Want China TimesBeijing confirmed that the PLA Navy will launch a joint naval exercise with the Russian Navy in the Mediterranean Sea early next year, reports the state-run Global Times.
The announcement was made after Sergei Shoigu, the Russian defense minister, visited China and Pakistan.
Russia is apparently seeking support from its security partners to establish a new alliance against US influence from the Far East to Europe. It also allows China a chance to demonstrate its naval power on the Mediterranean Sea, considered traditionally Western waters for centuries.
Such an exercise means that the United States is no longer the only naval power capable of sending its fleet to the waters of other nations, according to the Global Times. The Chinese and Russian navies already launched a joint exercise on the sea earlier this year. Through normalizing the joint naval exercise in foreign waters, the military-to-military cooperation between China and Russia can be strengthened gradually.
What Russia fears most is that the United States or other members of the NATO will send military forces into Ukraine. To confront the influence and expansion of the US and NATO, Russia needs such cooperation from China to show the Western world that it is not fully isolated. Russia also expressed its dissatisfaction towards India by sending Shoigu to Pakistan, since New Delhi has purchased many of its weapons systems from Western nations.
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