NATO's Sea Breeze-2021 naval exercise in the Black Sea is provocative muscle flexing and bears outspokenly anti-Russian implications, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told a news briefing on Thursday.
"It goes without saying that this is provocative muscle flexing," Zakharova said. "Combat deployment of such a scale near Russian territory evokes a corresponding reaction from us. Washington and its allies are systematically turning the Black Sea from a space of cooperation, created there, into a zone of military standoff. This is being done intentionally, in order to make another region of the world unstable under the United States' guidance and turn it into a source of threat".
"It is beyond doubt that this exercise conveys an obvious anti-Russian message. Examples of this are more than enough," she stressed, adding that one should also bear in mind the incident with the British destroyer that intruded into Russia's territorial waters and dangerous maneuvers by a Dutch frigate on June 24.
