US pulls Russian and Chinese warships away from Alaska

On the second day before, Russia and China announced that they would accelerate cooperation between their Armed Forces, with an eye on the context of the Cold War 2.0 that started between Washington and Beijing in 2017, today it is very active in Ukraine and the Baltic.

On the same day, September 19, everything indicates that the partnership was already underway: a US Coast Guard ship located, by chance, a formation with three Chinese and four Russian warships sailing near the American waters of Alaska, in the Bering Sea. .

The case was revealed this week by the US Navy. The ocean patrol ship USS Kimball first spotted a Chinese cruise missile cruiser 140 km north of Alaska’s Kiska Island. That would be unusual, given that boats from Beijing are rare there.

But the surprise came later: there was a convoy, including a Russian Pacific Fleet destroyer, not yet identified. As soon as the Americans spotted and signaled, the formation broke up, with each boat taking a turn. A Hercules reconnaissance plane accompanied the action.

“While the formation operates according to international standards, we will face presence with presence to ensure that there is no disruption of American interests around Alaska,” said Coast Guard commander in the region, Admiral Nathan Moore.

Arctic waters are one of the new frontiers of tension between Russians, now reinforced by the Chinese, and the West. In his review of naval doctrine, announced after the Ukrainian War, President Vladimir Putin placed special emphasis on operations in the northern region of the globe. Last week, he met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

There are some obvious reasons for this: in addition to almost half of the Arctic Ocean bathing Russia, climate change has provided more moderate winters and melting of the region’s polar ice cap, allowing an increase in the route that goes from Murmansk (Russia) to coastal ports. west chinese.

Still in its infancy, it is an alternative for Beijing and Moscow to the blockages that they may face in the seas, particularly the Chinese, which have a more developed and export-based economy – which are mostly by sea.

In addition, the Arctic is rich in hydrocarbons. Russia and France have joint natural gas exploration fields in the Yamal region, and oil is explored throughout the region. The spice, in the case of Alaska, is the fact that it was Russian territory sold to the Americans in 1867.

Before the conflict in Europe, Russians and Americans were already at odds in the waters of the Pacific, further south, near the Kremlin base in Vladivostok. On at least one occasion, a ship from Moscow threatened to ram an American destroyer that was in its waters.

Cooperation between Moscow and Beijing has intensified with joint patrols of both ships and bombers, and has been responded to with similar measures by the US.

Even further south is the already congested territory of the Sea of ​​Japan, the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea, all arenas of constant clashes between the Chinese, sometimes accompanied by the Russians, and the Americans and their allies.

This Tuesday (27), the Chinese National Liberation Army released a video in which a Russian J-15 fighter jet takes off from the Liaoning aircraft carrier and flies over what appears to be an American destroyer. The piece also shows the ship with 24 fighter jets on deck, something never seen before.