Russian warships that are arriving in waters that are surrounding Cuba this is ahead of a planned military exercise in the Caribbean the Russian Navy Fleet including a nuclear powered submarine and a warship uh this comes as tensions are soaring between the United States and Russia over the war in Ukraine but the Pentagon so far downplaying the ship's arrival saying the US has been monitoring this all along ABC News senior Pentagon reporter Louis Martinez is live force from the Pentagon with more so Louis thank you for being here and what more do we know right now about these Russian military exercises and how closely is the US monitoring this okay know the US was closely monitoring it because they sent three destroyers a Coast Guard Cutter and we also had French Canadian warships that joined along to track these vessels as they made their way towards Cuba now Us official tells me that these ships never came close to the US Territorial Waters which stretch out 12 nautical miles from the coastline but whenever something like this happens whenever we see uh foreign n navies especially particularly ones with whom we have tensions right now including Russia uh the United States is going to keep a close eye on them this is something that they do when we get close to them so it's a it's a pretty much standard part for the course now one of the things that's going on here is that the the Russians are trying to just demonstrate their capability their Global reach uh back in the 1990s this is something that they really didn't have as well as in the early 2000s but since 2008 we've seen almost on a regular basis these these kind of arrivals and these Port visits into Havana and that's one of the reasons why the Pentagon was was downplaying this scenario they're saying this happens regularly and when it does when the Russians do come we're going to keep a close tab on them and so for now that's why they're downplaying all this even though as you said there are high heightened tensions because of what's going on with Ukraine all right Louis Martinez thank you so much for joining us uh from the Pentagon there