The \u2018Will for Peace 2026\u2019 naval exercises started off the coast of Cape Town on Saturday<\/p>\n
South Africa considers joint drills with its BRICS allies \u2013 Russia, China and Iran \u2013 an absolute necessity given the current tensions on high seas, a top commander has said.
\nThe \u2018Will for Peace 2026\u2019 exercises started off the coast of Cape Town on Saturday, just days after US forces seized a Russian-flagged oil tanker over claims it had breached Washington\u2019s sanctions against Venezuela.
\nThe US has also recently captured five other tankers in the Caribbean as part of its naval blockade of the Latin American nation.
\nSouth Africa\u2019s Deputy Defense Minister Bantu Holomisa said on Friday that the drills were not a response to the latest moves by the US, pointing out that they had been planned months ago.<\/p>\n
Read more<\/p>\n
US seizes another oil tanker in Caribbean (VIDEO)<\/p>\n
\u201cLet us not press panic buttons because the US has got a problem with countries. Those are not our enemies,\u201d he said.The focus should be \u201con cooperating with the BRICS countries and making sure that our seas, especially the Indian Ocean and Atlantic, they are safe,\u201d Holomisa insisted.
\nAccording to media reports, South Africa, China and Iran have deployed destroyers for \u2018Will for Peace 2026\u2019 drills, with Russia and the United Arab Emirates being represented by corvettes. Other BRICS nations \u2013 Brazil, Indonesia and Ethiopia \u2013 have sent their observers to the exercises, which are scheduled to conclude on January 16.<\/p>\n
READ MORE: US releases Russian crew members of seized tanker \u2013 Moscow<\/p>\n
The third iteration of the Mosi (Smoke) naval drills between China, Russia and South Africa had initially been slated to take place near Cape Town in November. However, the exercises were postponed due to the G20 summit hosted by South Africa the same month. A decision was later made to reschedule them, give them a new name and expand the number of participating nations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The \u2018Will for Peace 2026\u2019 naval exercises started off the coast of Cape Town on Saturday South Africa considers joint drills with its BRICS allies \u2013 Russia, China and Iran…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25889,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy","category-environment","category-politics"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25888\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/25889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}