Russian warships spotted off Taiwan’s east coast ‘on way home’ from Komodo drills

Drew Thompson, a visiting senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, said Taiwan’s defence ministry had confirmed to him that the Russian warships “had not entered the 12-mile limit of Taiwan’s territorial waters”.

“I don’t think this will increase tensions, or Russia was trying to coerce Taiwan,” he said.

Thompson said the Russian warships were “exercising the freedom of navigation” and “on their way home” from the Komodo drills, which ended on June 8.

The last time Taiwan observed Russian warships sailing off its eastern coast was in July last year, when the destroyer Marshal Shaposhnikov led a corvette and a supply ship northeast through waters near the eastern county of Hualien.

Song Zhongping, a retired People’s Liberation Army instructor, noted that Russian warships had previously sailed through open waters near Taiwan for routine drills in the South China Sea and the western Pacific.

Former Taiwanese defence minister Andrew Yang Nien-dzu said the fact that the Russian vessels were sailing 26 nautical miles off Taiwan’s Suao port suggested it was “an innocent passage”.

Macau-based military analyst Antony Wong Tong also described it as an “innocent passage” but noted that the timing was sensitive given that Russian President Vladimir Putin had just survived a short-lived mutiny.

“It may be a gesture by Putin to show his support for Beijing over its Taiwan policy,” Wong said.