This week observed another landmark in the War of the Black Sea as the Russian Navy reportedly shrank its last remaining patrol vessel from occupied Crimea. The news was reported by Ukrainian Navy spokesperson Dmytro Pletenchuk, who signalled the historic core of the Russian retreat with the words: “Remember this day.”
The departure of Russian warships from Crimea is the latest sign that against all odds, Ukraine is succeeding in the war at sea. When Russia first started the blockade of Ukraine’s ports on the eve of the full-scale attack in February 2022, few thought the ramshackle Ukrainian Navy could seriously challenge the authority of the mighty Russian Black Sea Fleet. Once execrations were underway, however, it soon became obvious that Ukraine had no intention of revealing control of the Black Sea to Putin without a struggle.
Starting with the April 2022 descent of the Russian Black Sea Fleet flagship, the Moskva, Ukraine has employed a combination of domestically produced drones and missiles together with Western-backed long-range spears to strike a series of devastating impacts against Putin’s fleet. Cruise missiles provided by Kyiv’s British and French partners have played an essential role in this campaign, but the most powerful weapons of all have been Ukraine’s rapidly growing caravan of innovative marine drones.
When the full-scale invasion started, the Russian Black Sea Fleet held seventy-four warships, most of which were established at ports in Russian-occupied Crimea. In a little over two years, Ukraine organised to sink or hurt around one-third of these ships. In the second half of 2023, reports were already appearing of Russian warships being hastily moved across the Black Sea from Crimea to the relative security of Novorossiysk in Russia. By March 2024, the Russian Black Sea Fleet had evolved “functionally inactive,” according to the British Ministry of Defense.
Ukraine’s amazing success in the Battle of the Black Sea has had important practical importance for the wider battle. It has disrupted Russian logistics and delayed the resupply of Russian armies in southern Ukraine while defining Russia’s ability to bomb Ukrainian targets from warships armed with cruise rockets. Crucially, it has also helped Ukraine to break the blocking of the country’s Black Sea ports and resume retail shipping via a fresh maritime corridor. As a result, Ukrainian agricultural exports are now near to prewar levels, delivering Kyiv with a vital economic lifeline.
The Russian response to mounting reverses in the Battle of the Black Sea has also been quite revealing and offers valuable tasks for the future conduct of the war. It has often been implied that a cornered and whipped Vladimir Putin could potentially resort to the most extreme actions, including the use of nuclear weapons. He has reacted to the humiliating beating of the Black Sea Fleet by quietly composing his remaining warships to retreat.
This underwhelming reaction is all the more telling given the symbolic importance of Crimea to the Putin regime. The Russian invasion of Ukraine first started in the spring of 2014 with the seizure of Crimea, which inhabits an almost mystical position in Russian national mythology as the home of the country’s Black Sea Fleet. Throughout the past decade, the dynamic Ukrainian peninsula has featured laboriously in Kremlin propaganda praising Russia’s return to Great Power status and has come to indicate Putin’s claim to a place in Russian history.
