Posted on 12/15/2017 2:08:33 PM PST by Thistooshallpass9
Russian President Vladimir Putin submitted an agreement to the State Duma on December 13 for Moscow to create a full-fledged naval base in Syria’s Mediterranean coastal city of Tartus.
Former head of the Russian Navy’s Main Staff, Adm. Viktor Kravchenko, told Interfax that the move “will strengthen the operational capabilities of our fleet in the Mediterranean and, in general, Russia’s position in the Middle East.”
Since the Soviet era, Russia has maintained a logistics hub in Tartus, but Kravchenko said “this is a small territory” with considerable limitations.
At present, first rank ships must remain in Tartus’s outer roads and be refueled and serviced with the assistance of auxiliary fleet vessels. The new plan calls for the channel to be deepened and widened enough to accommodate such large ships.
The expanded base will involve “all types of protection and defense, call of ships—to cruisers of the first rank,” Kravchenko said. “They will be able to replenish supplies, and personnel will have a rest.”
The new plan also calls for constructing a complex of administrative and residential buildings, and adding two new piers that can moor vessels with a displacement of more than 10,000 tons.
Vasily Kashin, senior research fellow at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow spoke to the Trumpet about the Tartus expansion on December 15. “Our presence in Mediterranean is more limited than it used to be,” he said of the Russian naval influence in the region. Due to reductions since the Soviet era, the current Russian presence there is generally “maintained by smaller ships like frigates or corvettes,” he said. “Such ships have shorter endurance and need to undergo refueling and maintenance more frequently.”
Kashin says for this reason, Russia will benefit from having “a better-equipped base” at Tartus.
Kashin added that the Tartus expansion will give Russia “a tripwire force,” which can “prevent possible attempts to attack or blockade Russian partners in the region, such as Syria.”
Russia, due to unsatisfactory natural geography, has long desired warm water ports. Moscow’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014 was motivated largely by this desire, and Russia’s expansion in Tartus is driven partly by the same aspiration. Having a full-fledged naval base in Tartus would give Russia invaluable options if the Bosporus and/or Dardanelles were blocked. A greater presence in Tartus will also boost Russia’s ability to project power into the Middle East and the Mediterranean.
Russia’s growing control over the Middle East, its ability to project power into the Mediterranean, its increasing focus on military preparedness, and its expansionism into Ukraine and beyond have many Europeans concerned. And this concern will help to transform Europe into a unified and formidable force.
“We need to watch what is happening in Russia and how Europe responds to it,” Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry writes in The Prophesied ‘Prince of Russia.’ “[S]ome Europeans recognize that Putin’s power maneuver on Ukraine was no isolated incident …. The Ukraine crisis continues, and America is sleeping through it. But Europe is deeply alarmed! The changes this crisis provokes in Germany and Europe will shake the nations!”
To understand more, order a free copy of Mr. Flurry’s booklet The Prophesied ‘Prince of Russia.’
Alas Babylon!..................
To the victor go the spoils.
Why they would want a base there is beyond me. What do they have that the moozlems want? It will not stop Israel from attacking if they have to. Mediterranean port?
His name is Vladimir, not Victor.............
A warm water port..................
“And I will put hooks in your jaws...,”
This could be a temporary blessing or a long-range curse to Israel. Russia has muzlim problems of their own, so maybe they can help with Israel’s and ours.
But longterm, I think it is a step toward some pretty apocalyptic stuff.
Stay tuned (and fascinated).
Naval base ... Syria... would this be the world’s largest dry-dock or what? Or maybe a jet-ski base on the Euphrates river? :)
We invaded Iraq and didn’t even get a T-shirt, not to mention a forward operating base.
This whole thing in Syria started when the Syrians refused to allow Qatar and Saudi Arabia to build a gas pipeline across their territory to Europe.
See, Russia has a stranglehold on Europe because they depend on Russia for their natural gas. The pipeline across Syria would have undercut Russia’s leverage in Europe so Syria, a treaty ally of Russia, refused the pipeline.
In a sheer coincidence Obama and John McCain suddenly decided that the Assad regime, who posed no threat to the USA, needed to be overthrown so the US ginned up some rebels from the anti-Alawite elements in Syria, illegally armed them, and set them loose. Naturally some of those rebels were the people who started ISIS.
Millions of Syrians have been displaced and hundreds of thousands murdered all because Obama and McCain wanted a gas pipeline to undercut Russian power in Europe.
Now the US has lost a war we had no business starting and Putin is doubling down on Russia’s defense of Syria because it serves his Syrian friend Assad and because it serves Russia’s national interests. The expanded naval base in Syria will not only give Russia a greater presence in the region it will also give the Russians a greater justification to destroy any American military assets that attack Syria.
All because Obama and McCain wanted a gas pipeline.
The reason is obvious if you understand a few simple things. Russia has only one major naval base that is ice-free year round: Sevastopol, located in Crimea on the Black Sea. But in order to "break out" from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, Russia's fleet must transit two of the world's narrowest and most strategic choke points. Locate the Bosporus and the Dardanelles straits on an atlas and you will understand Russia's greatest strategic vulnerability.
Syria is the only practically feasible path for a Saudi and Qatari natural gas and oil pipeline to Europe
The Saudis and Qataris will one day get their pipeline, but the line will be controlled by Russia and the tankers will get loaded in the Russian port
The Russians have a military base on the Mediterranean. Their stake in a “warm-water port” has been part of their strategy since the days of Ivan the Terrible, and they view the Muslims as just a bump in the road, an irritating part of doing business. Of course, to supply the base by sea, they must traverse the Bosporus, which passes through Turkish territory, or by air, which again passes over Turkish air space, but then, there is an eastern air route which passes over the Caspian Sea, Iran, Iraq and Syria, not so much further. To do this they must remain on some kind of engagement with one side or the other among the Muslim factions, and keep them in constant ferment one with another.
Geopolitics on the grand master chess game board.
We have no business being in Syria or arming, training, and financing "friendly rebels". We had one for awhile, until ISIS, which is the direct result of our meddling, was defeated. Now we should get out. Syria's a sovereign nation. Assad invited Russia to help him; we have no permission to be there. It defies logic that Assad used chemical weapons against his own people; it was of no benefit to him. It was either rogue elements in his Army or ISIS and its sympathizers.
McCain and hillary should be charged with war crimes and spend the rest of their miserable lives incarcerated by the Hague.
Well, they get the warm-water port they’ve always desired.
definitely Russia established its Syria naval base years ago to get a Mediterranean port
Russia cannot count on getting its ships thru the Bospherus Straits , at least not during any wartime
“And I will put hooks in your jaws...,”
My thought too...
What’s a half fledged naval base look like?
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