Ukraine and Russia in High-Stakes Battle for the Black Sea

Ukraine’s battle for the Black Sea is heating up. 

In what Ukraine’s intelligence service described as a “unique operation,” the country’s special forces claimed to have captured two Russian-occupied oil platforms in the Black Sea on Monday. The platforms, known as the “Boyko Towers,” had been under Russian control since the annexation of Crimea in 2014.

Then, Wednesday morning, Ukraine launched its largest ever drone and missile attack on the Crimean city of Sevastopol, home of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. Ukrainian officials claimed to have struck a landing ship and a submarine, though the extent of the damage is unclear. Sevastopol has been hit numerous times since the war began, but if reports that a Kilo-class submarine was damaged are confirmed, it would mark a significant breakthrough for Ukrainian forces. Russia’s subs have been virtually untouchable since the beginning of the war.

These operations are the latest in a series of notable victories for Ukraine’s outnumbered and outgunned forces in the Black Sea. These accomplishments also include the sinking of the Russian fleet’s flagship, the Moskva, in April, 2022, the retaking of strategically and symbolically important Snake Island that June, and several strikes on the Kerch Strait Bridge, which connects occupied Crimea to Russia.

Despite these victories, Russia still maintains significant advantages in the Black Sea, a front in the war that is critical not only for Ukraine and Russia, but for the global economy as well. 

Russia’s Black Sea advantage

Russia had an advantage in the Black Sea from the start. Prior to 2014, both countries maintained naval fleets in Crimea under a treaty signed in the 1990s. When Russian President Vladimir Putin’s forces annexed the Crimean Peninsula in 2014, they also took over about 75 percent of Ukraine’s fleet, leaving it reliant on what’s known as a “mosquito fleet” of mostly small patrol boats to defend its southern coast.

When Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in 2022, it appeared that one of Russia’s goals was to take the entire southern coast of the country, from Mariupol in the east through Odesa in the west to the Romanian border, cutting off all Ukrainian access to the sea. That didn’t happen; the Russians have had their hands full in eastern Ukraine, and for now Odesa - a critical Black Sea port - is under fire but in little immediate danger of conquest. Russia also never launched a large-scale amphibious invasion from Ukraine’s southern coast, despite some false rumors to that effect in the early days of the conflict. 

“I think they've just lost all initiative,” Steven Wills, navalist at the Center for Maritime Strategy, told The Messenger, referring to the Russian naval ambitions. “Whatever plans they originally had, they immediately abandoned them and they've gone into garrison, hunker down mode.”

That’s not to say that Russia’s naval power hasn’t mattered. Many of the missiles that have rained down on Ukrainian cities have been fired from surface vessels and submarines in the Black Sea. And some 20 Russian naval vessels, including six submarines, are patrolling the southern coast, effectively turning Ukraine into a landlocked country. 

That, in turn, has had a profound effect on the Ukrainian economy. Prior to the war, Black Sea shipping accounted for half of Ukraine’s total external trade and 90 percent of its trade in grains including wheat and sunflower oil. Ukraine, meanwhile, accounted for about 10 percent of the global wheat market, much of it going to poor countries in the Middle East and Africa. Last year, Ukraine’s former finance minister, Natalie Jaresko, told Grid that by blocking Ukraine’s ports, “what Putin has done is declare war against the world’s poor.”

The world got some relief in July 2022, when, under a deal negotiated by the United Nations and Turkey – which controls the southern access to the Black Sea via the Bosphorus strait – Russia and Ukraine agreed to a deal to allow the shipment of grain through the Sea to resume.

But Russia quit the deal one year later and launched a series of drone and missile strikes on grain facilities in Odesa. Russia has warned that all ships traveling to Ukraine will be treated as potential military targets. A Russian patrol ship fired on and boarded a Palau-flagged vessel in mid-August. The British government also claimed earlier this week that Russia had targeted a Liberian-flagged civilian ship at port in Ukraine in late August with a missile strike that was thwarted by Ukrainian air defenses. 

Ukraine fights back

All of this has left Ukraine with relatively few options. Some grain is still being shipped out via the Danube River through the port city of Izmail, across the river from Romania. But this shallow port can handle only a small fraction of the amount of grain Ukraine was previously shipping, and Izmail has also come under Russian missile attack. Some advocates, like retired Admiral James Stavridis, the former supreme commander of NATO, have called for NATO convoys to escort Ukrainian grain shipments, but that idea has gotten little interest from Western governments who don’t want to risk direct military confrontation with Russia.

“Ultimately, it’s about getting insurance for vessels,” Sal Mercagliano, a former merchant mariner and maritime historian, told The Messenger. “All you have to do is raise some doubt and the insurance rates go through the roof. So it’s really difficult for Ukraine to make the argument [to shipping companies] that it's worth risking your ship to come up to Odesa and load 50,000 tons of grain.”

Where Ukraine has recently had more success is in making life miserable for Russia’s naval forces. One game changer has been Ukraine’s maritime drones, also known as unmanned surfaced vehicles, which have been used in a number of high-profile attacks. including the second strike on the Kerch bridge in July and the ramming of a ship in the port of Novorossiysk, more than 360 miles from Odesa, in early August. 

“[The Ukrainians] know they're not going to destroy Black Sea Fleet headquarters with a drone," Dmitry Gorenburg, senior research scientist at the Center for Naval Analyses, told The Messenger. “But by attacking every so often, they keep everyone kind of discombobulated and stressed.” 

This week’s capture of the two oil platforms may also help shift the balance at sea. In a recent operational update, Britain’s Defense Ministry said that Russian-controlled oil platforms not only “command valuable hydrocarbon resources," but “can also be used as forward deployment bases, helicopter landing sites, and to position long-range missile systems.” The Ukraine defense ministry’s intelligence directorate claimed that its forces had captured a cache of missiles as well as a radar system in the operation. 

High stakes

The Black Sea is also arguably where the risk of international escalation is highest. In March, a Russian jet collided with a U.S. drone flying a surveillance mission over the Black Sea. On three separate occasions in recent weeks, fragments of what appear to be Russian drones have been found on Romanian territory after attacks on the Danube port at Izmail. 

The governments involved have mostly downplayed these incidents, likely in the interest of avoiding escalation, but they are an indication that what happens in the Black Sea won’t necessarily stay there. 

The true importance of the Black Sea may only become clear later. The main goal of Ukraine’s current counteroffensive appears to be to reach Ukraine’s southern coast, severing the “land bridge” that connects Crimea to Russian-held territory in eastern Ukraine. For the moment, that goal looks unlikely, but Ukrainian officials are still adamant that “victory” in this war has to include retaking the peninsula that was seized nine years ago. 

“This Russian war … began with Crimea and must end with Crimea — with its liberation,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said. 

Crimea is a high priority for both sides not only because of its historic, religious, and symbolic significance, but also because of the presence of the Black Sea fleet. Ukraine is unlikely to be satisfied with an outcome that once again leaves a major Russian military installation so close to its coastline. For Russia, Sevastopol is key not only to its goals in Ukraine but to its global goal of remaining a maritime power. 

“Russia has had a naval base in Sevastopol longer than the United States has been a country,” Wills said. “A lot of Russian blood and treasure has been spent in that place, and they will fight tooth and nail for it.”