Several ships have sailed a new shipping corridor established to evade Russia’s de facto blockade. A military campaign has helped Ukraine gain some control, experts say - by Constant Méheut.
Russia has held sway over the Black Sea for much of the war. But Ukraine is increasingly managing to gain a degree of control over part of its disputed waters, aided by an intensifying military campaign, experts say.
In recent weeks, seven cargo vessels have successfully sailed a new shipping corridor established by Ukraine to evade Russia’s de facto blockade of its Black Sea ports, Ukraine’s navy says. Analysts say the ability of ships to ply the waters despite threats from Moscow may stem from Kyiv’s new ability to hit Russian warships and potentially deter them from approaching Ukrainian waters, as well as its efforts to degrade Moscow’s surveillance capacities in the Black Sea.
To be sure, once the ships using the new corridor have left Ukrainian waters, they hug the western Black Sea coast near members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, also a likely deterrent. Were Russia to take action there, it would most likely prompt widespread condemnation, and risk escalating the war.
But since August, Ukraine has accelerated its efforts to limit Russia’s ability to threaten the western Black Sea coast through repeated attacks, damaging a Russian warship in a drone strike and hitting Moscow’s naval headquarters in Crimea.
“We’ve seen that Ukraine is taking an increasingly offensive approach in the Black Sea,” said Thea Dunlevie, a senior analyst at the Center for Maritime Strategy, a research organization based in the Washington metropolitan area. She added that there was “a link between the success of the corridor” and Ukraine’s campaign to assert control over parts of the sea.
Under a yearlong agreement with Russia, Ukraine had been able to ship millions of tons of its grain by sea, but Moscow pulled out in July and warned that it would consider any ship approaching a Ukrainian port to be a potential military threat. Moscow then sent more boats to patrol the area, Ms. Dunlevie said, and last month its forces fired warning shots and boarded a freighter in a sign of the rising tensions at sea.
In response, Ukraine devised its new route, offering passage through a maze of maritime mines the country installed to protect its shores, but making clear that ships could still be targeted by Russian forces. Once ships leave Ukrainian waters, they follow the coasts of Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey, which are under the protection of NATO, to reach the Bosphorus Strait.
Two freighters loaded with wheat sailed the route successfully last week, and several other cargo ships that had been stuck in Ukrainian ports since the start of the war were able to leave through the corridor. Ukrainian officials said last week that three more ships had entered Ukrainian waters, but they have not yet left the country’s ports.
To limit the risk from Russia, Ukrainian forces appear to have targeted the Russian fleet in order to discourage it from approaching the corridor, experts say.
Last month, a Ukrainian naval drone damaged a Russian warship hundreds of miles from the nearest Ukrainian-controlled territory, near the Russian naval and shipping port of Novorossiysk, demonstrating the country’s ability to strike distant targets. “It’s an important deterrent because that keeps Russian vessels at bay,” Ms. Dunlevie said.
Ukraine has also accelerated its attacks on Crimea, the Russian-occupied peninsula that is home to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet and is a key supply hub for Moscow’s war effort.
Andrii Klymenko, the head of the Black Sea Institute of Strategic Studies, said his group had recorded more than 35 attacks this year on Sevastopol, a city on Crimea’s southern tip that houses the fleet’s headquarters, including recent strikes that damaged two ships and the headquarters itself. He added that Moscow has since relocated part of its fleet to Novorossiysk, which lies on the eastern shore of the Black Sea and is out of range of many Ukrainian weapons.
The British Ministry of Defense said on Tuesday that it was likely that Russia’s ability “to continue wider regional security patrols and enforce its de facto blockade of Ukrainian ports will be diminished” as a result of the attacks.
Ms. Dunlevie said that NATO countries had also helped Ukraine secure the corridor by monitoring Russian activity in the Black Sea with air patrols. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of Britain said in a statement this month that his country’s aircraft were flying over the area to deter Russia from carrying out strikes against civilian grain ships.
Ukraine has tried to undermine Moscow’s ability to gather intelligence on movements in the Black Sea. Earlier this month, Ukrainian forces claimed to have taken control of several offshore drilling platforms located near the new shipping route, on which Moscow had installed radar systems.
In a video of the operation released by Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, soldiers can be seen removing a radar from a platform. The radar, a soldier said, “will no longer monitor our actions in the Black Sea.”
The State of the War
Severed From the Sea: With Russia trying to maintain military control of the Black Sea, the city of Odesa is disconnected from its waters and its history as a flourishing port city.
The Scars of Izium: Russian forces left the city in eastern Ukraine a year ago, but the buildings remain in ruins and services are still spotty. Its residents worry that more mayhem may lie ahead.
Grain Exports: Ukraine has stepped up its use of a new shipping route that has allowed it to begin reviving grain exports to circumvent a de facto Russian blockade of its Black Sea ports.
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Cargo ships in the Black Sea, off the coast of Romania, last month. Credit...Andreea Campeanu for The New York Times.
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