The Russian Navy’s Pacific Fleet has arrived in Myanmar for a high-profile maritime engagement that places Russian warships uncomfortably close to Indian strategic waters.

The deployment includes the frigate Marshal Shaposhnikov, the stealth corvette Gremyashchiy, and the fleet oiler Boris Butoma. These vessels are participating in joint naval exercises named MARUMEX 2025 with the Myanmar Navy in the Andaman Sea — a theatre critical to India’s maritime security.

The selected location for these drills is particularly sensitive, as the Andaman and Nicobar Command (ANC) serves as India’s only integrated tri-service command.

The command manages surveillance and strategic operations across the Bay of Bengal and beyond. Russian and Myanmar naval activity in this proximity raises serious concerns in New Delhi, given India’s growing focus on monitoring maritime activity along major sea lanes leading to the Malacca Strait.

According to statements released by Russia’s Pacific Fleet, the exercise officially commenced with an opening ceremony at Thilawa Port, near Yangon. The joint drills will train the two navies in maritime command, tracking and neutralising simulated enemy submarines, and conducting coordinated operations using naval guns and torpedoes.

These anti-submarine manoeuvres suggest a focus on undersea warfare capabilities in a region where Chinese presence has been steadily expanding.

The exercise also includes counter-piracy and anti-terrorism operations. Naval boarding teams are practising vessel inspections and hostage-rescue missions from “pirate-controlled” ships. Moscow emphasised that the overarching objective of MARUMEX 2025 is to enhance cooperation with Myanmar’s armed forces and to improve joint readiness for maritime security operations in Southeast Asian waters.

Myanmar’s participating ships include the landing platform dock UMS Moattama, the frigate Kyansittha, the corvette Tabinshwehti, and the diesel-electric submarine Minye Theinkhathu. Although modest in scale, the Myanmar Navy holds significant geographic importance as it patrols access routes to the Bay of Bengal and the approaches to the western flank of the Malacca Strait — a transit corridor vital to Indo-Pacific trade and energy flow.

The timing of the exercise coincides with the ongoing civil conflict in Myanmar, but it also reflects Russia’s deepening engagement with the junta amid its growing isolation from the West. For Moscow, such engagements expand defence diplomacy in Asia and align with its push for a multipolar Indo-Pacific strategy.

Beijing’s growing influence over Myanmar forms an additional layer of complexity. Chinese infrastructure projects and naval monitoring in the Andaman Sea region already create security friction for New Delhi. The addition of Russian warships operating alongside Myanmar’s navy effectively signals a new dynamic, where multiple non‑regional powers now interact within India’s immediate maritime neighbourhood.

For India, MARUMEX 2025 underscores the need to enhance coastal surveillance and strategic maritime awareness around the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The increasing frequency of foreign naval presence in the eastern Indian Ocean serves as a reminder of the accelerating contest for influence in one of the world’s most critical maritime choke points.

Agencies