Russian Navy Crews Are Under Orders To Avoid The Ukrainian Coast

The commanders of the Russian navy’s Black Sea Fleet are scared to send their surviving surface warships beyond sight of the Crimean coast.

It’s not hard to understand why. In keeping 20 miles or so from Crimea, the ships can stay under the protective umbrella of ground-based air-defenses. Farther west, they’re at the mercy of Ukraine’s growing arsenal of sea-hugging anti-ship missiles.

“The surface vessels of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet continue to pursue an extremely defensive posture,” the U.K. Defense Ministry noted.

The only vessels in the regional fleet that safely can venture toward the unoccupied stretch of Ukraine’s Black Sea coast are the four active Kilo-class submarines.

But subs, while perfectly capable of lobbing Kalibr cruise missiles at Ukrainian cities, can’t do the things surface ships routinely do—chase down freighters and board them in order to enforce a blockade. All that is to say, the Black Sea Fleet “is currently struggling to exercise effective sea control,” the U.K. Defense Ministry stated.

Ukraine’s control of the western Black Sea frees up troops and equipment the country otherwise would have to devote to defending against Russian amphibious attacks. This is not the outcome many analysts expected as Russia widened its war in Ukraine starting in late February.

The Black Sea Fleet, with its 40 or so major warships, out-gunned the tiny Ukrainian navy, which sailed into the wider war with just one lightly-armed large vessel, the frigate Hetman Sahaidachny.

Russia had the advantage in the air, too. Several squadrons of Russian navy Su-24 and Su-25 bombers and Su-27 and Su-30 fighters, flying from bases in Crimea, covered the Black Sea Fleet.

The naval balance of power was so lopsided that Ukrainian commanders didn’t even bother fighting at sea. In the early hours of the initial Russian bombardment on Feb. 23, they ordered the crew of Hetman Sahaidachny to scuttle the frigate at its moorings in Odesa, Ukraine’s strategic port on the western Black Sea.

For the first two months, the Russians dominated the sea. Sailing and flying with impunity, they captured tiny Snake Island, 80 miles south of Odesa, and—using the island plus some gas platforms they’d captured from Ukraine as bases for air-defenses and surveillance gear—enforced a blockade of Odesa that effectively cut off Ukraine’s vital grain exports.

The Black Sea Fleet was poised to attempt an amphibious landing around Odesa. Capturing the port would complete Russia’s conquest of Ukraine’s Black Sea coast and cut off the country from the sea, permanently strangling its economy.

The tide began to turn on March 23, when a Ukrainian Tochka ballistic missile struck the Black Sea Fleet landing ship Saratov while she was pier-side in the occupied port of Berdyansk. The explosion sank Saratov, damaged at least one other landing ship and underscored the danger Russian ships might face in a direct assault on Odesa.

Then, on April 13, a Ukrainian navy anti-ship battery put two Neptune missiles into the side of the Russian cruiser Moskva, eventually sinking the 612-foot vessel.

In a single strike, the Ukrainians deprived the Black Sea Fleet of its main air-defense ship with her S-300 long-range surface-to-air missiles. Desperate to preserve their surviving large warships—in particular, the two Admiral Grigorovich-class frigates—fleet commanders pulled back the bigger ships 80 miles from the Ukrainian coast.

That exposed the rest of the Black Sea Fleet—in particular, support ships that can’t effectively defend themselves—to attack by Ukraine’s missiles and drones. “Russia’s resupply vessels have minimum protection in the western Black Sea,” the U.K. Defense Ministry stated.

Ukraine meanwhile reinforced its Neptune battery with U.S.-made Harpoon missiles, compounding the risk to Russian ships in the western Black Sea. The missileers coordinated with drone operators flying Turkish-made TB-2 drones to hunt down and sink several of the Black Sea Fleet’s Raptor patrol boats and landing craft.

A Harpoon hit and sank the support ship Vsevolod Bobrov while she made a supply run to Snake Island on May 12. Ukrainian missiles also struck at least one of the gas platforms the Russians were using for observation. Ukrainian drones, fighters and artillery bombarded Snake Island, rendering the treeless rock uninhabitable.

The Russian garrison fled the island on May 31. A week later, Ukrainian commandos hoisted a Ukrainian flag. Snake Island’s liberation signaled to the Ukrainian merchant marine that the western Black Sea was safe for commerce.

Odesa was still under blockade—and would remain so until Turkey brokered an end to the port blockage in late July—but ships now could get grain out of Ukraine via canals connecting small river ports near the Romanian border to the western Black Sea.

Unable to replace the Black Sea Fleet’s losses as long as Turkey controlled the Bosphorous Strait joining the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, Russian commanders focused on protecting what remained of the fleet. Ships hugged the Crimean coast, staying inside the range of land-based fighters and S-400 surface-to-air missiles.

But then Ukraine started going after the Black Sea Fleet’s bases in Crimea. Firing what might be an undisclosed new type of ballistic missile—one with greater range than the 70-mile Tochka—Ukrainian forces on Aug. 9 struck Saki air base, home of the Black Sea Fleet’s 43rd Independent Naval Attack Aviation Regiment.

A chain of explosions triggered a fire that burned to the ground as many as eight Su-27s, four Su-30s, five Su-24s, six Mi-8 helicopters and a unique Il-20 telemetry aircraft, according to a Russian source.

A week later, an explosive-laden Ukrainian “suicide” drone blew up an ammunition dump at the Russian airfield near Hvardiiske in Crimea. “Puffs of black smoke were visible above the military air base,” Kommersant reported. It’s unclear whether any of the warplanes that fly from Hvardiiske—reportedly 12 Su-24s and 12 Su-25s—suffered any damage.

The Hvardiiske attack coincided with separate strikes on other Russian facilities in Crimea, including a Ukrainian commando raid on a Russian ammo stash near Mayskoye.

First the Ukrainians sank, or scared away, the Black Sea Fleet’s warships. Then they peeled away the fleet’s island and gas-platform outposts. Finally, they went after its bases on land, degrading the air power that protects the remaining ships.

The only Black Sea Fleet assets the Ukrainians haven’t touched are the submarines. But with no enemy warships to hunt down, the subs have just one main role—firing cruise missiles at targets on land.

It’s fair to say, after six months of fighting, that Ukraine has neutered the Russian fleet and won the battle for the western Black Sea. And it’s done so without a fleet of its own.

It’s a big deal. And not just at sea.

“The Black Sea Fleet’s currently limited effectiveness undermines Russia’s overall invasion strategy, in part because the amphibious threat to Odesa has now been largely neutralized,” the U.K. Defense Ministry explained. “This means Ukraine can divert resources to press Russian ground forces elsewhere.”