Russia to deploy new S-400 missiles in Crimea amid sky-high tensions

Moscow will soon deploy more of its advanced S-400 air defense systems in Russian-annexed Crimea, a military official said Wednesday, amid rising tensions with Ukraine.

The RIA Novosti news agency reported it would be in place by the end of the year, joining three other S-400 systems already on the peninsula, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

“In the near future, a new anti-aircraft system will take up combat duty to protect the airspace of the Russian Federation,” Colonel Vadim Astafiyev of Russia’s southern military district told news agency Interfax.

He told the news agency the new S-400 system for Crimea had undergone successful testing and was ready to be deployed.

Sources in Russian security services had said in September that a fourth system would be deployed in Crimea near Dzhankoy, a town close to Ukrainian-controlled territory.

The S-400 “Triumph” is Russia’s latest and most advanced anti-aircraft and missile defense system.

In November 2015, Russia sent an S-400 system to Syria to protect its airbase near the coastal city of Latakia.

The anti-aircraft system — constituting an array radar to monitor the skies and a missile battery — can track and shoot down targets some 400 kilometers (250 miles) away. At its position on the Syrian coast, that range encompasses as far as Ben Gurion International Airport, on the outskirts of Tel Aviv.

Wednesday’s announcement came with Moscow and Kiev embroiled in their biggest crisis in years, after Russian border patrol boats seized three Ukrainian naval vessels off the coast of Crimea on Sunday.

Ukraine’s parliament voted Monday to impose martial law in parts of the country to fight what its president called “growing aggression” from Moscow, after a weekend naval clash off the disputed Crimean Peninsula in which Russia fired on and seized three Ukrainian vessels amid renewed tensions between the neighbors.

Western leaders and diplomats urged both sides to deescalate the conflict, and the US blamed Russia for what it called “unlawful conduct” over Sunday’s incident in the Black Sea.

Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed “serious concern” over Ukraine’s decision to impose martial law.

Russia and Ukraine blamed each other in the dispute that further ratcheted up tensions ever since Moscow annexed Crimea in 2014 and threw its weight behind separatists in eastern Ukraine with clandestine support, including troops and weapons.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko asked lawmakers in Kiev to institute martial law, something the country did not do even during the worst of the fighting in the east that killed about 10,000 people.

After a five-hour debate, parliament overwhelmingly approved his proposal, voting to impose martial law for 30 days, starting Wednesday morning in 10 of Ukraine’s 27 regions — those bordering Russia, Belarus and Moldova’s pro-Moscow breakaway republic of Trans-Dniester. The locations chosen were ones that Poroshenko identified as potentially in the front line of any Russian attack. The capital of Kiev is not under martial law.

Poroshenko said it was necessary because of intelligence about “a highly serious threat of a ground operation against Ukraine.” He did not elaborate.

“Martial law doesn’t mean declaring a war,” he said. “It is introduced with the sole purpose of boosting Ukraine’s defense in the light of a growing aggression from Russia.”