Its Navy, the second most powerful in the world after the United States, has recently intensified its action to protect maritime traffic
Russian President Vladimir Putin has decided to declare war on piracy at sea. Its Navy, the second most powerful in the world after the United States, has recently intensified its action to protect maritime traffic. It has done so successfully in the Gulf of Guinea, currently the most conflictive area after the Gulf of Aden was a few years ago.
On October 25, the Panamanian-flagged container ship ‘MSC Lucía’ was taken on board by pirates while sailing near the Nigerian coast, between Togo and Cameroon. Fortunately, the Russian anti-submarine destroyer ‘Vitseadmiral Kulakov’ was nearby, which sent a unit of marines to the Panamanian ship aboard a Ka-27 helicopter and managed to rescue its crew, consisting of 20 Ukrainians, a Russian and a Romanian.
The Russian ship, belonging to the Northern Fleet based in Severomorsk, on the Russian Kola peninsula, received the distress signal around noon and came to the aid of ‘MSC Lucia’. The Russian Defense Ministry assured that the hijackers were heavily armed, approached the ship in a small speedboat and boarded it while the crew locked themselves in the engine room.
The incident, according to Dryad Global, occurred 86 nautical miles (160 kilometers) southwest of the Agbami terminal, a large oil field off the coast of Nigeria operated by the US company Chevron. “When the helicopter approached, the pirates left the ship, got on the boat in which they had arrived and headed towards the coast at full speed,” says the note from the Russian Defense Ministry.
The ‘Vitseadmiral Kulakov’, the mother ship ‘Akademik Pashin’ and the rescue ship ‘Altai’ have been patrolling the area for three weeks to prevent pirate attacks on tankers and other merchant ships. The three ships sailed from Severomorsk on June 28, participated in the naval parade on the island of Kronstadt, next to Saint Petersburg, and in the Atlantic they gave support for the training of Russian sailors. Starting in August, this naval group operated in Mediterranean waters off the coast of Syria and then sailed for Africa.
Pirate attacks in the Gulf of Guinea happen quite frequently. It is on the list of the most dangerous areas for civilian ships: in January 2019, six Russian sailors were kidnapped while sailing off the port of Cotonou (Benin) aboard the MSC Mandy, under the Panamanian flag. After the apparent payment of the corresponding ransom, the six crew members were released a month later.
In December 2020, the Agisilaos tanker was boarded. They kidnapped four crew members, including a Russian, who was released in January. At the end of the same month, off the coast of Nigeria, the pirates seized the Mozart freighter, which was sailing under the Liberian flag. In February 15 hostages were released. Another Russian sailor was captured off the coast of Ghana in May and released in July.
According to the UN International Maritime Office (IMO), 95% of all crew abductions that occurred in the world in 2020 (130 out of 135 globally) took place in the Gulf of Guinea, where they patrol, not only Russian ships, but also from many other countries, Spain included. Experts explain such a high incidence in the fact that piracy in the Gulf of Aden, where the Russian Navy was also present, is practically eradicated and criminals seek other latitudes to carry out their criminal activity.
While the destroyer ‘Vitseadmiral Kulakov’ saved the container ship ‘MSC Lucía’ from pirates, thousands of nautical miles from there, in the Pacific and to the astonishment of Japan, Russian and Chinese ships concluded what have been their first joint naval maneuvers . Each fleet has contributed five ships to the exercises, which led to the denunciation of the Japanese media when the naval formation crossed the Tsugaru Strait.
Historic naval maneuvers
The Russian Navy carried out the largest naval maneuvers ever conducted in the Pacific Ocean in June. They involved a score of warships, as well as submarines, support ships and airplanes. The former Chief of Staff of the Russian Navy, Admiral Victor Krávchenko, then stressed that those maneuvers in the Pacific “have no precedent due to their size (…) there have been no exercises that involved so many forces so far.”
In his words, the exercises “in addition to military tasks, they also have geopolitical objectives. Russia shows the capabilities of the forces and means of the Pacific Fleet at a considerable distance from the coastal infrastructure (…) we thus show the capabilities of the Pacific Fleet both to the United States and to Japan and to everyone in general, including NATO ».
Last April, in the midst of a spiral of tension caused by the deployment of Russian troops along the border with Ukraine, the Black Sea was also the scene of major naval maneuvers by the Russian Navy. But the moment of maximum tension was lived during the summer, when NATO ships deployed the ‘Sea Breeze’ maneuvers in the Black Sea, causing friction with the Russian Navy that came close to ending in tragedy.
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