Ukrainians have little to celebrate as the second anniversary of the Russian invasion approaches, but continued successes in the Black Sea are a surprising bright spot.
On Wednesday (14), Ukraine's Defense Intelligence announced that it attacked and destroyed a large Russian Black Sea Fleet ship – the Caesar Kunikov – with maritime drones off the coast of Crimea. There has been no official comment from Russia on Ukraine's claim.
Ukraine has virtually no navy of its own, but Russian technological innovation, audacity and incompetence have ensured an advantage in much of the Black Sea. The country said it has already destroyed or disabled more than 20 Russian warships in the region, a third of Russia's total Black Sea fleet.
This, in turn, has secured a maritime corridor that allows Ukraine to export much of its grain and other products from ports such as Odesa – an economic boon at a time when the economy has been battered by conflict.
In the midst of a harsh winter on the front lines in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Kharkiv, President Volodymyr Zelensky was at least able to say in an interview this month: “Russia lost a lot of ships and in the Black Sea we managed to build a grain corridor, therefore, this pragmatic part of the operation with effects on the economy was conducted in a positive way.”
Before the Russian invasion, Ukrainian agriculture represented about 11% of the country's GDP. Agriculture was also a critical source of export earnings (about 40% of the total), which supported Ukraine's farms and influenced global cereal prices. Almost all products were transported through the Black Sea.
In July last year, Russia abandoned the UN-brokered Black Sea Initiative, which allowed Ukraine safe passage to ship 31.5 million tonnes of grain and other food products from its ports to world markets. The agreement lasted just under a year.
Rather than give up, the Ukrainians declared a unilateral “Black Sea Humanitarian Corridor” for commercial shipping and stepped up the use of maritime drones and missile strikes against the Russian Black Sea fleet. The corridor hugs the Ukrainian coast before reaching the waters of two NATO states, Romania and Bulgaria.
Ukraine moved 22.6 million tons of cargo through the corridor in just seven months, according to Ukrainian and U.S. officials. More than 700 ships used the passage to the Bosphorus and beyond to world markets.
In January alone, according to the Ministry of Economy, 1.9 billion dollars in Ukrainian exports were transported by sea (out of a total of 3.4 billion dollars). This is less than pre-war volumes, but it is growing every month. Some ships offset the risk by taking out insurance through a scheme called UNITY, created by the Ukrainian government in conjunction with a group of insurance companies.
When the Black Sea Initiative collapsed, Russia launched drone and missile attacks on port and storage infrastructure and threatened (but did not) to sink ships carrying cargo to and from Ukraine.
But the Ukrainian military took the battle to Russia. A third of the Black Sea Fleet has been decommissioned or destroyed and the remaining ships rarely venture into the western half of the sea. In August, Russia withdrew part of the Black Sea Fleet from its headquarters in Sevastopol to relatively safer ports on the Russian coast. The country also used sunken nets and barges to try to defend itself against maritime drones.
Zelensky said during his visit to Washington in December that “Russia is hiding the remains of its naval fleet in remote bays.”
On Wednesday, Ukrainian naval spokesman Dmytro Pletenchuk told CNN that Russian ships are now “forced to remain mainly in the eastern part of the Black Sea, at the Novorossiysk basing point, and also appeal to Sochi to disperse the ships. And the use of cruise missile carriers that can attack Ukrainian territory is difficult because the logistics are in Crimea, at the main naval base in Sevastopol.”
Pletenchuk added that when Russia began its invasion, it had 13 landing ships in the Black Sea. Only five are now repairable.
Both Wednesday's attack and the previous one – against a Russian missile ship, the Ivanovets, off the coast of Crimea late last month – were carried out by what the Ukrainians call MAGURA (Unmanned Robotic Apparatus of Maritime Autonomous Guard).
The latest iteration, MAGURA-5, is partly privately funded and implemented by a Defense Intelligence unit, Group 13, disclosed by CNN earlier this month.
Drones, missiles and sabotage
Ukraine has pioneered the development and deployment of a range of maritime drones, using them to attack Russian ships at sea and when docked in ports in Crimea and Russia. Both Defense Intelligence and the Security Service, the SBU, continued their development.
One of the Black Sea Fleet's main landing ships, the Olenogorsky Gornyak, was crippled by a maritime drone in its home port of Novorossiysk in August, days after the collapse of the Black Sea Grains Initiative.
Novorossiysk, near the Russian city of Krasnodar, is Russia's largest port by volume of cargo handled and is a base for the Russian Black Sea Fleet. A Russian military commentator noted that “it is time to realize that the enemy has a 'long arm' and can reach very far with it.”
A Russian chemical and oil tanker – the SIG – was damaged days later by a maritime drone in the Kerch Strait.
The speed at which the Ukrainians have developed their fleet of maritime drones has been impressive. MAGURA-5 is about 5 meters long and has a range of about 450 nautical miles, according to its manufacturer. It is barely visible above the waterline and has a payload of 320 kg, enough to cause serious damage to most ships.
It is also maneuverable, which is why it was able to evade the Ivanovets' AK-630M defensive cannons.
Russian military bloggers criticized the navy for not doing more to contain the threat. After Wednesday's attack, one of them, Rybar, said that “repeatedly the Black Sea Fleet is incompetent and unable to repel attacks by Ukrainian formations.”
Ukraine also used long-range missiles supplied by the United Kingdom and France to target Russian ships in the Crimean port, as well as inflicting extensive damage last September to the Black Sea Fleet headquarters in Sevastopol, a humiliating blow.
Sabotage and missile attacks on Russian radars and other facilities in Crimea also helped weaken Russia's ability to project power in the Black Sea. So did special operations against Russian-occupied drilling rigs and the expulsion of Russian forces from Snake Island in 2022.
In January, Ukrainians claimed that a special operations unit had destroyed a Russian Neva-B radar station (which detects surface ships) on a platform off the coast of Crimea. The group approached the platform from the sea and attached explosives that were detonated.
However, there are still risks for commercial shipping using the western Black Sea. There have been frequent Russian drone and missile attacks against Odesa, the largest port. The last one was this week.
“The enemy’s priority was once again the coastal strip of infrastructure and agricultural facilities,” the southern Ukrainian command said.
There is also the risk of mines. At least one ship was damaged by a floating mine of unknown origin off the coast of Romania late last year. But the vast majority of ships traveled safely to and from Odesa and other Ukrainian ports. Turkey offered to help with demining.
It is unlikely that Russia will be able to tip the scales in the Black Sea in its favor. An international treaty signed in 1936 – the Montreux Convention – prohibits any country at war from moving its ships through the Bosphorus. This means that Moscow cannot reinforce its now diminished fleet with other naval forces.
Since the start of Russia's invasion, aerial drones have been a vital part of each side's arsenal – for surveillance, intelligence and attacks. Over the past six months, the Ukrainians have used the maritime equivalent to turn the balance of power at sea upside down – and revived an economic lifeline in the process.
Source: CNN Brasil
Bruce Belcher is a seasoned author with over 5 years of experience in world news. He writes for online news websites and provides in-depth analysis on the world stock market. Bruce is known for his insightful perspectives and commitment to keeping the public informed.
