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| (L-R) Russian navy corvette Steregushchy, destroyer Nastoichivy and frigate Admiral Gorshkov are anchored in a bay of the Russian fleet base in Baltiysk in Kaliningrad region, Russia, July 19, 2015. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov |
MOSCOW/STOCKHOLM
(Reuters) --- Russia is sharply upgrading the firepower of its
Baltic Fleet by adding warships armed with long-range cruise missiles
to counter NATO's build-up in the region, Russian media reported on
Wednesday.
There
was no official confirmation from Moscow, but the reports will raise
tensions in the Baltic, already heightened since Russia's 2014
annexation of Crimea, and cause particular alarm in Poland and
Lithuania which border Russia's base there.
The
reported deployment comes as NATO is planning its biggest military
build-up on Russia's borders since the Cold War to deter possible
Russian aggression.
Russia's
daily Izvestia newspaper cited a military source as saying that the
first two of five ships, the Serpukhov and the Zeleny Dol, had
already entered the Baltic Sea and would soon become part of a newly
formed division in Kaliningrad, Russia's European exclave sandwiched
between Poland and Lithuania.
Another
source familiar with the situation told the Interfax news agency that
the two warships would be joining the Baltic Fleet in the coming
days.
"With
the appearance of two small missile ships armed with the Kalibr
cruise missiles the Fleet's potential targeting range will be
significantly expanded in the northern European military theater,"
the source told Interfax.
Russia's
Defence Ministry, which said earlier this month the two ships were en
route to the Mediterranean, did not respond to a request for comment,
but NATO and the Swedish military confirmed the two warships had
entered the Baltic.
"NATO
navies are monitoring this activity near our borders," said
Dylan White, the alliance's acting spokesman.
The
Buyan-M class corvettes are armed with nuclear-capable Kalibr cruise
missiles, known by the NATO code name Sizzler, which the Russian
military says have a range of at least 1,500 km (930 miles).
Though
variants of the missile are capable of carrying nuclear warheads, the
ships are believed to be carrying conventional warheads.
"The
addition of Kalibr missiles would increase the strike range not just
of the Baltic Fleet, but of Russian forces in the Baltic region,
fivefold," said Ben Nimmo, a defense analyst at the Atlantic
Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab, who has been tracking the
ships' progress.
"The
two small corvettes, with their modern, nuclear-capable missiles, may
yet have an impact out of proportion to their size in the Baltic."
SWEDEN,
POLAND WORRIED
Izvestia
said Russia's Baltic Fleet would probably receive a further three
such small warships armed with the same missiles by the end of 2020.
It
said the Baltic Fleet's coastal defenses would also be beefed up with
the Bastion and Bal land-based missile systems. The Bastion is a
mobile defense system armed with two anti-ship missiles with a range
of up to 300 km (188 miles). The Bal anti-ship missile has a similar
range.
Sweden's
Defence Minister said his country was worried by the presence of the
warships in the Baltic Sea, complaining the move was likely to keep
tension in the region high.
"This
is ... worrying and is not something that helps to reduce tensions in
our region," Defence Minister Peter Hultqvist told Sweden's
national TT news agency. "This affects all the countries round
the Baltic."
Swedish
media said the Kalibr missiles had the range to hit targets across
the Nordic region. The Russian Defence Ministry said in August that
the two corvettes had been used to fire cruise missiles at militants
in Syria.
Polish
Defence Minister Antoni Macierewicz, in Brussels for a NATO meeting,
called the deployment "an obvious cause for concern," the
PAP news agency reported. "Moving such ships into the Baltic
changes the balance of power," he said.
Earlier
this month, Russia moved nuclear-capable Iskander-M missiles into
Kaliningrad leading to protests from Lithuania and Poland.
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