As Russian and Chinese warships prepared in South Africa for their joint exercises, Russian President Vladimir Putin welcomed China’s most sensible foreign policy official to the Kremlin. These meetings showed the strengthening of Russia’s relations with China and raised fears in the West that Beijing is in a position to offer Moscow more powerful for its war in Ukraine.
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Russia’s targets for naval training have come under scrutiny due to the involvement of Admiral Gorshkov, a frigate armed with hypersonic missiles and which serves as its primary control platform. The shipment arrived in Cape Town last week with the letters Z and V, letters also noted in Russian. weapons at the front in Ukraine and used as patriotic symbols in Russia.
Russia said Zircon missiles can penetrate any missile defense formula by flying at a staggering speed of 7,000 miles per hour, about nine times the speed of sound, to hit targets at sea and on land. They have a diversity of more than 620 miles, Russia claims.
Putin sent Admiral Gorshkov on a transoceanic cruiser last month in a show of force as tensions with the West over Ukraine mounted. He wouldn’t be fired.
The drills will include “mutual maneuvers on all 3 sides, assistance to the ship suffering a disaster, release of a ship captured by pirates, and artillery fire that, according to our program, does not come with hypersonic missile fire. “Said Captain Oleg Gladkiy. He spoke through a translator.
Russia on Wednesday denied plans to test new hypersonic missiles off the coast of South Africa. (Press service of the Russian Defense Ministry AP)
Admiral Gorshkov and a Russian supply tanker, a Chinese destroyer, a frigate and aid ship, and a South African frigate will take part in the exercises, according to a South African military statement issued last week.
Ukraine’s ambassador to South Africa, Lyubov Abravitova, criticized the timing of the exercises, which will coincide with the first anniversary of the start of the war in Ukraine on Friday.
Abravitova noted that China, Russia and South Africa, which are BRICS partners of emerging economies, have already held joint naval exercises, but said “we are involved in the anniversary of the Russian invasion. “
“The shipment that washed up on the shores of South Africa necessarily brought part of the war to this nonviolent land dressed in the letters Z and V, which they use as markings on their military apparatus when bombing Ukrainian cities,” Abravitova said in an interview with The Associated Press.
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Last week, a small Ukrainian-flagged yacht sailed through the port of Cape Town in protest. On Wednesday, an organization of protesters gathered outside the Russian embassy in the South African capital, Pretoria. They criticized the presence of the Russian and South African warship. Resolution to host it.
One protester raised a sign that read, “DO NOT play with thugs. “
South Africa, the West’s key partner in Africa, has been criticized for conducting the naval trainings but has defended itself by claiming they were planned two years ago, long before Russia invaded Ukraine.
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The trainings will be held around the port cities of Durban and Richards Bay in the Indian Ocean. Media has been restricted.