Ukraine sees no threat to any country in the Black Sea region due to the holding of the Sea Breeze 2011 military exercises on its territory, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry has reported.
"Ukraine sees no real or potential threat to any country in the Black Sea region due to the holding of Ukrainian-U.S. Sea Breeze 2011 naval exercises," Foreign Ministry spokesman Oleksandr Dykusarov told Interfax-Ukraine, while commenting on Kyiv’s official position in connection with Russia’s concerns over the entry of the guided-missile cruiser USS Monterey to the Black Sea.
Dykusarov said that all the elements included in the program of these exercises were by no means linked to any actions that could be dangerous to "our neighbors."
All of the Black Sea littoral states, including Russia, have been invited to take part in the exercises, which Ukraine views as a key element of confidence building measures and cooperation between servicemen of different countries, he said.
Kyiv thinks that such events help overcome misguided phobias and Cold War-era stereotypes, as well as contribute to security in the Black Sea region, the Ukrainian diplomat said.
"We hope that all of our partners will start to share our vision of these maneuvers," he said.
It was reported earlier that the emergence in the Black Sea of the U.S. guided missile cruiser Monterey, carrying Aegis missile systems, aroused concerns in Russia.
"The Monterey was sent to the European waters under the plan to implement the U.S. administration’s step-by-step adaptive approach to the formation of the European segment of the global missile shield. The first stage in this program envisions the deployment in the Adriatic, Aegean and Mediterranean seas of an American naval force, tasked to defend the Southern European countries from hypothetical missile threats. In accordance with the official American version, the warships could also be sent to the Black Sea should the situation deteriorate in the region," the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Sunday.
"Setting aside the remaining unresolved issues related to the architecture of the proposed European missile shield in compliance with the resolutions of the Russia-NATO Lisbon summit, it remains unclear what ‘deterioration’ the American command meant when it moved the backbone strike unit of the NATO territorial missile defense component currently under formation from the Mediterranean to the east," it said.
"If a routine ‘visit’ to this extremely sensitive region is the issue, why was a warship with this particular type of weaponry chosen? What role was reserved for the Monterey’s anti-missiles in the scenario of the Sea Breeze 2011 drill, during which ‘an anti-pirate operation by NATO standards’ was exercised?" the Foreign Ministry said.
"The Russian side has said on many occasions that we will not leave without attention to the emergence of elements of the U.S. strategic infrastructure in the direct vicinity of our borders and will take such steps as a threat to our security," it said.
The Russian Foreign Ministry is compelled to state in this connection that, "our concerns have remained disregarded and that under the cover of the talks on cooperation in missile defense in Europe, work is continuing to form a missile defense configuration fraught with dangerous consequences, of which we have warned our American and NATO partners many times. This is being done demonstratively, as if showing Russia that no one is going to take its opinion into account," the Foreign Ministry said.
This sort of approach is counterproductive to the joint work to forge the concept and architecture of the future missile defense system in Europe, as agreed upon in Lisbon and at meetings between the Russian and American presidents, it said.
"Surprises, already emerging at the first stage in the implementation of the American ‘adaptive approach’ points to a high level of strategic uncertainty which the American missile defense system is creating," the Foreign Ministry said.
"Still, the more justifiable is the question about how reliable the verbal assurances are that it is not targeted against Russia," it said.
"The reconnaissance of the Black Sea waters done by American missile warships confirms again that rigid legal guarantees must be worked out that the missile defense means to be deployed in Europe are not targeted against the Russian nuclear deterrence potential," the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
Such guarantees must rest on the objective criteria of assessing whether the missile defense systems comply with the declared goal of countering missile threats from beyond Europe, the ministry said.
It is no less important to guarantee Russia’s equitable role in the development of the concept and architecture of the European missile defense system and envision adequate confidence-building and transparency measures.
"We were prepared to finally negotiate all of this in Deauville. Unfortunately, this did not happen. We will continue demanding complete clarity in these profoundly serious questions in further talks with the United States and NATO," the Foreign Ministry said.
