Chinese Navy Ships Sail Into 'NATO Lake'

A pair of Chinese navy ships were escorted into the Baltic Sea by NATO vessels on Saturday local time as they steamed toward the Russian city of St. Petersburg for this year's Navy Day celebrations.

Footage from a live bridge camera captured the moment a Danish patrol boat led the Chinese destroyer Jiaozuo and fleet oiler Honghu past Denmark's Baltic islands, according to an X post by ship spotter Markus Jonsson (a pseudonym).

Kurt Pedersen, another ship spotter, posted photographs of the Chinese warships as they sailed under Denmark's Great Belt Bridge deeper into the Baltic Sea, which received the nickname "NATO Lake" following the accession of Finland and Sweden.

The Jiaozuo, a Type 052D guided-missile destroyer, and the Honghu, a Type 903A replenishment ship, are both in service with China's South Sea Fleet based on the South China Sea. The ship classes have the NATO classifications Luyang III and Fuchi, respectively.

NATO's Allied Maritime Command and the Danish navy did not immediately respond to separate written requests to comment on the encounter at sea.

The two-ship flotilla is part of China's 46th naval escort task force, of the country's counter-piracy contributions off the Horn of Africa since 2008.

A ship cam detected the vessels leaving the Mediterranean Sea and entering the North Atlantic Ocean early last week, and the Chinese Defense Ministry announced on Wednesday that they had concluded a five-day port call in Morocco's Casablanca port on July 14.

China's Defense Ministry and Russia's Foreign Ministry could not be reached for comment out of hours.

The Jiaozuo and the Honghu will spend the next hours sailing past NATO's sea borders and the Russian Baltic Fleet headquarters of Kaliningrad, before reaching St. Petersburg.

Every last Sunday of July, the city hosts Russia's annual Navy Day celebrations, when President Vladimir Putin and other top military officials watch a naval parade from the nearby island of Kronstadt.

Earlier this week, however, St. Petersburg officials said the parade on July 28—the main event—had been canceled for unknown reasons, with downscaled celebrations still to be held across the city.

Local media said ships of the Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy were expected to attend.

China sent ships to St. Petersburg for the first time in 2017. In 2019, one of its destroyers was also among the visiting foreign vessels amid growing strategic alignment and military cooperation with Russia.

Russia's Pacific Fleet, based in the Sea of Japan, said this week that one of its frigates completed a 15-day joint naval exercise with a group of Chinese warships in the South China Sea, sailing 4,800 nautical miles in total.

Update 7/21/24, 10:55 a.m. ET: This article was updated with additional photographs and information.