Yesterday it was two Russian and one Ukrainian warships [4] which had crossed the Bosphorus in direction Crimea, today it is the Americans. As Hurriyet reports [5], Turkish authorities have given permission to a U.S. Navy warship to pass through the Bosphorus within the next two days as fears grow that the standoff between Russia and Ukraine and the West over Crimea could soon become militarized.
Turkish sources, speaking with the Hürriyet Daily News on March 5, declined to elaborate on the name of the U.S. warship. The same officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, however, noted that it was not the USS George H.W. Bush nuclear aircraft carrier as suggested in some news reports, as it did not meet the standards specified by the 1936 Montreux Convention in terms of weight.
The U.S. Navy ship to pass through the straits will conform to the convention’s standards, the sources said.
According to the Montreux Convention, the total weight of military ships that non-littoral states to the Black Sea may deploy to the body of water cannot exceed 45,000 tons.
As a reminder we have been tracking the CVN-77 for the past week [6], ever since it crossed the straits of Gibraltar and as of yesterday it was in Piraeus, Greece [7]. It is also worth noting that while the Montreux Convention provides guidelines, it is not restrictive, which means that should the US really want to, it will have no problems getting its aircraft carrier into the Black Sea.
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That said, even a simple frigate or cruiser in proximity to a boatload of Russian and Ukraine warships already on edge, will make an already combustible situation extremely volatile with an abundance of false flag provocation opportunities, which those who are most interested in escalating military events, will be delighted to take advantage of.