Moscow doesn’t care who it starves – POLITICO

Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor at POLITICO Europe.

Sauntering around the port of Sevastopol in August 1989, American sailors were being mobbed by well-wishers.

Their warships, the USS Gates and USS Kauffman, had just received a rapturous welcome from thousands of Soviet citizens, showering “the ships with coins, souvenir lapel pins, cigarettes, candy, and flowers.” And the mariners reciprocated, throwing their baseball caps and standard-issue white Dixie cup hats into the cheering crowd.

Those were heady days, marking the end of history — or so some thought. Revolutionary change was sweeping Central Europe; Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s glasnost and perestroika were in full swing; and within three months of the United Sates navy’s goodwill visit, the Berlin Wall was torn down.

But as so often happened in the past, the Black Sea is now at the center of conflict once more.

Dubbed the “Inhospitable Sea” by the ancient Greeks — not only for the challenge in navigating its squalls and tempests but also the pugilistic tribes populating its shores — there have been few centuries when the Black Sea wasn’t marked by war. And with the conflict in Ukraine raging on, these waters have become inhospitable once again — and are getting more so by the day — as both Russia and Ukraine determinedly deny each other control or safe passage in yet another front in this grinding war.

In the first few months after Russia invaded, Ukrainians feared Moscow would order an amphibious assault on its coastline to help seize Odesa and other ports, aiming to link Russian-occupied parts of the Donbas with the breakaway statelet of Transnistria in Moldova, denying Ukraine any access to the Black Sea.

But Ukraine managed to prevent this from happening last year, firing off missiles that sunk the landing ship the Saratov, as well as two others. And in April 2022, it humiliated Russia by sinking its flagship Moskva, the pride of the Black Sea fleet and the most powerful warship in the region.

Unexpectedly, Ukraine has continued to harry Russia’s naval forces ever since, using both inexpensive aerial drones and innovative sea drones to swarm, target and strike — including warships at anchor at Sevastopol, the Russian fleet’s home base, where they damaged two ships, a minesweeper and, more importantly, the Admiral Makarov frigate last year. Kyiv has also repeated such attacks further afield on ports like Novorossiysk where, just last week, a Ukrainian drone left a damaged Russian warship listing perilously.

This isn’t the way Russia thought the maritime conflict would go. After all, at the start of the war they had a powerful fleet of more than 40 surface warships, plus support and auxiliaries and five Kilo-class submarines. Ukraine, meanwhile, had already lost most of its naval assets when Russia annexed Crimea in 2014. It had a diminutive fleet, comprising a dozen patrol and coastal boats, and an amphibious landing vessel. It also had a frigate but was forced to scuttle it in March last year.

Nonetheless, much as it was on land so it has been at sea, as Ukraine has proven an inventive, daring David, outmaneuvering a leaden Goliath. Kyiv has deprived Russia’s fleet of strategic initiative, forcing it back on its heels and coercing Russian commanders — much to their frustration — to withdraw warships from Ukraine’s near coastal waters. Moscow has also reportedly moved its submarines from Russian-occupied Crimea to southern Russia.

“Pushing Russia’s submarines out of Sevastopol to Novorossiysk has been a remarkable feat for Ukraine, especially as it has little in the way of anti-submarine capabilities,” Daniel Fiott — head of the defense and statecraft program at the Brussels School of Governance’s Centre for Security, Diplomacy and Strategy — noted last year.

However, Russia ultimately has the upper hand. It can still fire off sea-launched Kalibr Cruise missiles, and it has the tactical reach to continue to blockade and deter civilian cargo vessels loaded with Ukrainian wheat, maize, barley, corn and sunflower from daring to sail the Black Sea — especially now that Russian President Vladimir Putin has sunk the grain deal, which allowed more than 32 million tons of food commodities to be exported to 45 countries across three continents.

So, with Russia actively threatening to sink any civilian vessel heading to Ukrainian ports, as they could be carrying military supplies, Ukraine is now pushing back and trying to demonstrate it, too, can play a game of brinkmanship — hence the recent drone strike on a Russian oil tanker in the Kerch Strait as part of the ongoing effort to punish Moscow and make it rethink the grain initiative.

Ending the deal has “untied Kyiv’s hands,” said Ukrainian military analyst Roman Svytan, adding that the frequency of attacks on Russian ships will likely increase in a bid to get the Kremlin to agree on a renewal.

Whether Moscow will reenter the initiative, however, remains to be seen. Putin’s unsubtle game is to barter a deal revival for some sort of sanctions relief, using the threat of higher food prices and starvation in Africa and the Global South to get his way. He may also hope to coerce Ukrainian leaders into making concessions to allow for peace talks, then use African leaders’ frustration to cajole Kyiv into negotiations.

But Ukraine and its allies are unlikely to cave to Russia’s blackmail — they can’t afford to give into extortion. And on the diplomatic front, Ukraine is trying to strike back and persuade the leaders of the Global South that they’re being used by a Kremlin that really doesn’t care who it starves.