NATO, Sweden, and Ukraine will participate in military exercises in the Black Sea region:
Sea Breeze 2019, which has been held annually since 1997, is a multinational maritime exercise with land, sea and air components. Its intent is to "build combined capability and capacity to ensure maritime regional security and foster stronger friendships among partnering nations," the Navy said in a statement this week.
Ukraine and the United States will host the 12-day event, meant to enhance interoperability and capabilities among participating forces. Field training exercises, with a focus on protecting critical infrastructure, force protection, and maritime security operations, will be performed.
Sea Breeze 2019 serves to distract Russia from the main NATO front of the Baltic Sea, in my opinion. And it serves to threaten Russian forces in the Mediterranean Sea by posing a threat to Russian control of the Black Sea and use of Russian-occupied Crimea, which is the starting point of sustaining Russian forces based in Syria.
And if Russia goes to war with NATO over the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania), Russia's ground forces will be stressed to cope with that level of a war. Which would give Ukraine a potential opportunity to regain territory in the Donbas and Crimea that Russia captured in 2014.
As long as Ukraine stands independent, short of nukes Russia poses no real military threat to southeastern NATO. So NATO assets in the area that wouldn't be sent north to the Baltic front can serve to pin Russian assets in place to defend Crimea and the Black Sea approaches to Russian territory in the eastern part of the sea.
