UK, Dutch & Danish navies escort Chinese warships heading to Baltic for drills with Russia (PHOTOS)
RT.com
19 Jul, 2017
British, Dutch and Danish ships have escorted a trio of Chinese vessels which are heading to the Baltic Sea to conduct the first stage of joint drills with Russian ships.
“A Chinese frigate, a supply ship and a destroyer are passing through Danish waters. We are escorting [them] as part of the normal surveillance we have in our territorial waters,” Klaus Thing Rasmussen, senior duty officer at the Danish military operations center, told the DR broadcaster.
Rasmussen, however, declined to reveal the exact location of the Chinese ships.
“We sent one unit out to them last night, when they were approaching Danish waters. It will take around a day in total until they leave again near Bornholm, where they entered, and we will escort them the entire way,” he said.
“Our position is that there is free passage through the Baltic Sea, and the Danish Navy acts as a stopper in the gap. That means we accompany foreign state vessels as part of our surveillance of Danish waters,” he added.
The Chinese flotilla hasn’t had much time to itself as it moves towards the Baltic. On Monday, the Dutch navy confirmed that its fleet had also dispatched an escort.
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