Australia yesterday said it is tracking four Russian navy ships off its northern coast, whose presence Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said is a sign of Moscow’s military assertiveness, amid strained relations after the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 in Ukraine.
The appearance of the fleet coincides with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s arrival at the G20 summit in Brisbane this weekend and follows a highly anticipated exchange between the Kremlin leader and Abbott in Beijing.
Putin’s presence in Brisbane drew questions, given Canberra’s anger at the downing of the Malaysia Airlines passenger jet in July over rebel-held eastern Ukraine, a disaster that killed 298 people, including 38 Australian citizens and residents.
Photo: EPA
However, the G20’s consensus was that Putin should attend despite Kiev and the West claiming the plane was blown out of the sky with a missile supplied by Russia, an allegation Moscow denies.
“Defense is monitoring Russian naval vessels that are currently transiting through international waters to the north of Australia,” the Australian Defence Force said in a statement.
Australian media reports said they include a “heavily armed” cruiser and destroyer, a tug boat and a refueling vessel.
Canberra said the Russian Navy has previously been deployed in conjunction with major international summits. A warship from Russia’s Pacific Fleet accompanied former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev’s visit to San Francisco in 2010.
John Blaxland, an international security expert at the Australian National University, said having ships off Australian waters was “huff and puff” by Putin.”
“This is a show of force, a stage-managed event and is all for show,” he said. “People don’t go around doing this unless they feel insecure and need to assert themselves. It’s consistent with Putin’s chest-out, posturing behavior. It bolsters his domestic credentials.”
Abbott famously vowed to “shirtfront” Putin — an Australian rules football term in which a player charges an opponent — in Brisbane over the downing of MH17, but the pair met on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Beijing this week without incident.
“It’s not unusual for Russians to deploy in the vicinity of major conferences, and let’s not forget that Russia has been much more militarily assertive in recent times,” Abbott said yesterday in Myanmar, on the sidelines of the East Asia Summit.
“We’re seeing — regrettably — a great deal of Russian assertiveness right now in Ukraine. So, it’s not really surprising, and we are doing what you’d expect us to do. We are carefully monitoring the movements of these ships when they are in Australia’s approaches,” he said.
Former Australian Army head Peter Leahy, now director of the National Security Institute at the University of Canberra, said the naval deployment was a “less than subtle demonstration of power.”
“I rather think it’s likely to be pre-planned and it’s more associated with the G20 meeting in Brisbane rather than the comments from the prime minister, but I think Russia is sending us a message... It’s less than subtle, but it’s saying it’s a maritime power, it’s got global reach, it’s got interests in this part of the world,” he told National Radio.
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