Official Russian Navy Paranoia Alert

The official Russian Navy website passes on this nugget:

The USA could create a permanent navy base in Georgia while avoiding the provisions of the Montreux Convention...according to the Ukrainian weekly "2000".

"American ships can remain permanently in the Black Sea according to the Monteux Convention this way: some Black Sea littoral state, say Georgia, obtains American navy ships which would be based in Poti or Batumi and sail under the Georgian flag, but the crew remains American and is actually under the Pentagon's command."

"There has been similar historical precident. For instance, at the beginning of the First World War, Germany fictively gave Turkey the best cruiser of its time, the Goeben, which was renamed the Sultan Selim, but the crew remained German. This led to the Goeben going to Sevastopol' and Turkey's entry into that war," the paper reminds its readers.

According to the authors, while this looks like fantasy, it can't be ruled out that the USA would try that in Crimea, where it is possible that "a Ukrainian flag be raised on an American cruiser, allowing the possibility of it being based in the Sevastopol' while skirting the Montreux Convention."

Comment: The authors are wrong - it doesn't look like fantasy, it IS fantasy. In my mind, there are three options here:

a) there is some really good shit in the bong at the Russian Navy PAO shop,
b) the Russians are paranoid to believe this tripe,
c) the Russians are doing their best to whip up anti-American/anti-NATO sentiment in their public.

I suspect it is a combination of b) and c) above, although I wouldn't rule out all three options in the end.