The war in Ukraine is threatening to wash across the Black Sea – The Economist – 05.10.23
- Michael Julien
- Oct 7, 2023
- 5 min read
And to roil grain and oil markets again.
WHEN RUSSIA invaded Ukraine last year, the Black Sea seemed unlikely to become much of a battleground. The Ukrainian navy, after all, had only one warship, which it was forced to scuttle as Russian troops advanced on the shipyard where it was being repaired, in the city of Mykolaiv. Snake Island, a maritime outpost guarding the western approaches of Odessa, Ukraine’s biggest port, fell to Russian attackers on the first day of the war. Odessa itself braced for an amphibious assault that would have cut Ukraine off from the sea altogether.
The fact the landings never came was the first sign that Russia’s dominion over the sea was not as absolute as it seemed. A more ringing indication of that came in April of last year, when Ukraine managed to sink the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, the Moskva, using a newly developed anti-ship missile. Two months later intense Ukrainian bombardment drove the occupiers from Snake island. But it is only much more recently that Ukraine has begun to demonstrate a capacity to strike targets across the Black Sea.
In early August a Ukrainian naval drone—another new weapon—damaged a Russian landing-ship just off Novorossiysk, a big Russian port far to the east of the war zone. The following day another drone damaged a Russian oil tanker off Crimea, the peninsula that dominates the Black Sea, which Russia seized from Ukraine in 2014.
On October 1st aerial drones struck a helicopter base in Sochi, some 600km away from the closest Ukrainian-held territory. Most dramatically of all, over the past month, Ukrainian missiles and drones have repeatedly hit targets across Crimea, culminating in the destruction of the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea fleet in Sevastopol on September 22nd.
Russia also seems to be intensifying the war at sea. In July it withdrew from a pact overseen by the UN whereby it allowed Ukrainian grain exports to pass safely across the sea. It has threatened to sink any cargo ships calling at Ukrainian ports and has repeatedly bombed Ukrainian docks and grain silos in an effort to throttle Ukraine’s maritime trade.
Since Russia and Ukraine both have the capacity to strike at shipping and since, as a diplomat puts it, the Black Sea is to grain what the Persian Gulf is to oil, an escalation in naval warfare could have a harrowing impact on global food markets. In fact, the Black Sea is also a big conduit for oil, and is central to the economies not only of Russia and Ukraine, but also Turkey and other littoral states. If it truly becomes a war zone, the world will feel the repercussions.
Sea gall
For the most part, the war in Ukraine has been dominated by infantry, tanks and artillery, as well as long-range drones and missiles. But even though the six amphibious assault ships that Russia deployed to the Black Sea just before the outbreak of hostilities have not been used, the threat to Ukraine’s southern shores has in some ways shaped the conflict. For one thing, the possibility of a coastal landing meant that Russia could menace Ukraine from three directions, and obliged Ukraine to spread its forces thinly in response.
Much the same logic has applied to the war in the skies. Excluding Iranian-made drones, around a fifth of all Russian missile strikes on Ukraine between January and March of this year originated at sea. Attacking from the sea, as well as from land and air, has allowed Russia to place a greater stress on Ukraine’s air defences, which have to watch for attacks from every direction bar the west.
Ukraine’s response has in some ways been a triumph. The sinking of the Moskva has obliged Russia to keep its ships away from the shore. And the steady bombardment of Sevastopol has turned a huge naval base into something of a liability. Several ships previously berthed there have been pulled back to Novorossiysk. “They are like mice running away,” scoffs a Ukrainian naval officer. Ukraine has achieved “the functional defeat of the Russian Black Sea Fleet”, crowed James Heappey, Britain’s junior defence minister, this week.
image: The Economist
But for all its successes, Ukraine’s main goal, to ensure that cargo ships can come and go safely from Odessa and its other ports, remains elusive. After Russia withdrew from the UN’s grain initiative, Ukraine set up a new shipping route that hugs its coastline until the Romanian border to the west of Snake Island (see map).
The intention is to keep civilian vessels as far from Russian guns as possible, and to get them as quickly as possible into the territorial waters of Romania, a member of NATO, where Russia would presumably hesitate to launch attacks. So far ten ships have come to Odessa this way, loaded grain and set sail again, without incident, despite Russia’s threats.
A senior Ukrainian official tells The Economist that intelligence indicates Russia is planning an attack on civilian shipping, in an attempt to disrupt the new export route. Russian warships can fire missiles with a range of 2,500km, which would allow them to strike cargo vessels from a safe distance.
By the same token, Russia can use submarines to lay mines even if its surface ships are forced to stay away, suggests Sidharth Kaushal of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a think-tank in London (although Ukrainians argue that the shallow waters along the new export route would make that difficult). Even if Ukraine were somehow to sink the entire Russian fleet, missiles fired from Crimea could easily destroy a lumbering cargo ship off Odessa.
Another Ukrainian official notes that Russian strikes on Ukrainian ports are already raising insurance premiums across the Black Sea: “Insurers see where things are headed. They are not daft.” But, adds the first, “Two can play at this game.” Ukraine has warned that, if Russia attacks civilian vessels, it will retaliate in kind. It has been demonstrating its capacity to hit distant naval targets not to escalate the war in the Black Sea, he says, but to deter Russia from doing so.
image: The Economist
The stakes for both countries are high. Before the war, roughly 60% of Ukraine’s exports passed through its ports on the Black Sea. The volume of trade has since contracted dramatically, both because of the Russian blockade and because of the broader disruptions caused by the war to farms, factories and infrastructure. Even when the grain initiative was operating, Ukraine’s exports were a fraction of what they once were (see chart).
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This article appeared in the Briefing section of the print edition under the headline "Ripple effects"
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