Defence

Meeting in Washington D.C. on Thursday (4 April 2019), NATO Foreign Ministers agreed a package of measures to improve NATO's situational awareness in the Black Sea region and strengthen support for partners Georgia and Ukraine.

US Permanent Representative to NATO, Ambassador Kay Bailey Hutchison, said that a package of measures will be approved during a two-day conference to begin in Washington on Wednesday

Benyamin Poghosyan argues in this op-ed for commonspace.eu that it is time for Armenia to deepen its relations with Iran and China, out of necessity rather than choice.

Last summer in Brussels, NATO leaders reconfirmed the 2008 Bucharest Summit decision that Georgia will become a member of NATO. In Tbilisi, the Secretary General praised Georgia's progress in making important reforms and encouraged it to continue these efforts.

Ahead of the meeting, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the alliance will continue to call on Russia to come back into compliance with the INF Treaty

President Petro Poroshenko called the vote a "historic day" that will strengthen his government's resolve to carry out economic reforms.

"We can see that our Western colleagues are reluctant to communicate on an equal footing on various platforms," the Russian Foreign Minister noted during a speech in Bishkek. "We are calm about it. Arrogance and a sense of superiority never made anyone more attractive," he said..

A statement by the US Sixth Fleet, based in Naples, said the U.S. Navy routinely operates in the Black Sea consistent with the Montreux Convention and international law.

The USS Fort McHenry, with embarked elements of the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit, began its north-bound transit of the Dardanelles Strait, en route to the Black Sea, on January 6, 2019.