The Russian president announced new plans to create new naval military bases in the Mediterranean Sea, the Asia-Pacific region, the Indian Ocean and the Gulf to confront the perceived threat from the United States

Putin and his new naval doctrine: Russia's ambition to become a world maritime power

photo_camera PHOTO/FILE - Vladimir Putin on a Russian Navy vessel

Russia has taken another step forward in its belligerent stance towards the rest of the world after the already infamous invasion of Ukraine. Now Russian President Vladimir Putin has announced a new national naval doctrine. According to Putin, this new planning is aimed at countering the security threat posed by the US and its Western allies. 

Russia has recently announced plans to create new naval military bases in the Mediterranean Sea, the Asia-Pacific region, the Indian Ocean and the Gulf as part of a new naval doctrine that has received Vladimir Putin's approval, under the pretext that the United States and its Western allies consider it a threat to their own security. 

This dangerous argument has already been used by Russia's top leader as an excuse to invade Ukraine. On 24 February Vladimir Putin already announced the special military operation on Ukrainian territory aimed at "denazifying" and "demilitarising" Ukraine, as he considered the neighbouring country a threat to Russia's borders and integrity. Now he is once again citing the need to protect and maintain Russian security in order to announce a new plan to create naval bases at various strategic points around the globe. 

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Vladimir Putin's new naval doctrine is directed primarily against the United States and NATO, and announces the creation of new naval bases abroad. The 55-page directive sets out an ambitious maritime policy that encompasses crucial areas such as the Arctic and the Black Sea. It also ensures a strong fleet and an increase in the missile arsenal.

In his speech on the occasion of Russian Navy Day on Sunday in St Petersburg, the former imperial capital founded by Peter the Great, Putin praised the former tsar for making Russia a great maritime power and strengthening the global position of the Russian state.

After reviewing the navy, Putin delivered a brief speech in which he promised Russia's Tsirkon hypersonic cruise missiles, making it clear that Russia can defeat any enemy. Prior to this speech, Vladimir Putin signed the new naval doctrine, which determines the Russian Navy's strategy, including the goal of making Russia a "great maritime power". 

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Moscow sees a major risk for the Russian navy as the lack of bases outside national borders to receive and supply ships and carry out repair and maintenance work. Russia considers the "greatest challenge" to its national security to be the US plan to cut off Russian access to major ocean routes.

The new naval doctrine mentions interest in developing naval-military cooperation with India, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. India is a very relevant country due to its membership in the BRICs group, as is Russia itself, nations considered emerging economies, with great potential, that could be among the dominant economies by the middle of the century. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia is the most powerful country in the Middle East in terms of economy and energy resources, and has recently had disagreements with Joe Biden's US government due to mutual differences over oil production levels to tackle the current energy and world price crisis and the US government's lack of interest in the Middle East. For its part, the Islamic Republic of Iran is the United States' great political rival in the region, and also one of the US giant's main diplomatic allies. The regime of the Ayatollahs is identified by many analysts as the main regional destabilising element due to its aggressive stance and interference in the affairs of other states through like-minded Shiite groups, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon or the Houthi rebels who act in Yemen's civil war to undermine the legitimately established government. On the other hand, Iraq is a country with relevance in the Gulf area thanks to its oil reserves, even more so in the current difficult situation of the energy market, marked by the consequences of the war in Ukraine, which has provoked a conflict with Russia, which had been Europe's main supplier of hydrocarbons before the European Union decreed sanctions against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.

The new naval doctrine highlights the Black and Azov Seas, the Eastern Mediterranean, the Baltic and the Kuril Islands area (over which Japan claims sovereignty) and maritime communications leading to Asia and Africa as "important areas" in which the Russian fleet must secure national interests from an economic and national security point of view.

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The main naval base outside Russia is located in Tartous, Syria. Russia is the main ally of the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad in the ongoing war to wipe out the last jihadist terrorist strongholds in Idlib and in the ongoing battle against the opposition to the al-Assad government. Russian military and diplomatic support is essential for the Syrian government to maintain order and power on the ground. It has therefore always had this naval base in Tartous as a strategic point for supplies and logistics. Now Russia wants to develop other naval infrastructures on 'the territory of other countries in the region'. The Middle East is an important game board for international diplomatic interests and Russia wants to be more present there. 

The Asia-Pacific region is also of vital importance. Especially given the importance the region has acquired in the face of the dispute for world hegemony being waged by the United States and China, which is also Vladimir Putin's ally in diplomatic and economic matters. Joe Biden's US government has recently lost interest in areas such as the Middle East, although the region has now regained importance due to the global energy crisis resulting from Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and the scene of the main struggle is now in the Asia-Pacific region to confront the expansionism of the People's Republic of China, which wants to challenge the US giant's position as the world's leading power. 

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These new bases will therefore be opened in countries in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, and in the Red Sea, with whose nations Russia is trying to establish a strategic partnership as an alternative to its traditional European partners, with whom it is at loggerheads over the aforementioned war in Ukraine. 

As the EFE news agency pointed out, the Kremlin is now also seeking to solve one of its main handicaps, which is the construction of aircraft carriers, an area in which the US is well ahead. 

It is also a priority for Russia to become the main reference point for the exploitation of resources in the Arctic, something that other countries such as the United States, which accuse the Kremlin of militarising the region, are pursuing.

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