The sudden, unannounced docking of a Russian Pacific Fleet squadron of ships at Chittagong late Sunday night has raised questions on the timing of the vessels’ arrival when the United States has been strongly insisting that Bangladesh’s ruling Awami League ensures holding free, fair, participatory and inclusive elections due in early January 2024.
The Russian naval group’s arrival in Bangladesh is being considered significant, especially following the India-US ‘2+2’ Ministerial Dialogue on November 10 in Delhi where American Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin and their Indian counterparts, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh confabulated on the two countries’ strategic partnership in general and the security in the Indo Pacific region in particular.
On a three-day goodwill mission, the Russian naval group is expected to head for Sri Lanka via India. It is said that the Russian ships were on a prescheduled exchange visit.
The forthcoming elections in Bangladesh, a fraught issue involving Dhaka, New Delhi, Washington and Beijing, also featured in the dialogue.
Without paying much heed to US insistence on free, fair, participatory, inclusive and violence-free elections, Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is set to push her way through and conduct the polls with the exclusion of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).
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Till the publication of this report, there was no official reaction from New Delhi. However, there is no doubt that Bangladesh, which considers India an ally, finds itself in the middle of an intense geopolitical storm over the likely deepening penetration of China in the country’s economy, if not defence affairs.
An Indian tri-services command FORTRAN is located at the Andaman and Nicobar islands, which is about 750 nautical miles (1,294 kms) from Chittagong.
The BNP’s leadership and nearly 10,000 of its supporters have been thrown in prison at a time when a formal election notification will likely be announced shortly.
Describing the naval group’s arrival in Chittagong as a “huge milestone for Russia-Bangladesh relations”, the Russian embassy in Dhaka said that the “last time Russian/Soviet naval ships visited Bangladeshi ports was 50 years ago” in the aftermath of the 1971 liberation war that resulted in the defeat of the Pakistani army in erstwhile East Pakistan.
The naval group comprises destroyers Admiral Tributs and Admiral Panteleyev and an Oceanic tanker Pechenga.
The Russian ambassador to Bangladesh Alexander Mantytskiy received the ships before taking a walk on the deck of one of the vessels while the crew stood in attention and saluted him.
Unconfirmed reports in Bangladesh suggested that the Russian naval Troika left Indonesia on October 27 before joining an exercise with Myanmar between November 7 and 9 on the Andaman Sea and then heading for Bangladesh.
While the compact Russian flotilla docked at Chittagong two days after a vessel carrying the second of two reactors for Bangladesh’s Rooppur nuclear power plant, there was no immediate confirmation whether the ships are targeted under the US sanctions regime imposed against Russia for the war in Ukraine.
Earlier, in January 2023, a Russian ship, laden with material related to the Rooppur nuclear plant had docked at Haldia in India’s West Bengal, following US sanctions against it.
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The Russian ships are said to be on a friendly visit and, according to a Russian consulate general diplomat in Chittagong, it was “evidence that the relations between the two states are currently at a very high level”.
However, their presence on Bangladeshi waters is part of Dhaka’s strategy to have Russia stand alongside the Sheikh Hasina government which is under pressure from the US that could slap punitive measures, including sanctions, for refusing to restore democratic norms and practices and coming in the way of conducting free, fair and participatory elections.
Neither India nor China has reacted to the Russian ships docking at Chittagong port, but Sheikh Hasina and her Awami League are expected to showcase this as a timely friendly gesture by Moscow when Bangladesh remains under pressure from the US that could potentially employ punitive measures against India’s eastern neighbour in the short, medium and long terms.
