Russia strikes enemy warships in Black Sea drills

The Russian navy has practiced destroying mock enemy targets during drills in the Black Sea amid the presence of US warships and NATO forces in the strategic region.

The press office of Russia's Black Sea Fleet said in a statement carried by the TASS news agency on Tuesday that the Fleet's Bal and Bastion coastal defense missile systems had destroyed mock enemy ships during drills in the Black Sea.

"The teams of Bal and Bastion mobile coastal defense anti-ship missile systems from a Black Sea Fleet missile/artillery formation held drills to eliminate a group of the mock enemy's surface ships in the Black Sea," the statement said.

Mentioning that combat teams of the coastal defense missile systems conducted marches, equipped and camouflaged their positions during the drills, the press office said the naval forces also practiced delivering simultaneous missile strikes on a group of warships with electronic missile launches.

The Interfax news agency also reported on Tuesday that the Black Sea fleet had rehearsed destroying enemy targets, and its air defense systems had been put on alert at its bases in the port city of Novorossiysk and on the Crimean Peninsula.

"They... destroyed airborne targets of a mock enemy with anti-aircraft missile weapons and artillery," Interfax said in a statement.

The drills came as the US navy said on Monday that the amphibious command ship USS Mount Whitney had arrived in the Turkish city of Istanbul and would soon join forces with guided-missile destroyer USS Porter as well as other NATO ships in the Black Sea.

Russian President Vladimir Putin criticized the US-led NATO activity near Russia's borders and said his country's forces could observe the USS Mount Whitney "through binoculars or in the crosshairs of its... defense systems."

Putin and other top Russian officials have previously warned that the expansion of NATO activities in Ukraine represents a "red line" for Moscow.

Russia has repeatedly charged NATO with carrying out provocative activities close to its borders as the US-led military alliance has expressed determination to reinforce the security of member states close to Russia following what it claims to be Moscow's "annexation" of Crimea and its backing for pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine.

Meanwhile, the Kremlin on Tuesday dismissed as "low-quality fake" a US media report about a Russian military buildup near Ukraine, although it said it was up to Moscow where it moved troops around its territory.

SS