Moscow. September 25. INTERFAX - About 20 ships of the Black Sea Fleet that participated in joint maneuvers of the Crimean and Novorossiysk Naval bases are returning to their places of deployment, said the official representative of the Black Sea Fleet Alexey Rulev.
"Heterogeneous ship groups of the Black Sea Fleet consisting of missile, anti-submarine ships, submarines, fleet minesweeping forces, auxiliary and rescue vessels have completed joint exercises and headed for the bases of Sevastopol and Novorossiysk," Rulev said.
He recalled that in total, about 20 surface ships and support vessels, as well as aircraft and helicopters of naval aviation and air defense of the Black Sea Fleet were at sea during the exercise.
The maneuvers of the Black Sea Fleet took place against the background of the Rapid Trident-2021 exercises in Ukraine with the participation of the United States, which started on September 20 and will last until October 1. About 6 thousand servicemen take part in them, in particular, from Great Britain, Canada, Germany, Turkey and Poland.
"During the joint exercises of the Crimean and Novorossiysk Naval Bases of the Black Sea Fleet, the crews of ships as part of homogeneous and heterogeneous tactical groups worked out algorithms for conducting naval combat with surface ships of a conditional enemy, performed single and joint missile and artillery firing, conducted a complex of exercises on trawling, search, detection and destruction of a submarine, conducted a special exercise to protect objects of maritime economic activity of the Russian Federation in the Black Sea," Rulev said.
He noted that also as part of the exercise, the Bastion coastal missile systems successfully hit sea targets imitating enemy ships with missiles.
The exercises in the Crimea with the launches of cruise missiles of the Bastion complexes are a signal to the North Atlantic Alliance, which has begun to send ships to the Black Sea more often, former chief of the General Staff of the Russian Navy, retired Admiral Viktor Kravchenko, told Interfax on September 23.
"Ships of the United States, Great Britain and other NATO countries have frequently entered the Black Sea. This is our signal to NATO, " Kravchenko said, commenting on the Bastions exercises with cruise missile launches at training targets in the Black Sea.
