When the US Navy's (USN's) Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS Truxtun (DDG-103) entered the Black Sea early in March 2014 - little more than a week after Russian forces began to move into the Crimea peninsula - press reports suggested that a Russian counter had moved a K-300P Bastion-P (SSC-5 'Stooge') coastal-defence missile system from the Russian town of Anapa, Krasnodar, to a new location near Sevastopol. This simple move added great complexity to an already tangled operational picture and highlighted how ambiguity of a presence of a potentially lethal system could keep unwanted naval attention at arm's length. During the 9 May 2014 Victory Day parade held in Sevastopol, following Russia's annexation of Crimea, that ambiguity was cleared as two K-300P Bastion-P launchers and two of their associated Monolit-B radar systems were among the military hardware on display.
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