RATHER too much is being made of the squadron of Russian warships, headed by the country’s sole aircraft-carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov, that transited the English Channel on October 21st en route to Syria. The deployment was first announced back in July and is part of a regular rotation of Russian naval vessels in the eastern Mediterranean. To say, as did Michael Fallon, Britain’s defence secretary, that the Russians are seeking to test NATO’s capabilities borders on the absurd. The Russians are sailing in plain view and are only exercising their freedom-of-navigation rights, as the US Navy has on occasion in the South China Sea. The route down the North Sea is the obvious way for them to go. There is nothing particularly provocative about it, as long as the Russians don’t attempt to launch aircraft from the carrier into NATO airspace.

That is not to say that Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, will not be enjoying the extensive media coverage and the expressions of concern from NATO officials that the cruise has elicited. But compared with the deliberate buzzing of NATO warships in the Baltic and probing runs into NATO airspace by aircraft with their transponders switched off, this is fairly harmless.

Nor should too much significance be attached to the elderly carrier’s military mission when it arrives at its destination. Assuming that the dozen so or so SU-33 and the four more modern Mig-29Ks are used in anger against targets in Syria, it may well be the first time that a Russian carrier has been deployed for striking onshore targets. But it would be a stretch to describe the appearance of the Admiral Kuznetsov off the Syrian coast as a game-changer that will result in the fall of rebel-held parts of eastern Aleppo. If the Russians had needed more aircraft to bomb the city with even greater intensity, they could have flown them there much more quickly.

Just as the firing of cruise missiles from the Caspian Sea a year ago was intended more to demonstrate Russian capability than to serve any obvious military end, so the same logic applies to this foray. From Mr Putin’s point of view, the best things about it are the amount of attention it is getting from Russia’s foes and the great television pictures it will provide for the audience back home to lap up.

Photo credit: AFP PHOTO / FORSVARET