USS Mount Whitney, USS Taylor both in Black Sea ports

USS Taylor in Samsun, Turkey. (Image credit: 6n1k.com.tr via Bosphorus Naval News; links in text.)

The U.S. warships in the Black Sea continue to be nowhere near Ukraine, except in the sense of being closer to Ukraine than they would be if they were in port in Spain.

USS Taylor (FFG-50), the frigate, which was last heard of running her propeller aground

Black Sea update: USN not off Ukraine

Congratulations to Russia.  Some of her senior officials are as, er, misguided as some of ours.

Liberty Unyielding’s Kenric Ward reported earlier that Colonel General Leonid Ivashov has claimed the U.S. is “at war” with Russia over Ukraine.  (Ivashov is not in a military command or staff position now, but serves as vice president for the Academy of Geopolitical Affairs.  He has a history of stirring things up.)

Ivashov took up the refrain of some of the opposition elements in Ukraine, arguing that the presence of U.S. Navy warships in the Black Sea is a precursor to a NATO action of some kind

Black Sea naval charade continues

If you ignore the Russians, you might think the U.S. Navy ships being sent to the Black Sea for the Olympics are there to provide security “back-up” for Russian forces.

The Russians aren’t ignoring their own government or media, however.  From their perspective, and that of others in the region, it doesn’t quite look the way it’s being reported in the Western media.

There’s been an interesting sequence of events.  In late January, after hints began surfacing in Western media that the U.S. would deploy warships to the Black Sea for the Sochi Games,

U.S. to pointlessly put warships off Sochi?

Let’s stipulate that it was dumb to ever contemplate holding the Winter Olympics in Sochi.  What were we all thinking?

Now we’re stuck with the plan, however.  What to do about the real and intransigent problem of Islamist terrorism in the Caucasus, which has reared its head with a vengeance in recent weeks, and now has several terrorists – and that’s just the known threat – converging on Sochi for the Games?

The U.S. Olympic team’s security has been coordinated with a private security company called Global Rescue, which has worked with