregushiy has already passed through (the city of) Yaroslavl,” he said. “We expect the vessel to arrive in the Azov Sea too.”
Russia’s Azov Sea fleet now consists of over 120 various craft.
“Today, the situation is rather serious and menacing,” Tsyhykal said.
However, even though Russia is aggressively reinforcing its military presence in the Azov region, the principal goal of this policy might not be an all-out maritime attack on mainland Ukraine, but rather an economic blockade, said Ben Hodges, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant general and former commander of U.S. forces in Europe.
“I believe that this is part of Russia’s effort to choke Ukraine economically,” Hodges told the Kyiv Post at the sidelines of the forum. “So that they would not have to do an invasion – to prevent Ukraine from being able to export out of (major Azov port cities of) Mariupol and Berdyansk.”
“If Russia was preparing to invade or do an amphibious operation, they wouldn’t be doing exactly what’re doing right now – I mean, these preparations, reconnaissance, intimidation – the things that would make it difficult to recognize that something was about to happen,” Hodges said.
The annual Lviv Security Forum is being held between Oct. 24-26 at Lviv’s Ukrainian Catholic University.
Headlined “The economy of war or the war of economy?” the forum has gathered top security and defense experts and policymakers from at least 10 nations to discuss the challenges of Russia’s economic warfare amid its growing military presence around the world.
