U.S. Coast Guard watching uptick in Russian, Chinese navy activity near Alaska
The U.S. Coast Guard is watching an “uptick” in Chinese and Russian navy activity around Alaska and the northern Pacific but encounters to date have been very professional, a senior commander said on Friday.
TAIPEI — The U.S. Coast Guard is watching an “uptick” in Chinese and Russian navy activity around Alaska and the northern Pacific but encounters to date have been very professional, a senior commander said on Friday.
Vice Admiral Andrew J. Tiongson, U.S. Coast Guard Pacific Area Commander, noted on a call with regional reporters while visiting Japan that his country and Russia share a maritime boundary line between Alaska and the Russian Far East.
“Russian naval vessels, certainly we’ve seen an uptick in their presence in that particular region. And then what we also see is an uptick in PLAN, the PRC Navy, and the Russian navy working together in that region,” he said, referring to the People’s Republic of China.
“And we have been seeing that over this last couple of years. And they are conducting operations,” Tiongson added.
Occasionally those ships cross into the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone, he said.
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