A U.S. Navy submarine arrived in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on Thursday, a day after Russian naval vessels arrived in the area for drills with the island nation.
“The fast-attack submarine USS Helena is in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as part of a routine port visit as it transits the U.S. Southern Command geographic area of responsibility while conducting its global maritime security and national defense mission,” U.S. Southern Command said.
The Navy rarely announces specific movements of its submarines, indicating U.S. defense officials wanted the world to know the location of the USS Helena.
The Department of Defense said it doesn’t view the Russian naval fleet arrival as a threat to the United States.
“We’ve been tracking the Russians’ plans for this. This is not a surprise. We’ve seen them do this — these type of port calls before, and these are, you know, routine naval visits that we’ve seen under different administrations,” deputy Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said on Wednesday.
“We’re always constantly going to monitor any foreign vessels operating near U.S. territorial waters,” she said. “We, of course, take it seriously, but these exercises don’t pose a threat to the United States.”
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The Pentagon would not be surprised if they see “more [Russian] activity around the United States,” Singh noted. “They do have a global exercise that will, I think, likely culminate this fall.”
Havana has ties with Beijing and Moscow, offering both U.S. adversaries much closer access to the continental U.S. than their homelands.
