According to Interfax, citing a source in the General Staff of the Russian Navy, a Far Zone Command will be created in the Russian Navy. It will be created for operations in the southern seas, including the Red Sea, to protect shipping from sea pirates.
The Far Zone command is planned to be created by 2013. "The new operational squadron will on an ongoing basis solve the problems of ensuring the security of Russian civilian shipping and combating sea piracy in the Horn of Africa," the source said.
According to a representative of the General Staff of the Navy: "The basis of the new formation will be the grouping of ships of the Black Sea Fleet, and its prototype will be the 5th Mediterranean squadron of the USSR Navy and the 8th Indian operational squadron."
Currently, work is underway on issues related to the material and technical support of the future association. The issue of basing ships is being studied. During the Soviet era, we had a logistics center for the Mediterranean squadron in the Syrian port of Tartus, and one of the bases of the 8th Indian operational squadron was the Yemeni island of Socotra. Currently, only the PMTO remains in Syria. It consists of floating docks, a workshop, storage facilities and various utility facilities. But this object can provide the operation of ships only in the Mediterranean Sea, and it is too far for the Indian Ocean zone.
Ships of the Russian Navy began to carry out their mission of protecting shipping in the Red Sea in October 2008, when the Baltic Fleet patrol boat "Neustrashimy" took over on duty. He carried out his mission until January 2009. Since that time, ships of all 4 fleets of the Russian Federation have been on duty in that region. At present, a detachment of ships of the Pacific Fleet is on watch as part of the large anti-submarine ship "Admiral Vinogradov", the rescue tug SB-522 and the tanker "Pechenga".
According to the press secretary of the commander of the Pacific Fleet Captain 1st Rank Roman Martov, the ships during the combat watch at the Horn of Africa held ten international convoys of merchant ships from different countries. Now the detachment has reached the point of formation of the next caravan, already the eleventh in a row. In the coming days, the convoy under the cover of "Admiral Vinogradov" will begin moving along the security corridor from the Arabian Sea in the direction of the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait.
The creation of the command of the Far Zone is the right step on the part of the command, the Russian flag should be present in the southern seas. But the question arises, why did we leave Vietnam - Cam Ranh? It might be worth rebuilding this base, since we are reestablishing our presence in the South.
