laststandonzombieisland

A long term goal of the Russian military, ever since Peter the Great established that country’s navy in October 1696, is to have a place where their fleet didn’t get frozen into their slips come winter. You see the Baltic ports freeze solid as does Archangel in the far north. Vladivostok and Petropavlovsk in the Pacific do as well.

This aching led to expansion into the Crimea, courting Serbia in the 1900s to have a place in the sunny Mediterranean, building Murmansk in the middle of the permafrost reindeer land (which even though it is further north than Archangel, remains somewhat ice-free year round due to the warm North Atlantic Current) and getting involved in Manchuria in 1895 to steal Port Arthur out right from under Japan’s nose (which in the end didn’t work out too well for them in 1905). This is a reason why you still see the Russians being chummy to Syria when almost every other country wont return their phone calls– so they can send the occasional ship to Tartus where they have had a continuous presence since 1971.

The truth is, in winter its just cold as shit in Russia’s traditional naval ports, and further, if your ships are guaranteed to be locked in ice five months out of every year, do you really have a navy?

To reinforce this, here is a picture of the Republic of Korea’s Navy Ship Choe Yeong (DDH-981).

This handy little 5500-ton/492-foot long Chungmugong Yi Sun-sin-class frigate (the Koreans term it a destroyer) are pretty well-armed with a 32-cell strike-length Mk 41 VLS for SM-2 Block IIIA area-air defense missiles, one 21-round RAM inner-layer defence missile launcher, one 30 mm Goalkeeper close-in weapon system, one Mk 45 Mod 4 127 mm gun, eight Harpoon anti-ship missiles and two triple 324 mm anti-submarine torpedo tubes.

Now here is a picture of the ROKS Choe Yeong in Vladivostok for a port visit last month.

No, this is not an iceberg, but a Korean frigate in a Russian port

The view of the forward section over the bow, and yes, there is a 5-inch gun under there, somewhere.

Now you see why even the Russians say nyet to their ports in winter…

Further south he says….that way…