Context
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Recently, Ukraine and the United States have launched Sea Breeze 2021, a military exercise involving more than 30 countries in the Black Sea and southern Ukraine, despite Russian calls to cancel the drills.
About Sea Breeze 2021
- Sea Breeze 2021 follows a rise in tensions between NATO and Moscow, which said last week it had fired warning shots and dropped bombs in the path of a British warship to chase it out of Black Sea waters off the coast of Crimea.
- Britain rejected Russia’s account of the incident.
- Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 and says it is Russian territory, but the peninsula is internationally recognised as part of Ukraine.
- Sea Breeze 2021 will last two weeks and involve about 5,000 military personnel from NATO and other allies, and around 30 ships and 40 aircraft.
- The main goal is to gain experience in joint actions during multinational peacekeeping and security operations.
Back to Basics
Black Sea
- The Black Sea, also known as the Euxine Sea, is one of the major water bodies and a famous inland sea of the world.
- It is bordered by Ukraine to the north, Russia to the northeast, Georgia to the east, Turkey to the south, and Bulgaria and Romania to the west.
- The roughly oval-shaped Black Sea occupies a large basin strategically situated at the southeastern extremity of Europe but connected to the distant waters of the Atlantic Ocean by the Bosporus, the Sea of Marmara, the Dardanelles, the Aegean Sea, and the Mediterranean Sea.
- The Crimean Peninsula thrusts into the Black Sea from the north, and just to its east the narrow Kerch Strait links the sea to the smaller Sea of Azov.
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