US in uphill battle to challenge Russia in Black Sea
by Agence France-Presse
October 22, 2021
On the day that two Russian fighter jets suddenly scrambled to intercept a US bomber refueling mid-air near Crimea, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was visiting three Black Sea states.
The high-profile trip for the normally low-key Pentagon chief demonstrated that aside from facing down Chinese military expansion in the Indo-Pacific, the administration of US President Joe Biden sees the Black Sea as a key front in challenging Russia.
And the scrambling of the Russian Sukhoi jets on Tuesday shows how the region is perhaps the riskiest flashpoint on NATO’s eastern flank and how steep the challenge is for the Pentagon in contesting Moscow’s dominance of the Black Sea.
https://www.defencetalk.com/us-in-uphill-battle-to-challenge-russia-in-black-sea-77462/
