VLADIVOSTOK, March 28 (RIA Novosti) -- A group of warships from the Russian Pacific Fleet received a 21-gun salute as part of a warm welcome at a U.S. base in the western Pacific, a Navy spokesman said Tuesday.
The Russian naval group, consisting of a large anti-submarine ship, a large amphibious assault ship, a tanker and a rescue tugboat, will stay at the Apra Harbor naval base on the island of Aganya (the Mariana Archipelago) until April 1 and participate in a joint Russian-U.S. naval exercise.
"The visit expands the geography of naval cooperation between the Russian and the U.S. navies," the official earlier said. "In the past, warships from the Pacific Fleet visited San Diego, Seattle, Honolulu and the Americans visited Vladivostok and Petropavlovsky-Kamchatka [in the Russian Far East]."
Representatives of the Russian and U.S. navies have already met more than 30 times in similar circumstances, but that this is the first occasion a Russian group has arrived in the Mariana Islands.
