Ukraine deserves high praise for its maritime victories, defeating Russia in the Black Sea

Ukraine’s 2023 counteroffensive has disappointed many in the West who were hoping for progress like the liberation of Kharkiv and Kherson last year.

But critics look by land when they should also look by sea. Ukraine’s maritime victories, including breaking the Russian blockade in the Black Sea and forcing the Russian navy to withdraw, are a lesson in restoring deterrence.

Since August, more than 130 ships have set sail from Ukrainian ports and exported more than 5 million tons of goods, Ukraine’s Infrastructure Ministry told me this week.

They sail in defiance of Vladimir Putin’s efforts to hold the world’s food supply hostage.

In July, Russia withdrew from the Black Sea Grains Initiative.

However, Ukraine broke the blockade and reestablished a grain corridor without naval escort from the United Nations or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Additionally, the Ukrainian government and more than a dozen British insurers are working to ensure exporters’ losses are covered in the event of an attack.

Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal recently said that Kiev and London had reached an agreement for a “special mechanism” that “will allow a discount on the cost of war insurance for exporters of all Ukrainian products.”

Control of the Black Sea

The resumption of grain shipments is an important development in a Ukrainian counteroffensive that has the Russian Black Sea fleet in trouble.

For the first year and a half of the war, the Russians believed they could “dominate” the Black Sea, “dictate the rules there” and that their “Black Sea fleet was completely safe and secure,” said Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the president. Volodymyr. Zelensky, he told me in September. The main goal now is “to eliminate Russian dominance of the sea,” Podolyak said.

Zelensky cited the progress in a speech last month: “The Russian military fleet can no longer operate in the western part of the Black Sea and is gradually withdrawing from Crimea. “This is a historic achievement.”

Ukraine’s advances in the Black Sea are notable given the differences between the two countries’ navies. Russia is one of the great naval powers in the world.

In Ukraine, by contrast, “we literally have almost no navy,” said former Defense Minister Andriy Zagorodnyuk, so recent advances demonstrate that “the asymmetric approach and the new technology approach can eliminate old doctrines and old ways of make the war”.

Throughout the 2023 counteroffensive, Ukraine has used missiles and drones to push back the Russian navy.

Small groups of Ukrainians, some of them working in garages, are developing kamikaze marine drones that have repeatedly inflicted damage on the Russian fleet.

Ukrainian drone strikes in August damaged a Russian landing ship and hit a Russian oil tanker near the Kerch Strait bridge linking Russia and Crimea.

In September, Ukraine took control of oil and gas platforms in the Black Sea that Russia had been using as helipads and for reconnaissance.

A few days later, a Ukrainian missile attack on the Russian port of Sevastopol in occupied Crimea destroyed a landing ship and a submarine and damaged one of the Black Sea Fleet’s main repair facilities. Within days, Ukrainian drones and cruise missiles attacked the Black Sea Fleet headquarters in Sevastopol.

These blows led Russia to retreat. Ukraine’s naval spokesman said last month that the Black Sea Fleet was moving some ships from Sevastopol to Feodosia and Kerch, further east in Crimea, and to the Russian city of Novorossiysk.

On November 4, Ukraine hit and damaged the Zalyv shipyard in Kerch, “the largest shipyard in Eastern Europe” and “probably the main repair facility” for the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Crimea after the September attack on the Sevastopol repair complex, according to the Institute for the Study of War.

Ukrainian officials said the attack also damaged a small Russian missile boat. And on November 10, Ukrainian military intelligence said that marine drones had sunk two small Russian landing ships near Chornomorsk, Crimea, adding that one of them was loaded with armored vehicles.

To date, Ukraine has destroyed 15 Russian vessels and damaged 12 others in the Black Sea, Ukraine’s naval spokesman said on Friday. Ukraine has not overwhelmed the Russian navy.

But “we have undermined their dominance,” Serhii Kuzan, head of the Ukrainian Security and Cooperation Center, a Kiev think tank, told me this fall.

Missile threat

The counteroffensive has not deprived Russia of long-range missiles that could attack any part of the Black Sea.

The Kremlin has repeatedly attacked grain storage and export facilities in southwestern Ukraine. A missile attack in the port of Odessa this month hit a Liberian-flagged ship in the port, killing one person and wounding four, including three Filipino crew members.

But Ukraine’s attacks have denied Russia the ability to operate in the Black Sea with impunity.

Russian ships can no longer safely navigate near the grain corridor and interfere with shipping by colliding with cargo ships, firing warning shots or similar interdictory measures.

Putin must choose between sinking civilian ships owned by non-Ukrainians or allowing Ukraine’s grain corridor to operate, even though Russia warned it would no longer guarantee the safety of commercial vessels transiting these waters, says Fred Kagan, director of the Critical Threats Project at the American Business Institute. So far, Putin has chosen not to escalate the situation.

Reprinted from The Wall Street Journal. Melchior is a member of the London-based Journal’s editorial board.