On November 28, a Russian attack submarine was sighted in a strange place, very far from Europe and also from the United States. As reported by Jonathan Malaya, deputy director general of the Deputy Director General of the National Security Council of the Philippine government (NSC), the Russian ship was sighted in Philippine territorial waters.
This information was revealed by Malaya on Monday, and noted that the submarine was found in the exclusive economic zone (EEZ) of the Asian country, around 80 miles off the coast of Occidental Mindoro.
“I want to highlight that the area where it was found is not the territorial sea of the Philippines. It was on the high seas, in the exclusive economic zone. Technically, the Russian ship is exercising freedom of navigation,” were Malaya’s words during the Bagong Pilipinas forum Ngayon.
In this sense, it is necessary to differentiate between the EEZ and the territorial sea of the Philippines, as stated in the Philippine Maritime Zones Law. According to this, the Philippine country can only exercise sovereignty over its territorial sea and the airspace that covers it, while the country can exercise sovereignty over the entire EEZ to explore and exploit its natural resources.
For all this, Malaya wanted to differentiate that “if we talk about the exclusive economic zone, our rights there refer more to the economy and the natural resources that exist in it. It is part of the high seas, so any ship can pass through it as long as you don’t hang around there or get resources from there.”
Prior to Malaya’s statements, Forum President Ferdinand Bongbong Marcos Jr. did not hide his concern over the presence of the Russian submarine (UFA 490) seen in the West Philippine Sea.
“That is very worrying. Any intrusion in the West Philippine Sea, in our EEZ, in our baselines is very worrying. Yes, it is just one more,” he assured reporters.
For his part, Marcos assured that he would leave the matter in the hands of the Philippine military, with the aim that they would be the ones to address the matter and make a decision on the matter.
Finally, Malaya stated that they asked “the attack submarine what it was doing in our exclusive economic zone. They told us that they were coming from an exercise with the Royal Malaysian Navy in Kota Kinabalu. They also told us that they were already returning to their naval base in Vladivostok,” he said.
