Having sent not one but two aircraft carriers into the Mediterranean in what, as we reported yesterday, was meant to be a “clear message to Russia“, the US decided to further antagonize Russia when on Monday it sent the US destroyer Porter in the Black Sea“for a series of drills with allies and forces of partner nations in what the United States called a routine deployment”, the US Navy announced. To be sure, the US Navy was quite clear about its intentions with these deployments: “It provides some needed presence in the Med to check…the Russians,” the official said. “The unpredictability of what we did with Truman kind of makes them think twice.”