Peter the Great Update: It's About Time!

Gist: The deployed Northern Fleet battle group has met Venezuelan Armed Forces. Having just barely entered territorial waters, they picked up an honor guard of Venezuelan Su-30s, the very kind that Russia has sold to Latin America. The Peter the Great and other ships will rest at anchor at the port of La Guaira, 35km from Caracas, while ashore they prepare to welcome Russian sailors, who in turn will return the favor.

Venezuela welcomes us! The task force enters territorial waters in the Caribbean Sea. This very morning two Su-30s are in the sky, made in Russia, sold to Venezuela. They circle the task group one after the other. Our sailors render honors to a friendly country and this frigate will escort us to the port of La Guaira. The exercises between the countries will last until the first of December. These will be the first exercises in history involving the submarines, frigates, cruisers and helicopters of Russia and Venezuela.

Comrade officers, I will now brief you on the exercises between Russia and Venezuela, ((missed))-2008.

They discuss the plans that lay ahead in the Navigator's shack - joint patrolling, search for and destruction of submarines and ships belonging to the potential enemy, reconnaissance and anti-air warfare. The militaries of the two countries have been preparing for these large scale exercises for a couple of months. The official language of the exercises wont be English, Spanish or Russian but the language of symbols and signs.

We have created a table of conditional signals which have been translated into both languages and both countries have approved this table of signals. These signals will be used during the exercise....

There is activity above decks as well. Two presidents will visit Peter the Great: Hugo Chavez and Dmitriy Medvedev.

This is the first time Peter the Great has visited South America. The cruiser was built for northern waters and not for the Caribbean. The air temperature is 34 degrees and the water temperature is 30.

Captain, Peter the Great, Feliks Min'kov: The ship has been at sea in the open ocean. Whether we want it or not, we have to battle against the effects of salt water, or just plain water. So we have to clean up everywhere.

The flag of Venezuela already flies on the mast. It is naval tradition to fly the flag of the countries in whose port you are conducting a friendly visit. Today the sailors checked out the missile tubes. The Peter the Great's armament will be shown to the presidents of both countries.

What is there to show? The Peter the Great is the largest non-aircraft carrier warship in the world. Two hundred and fifty meters of steel with dozens of missile tubes. And beneath each of these three ton hatches lays the main battery - the Granit nuclear anti-ship cruise missile (RNB comment - Huh! Well how about that!). As opposed to American cruise missiles, the Granit flies to its target at supersonic speed like a fighter jet. There is no ship as powerful as the Peter the Great in the world.