Ukranian Conflict: The Black Sea’s role in Russia's war

• THOMAS LATSCHAN

MOSCOW: Since the end of the grain deal between Russia and Ukraine, both countries have increased attacks on each other’s merchant ships on the Black Sea. Russia has blocked the agreement since mid-July, shelling Ukrainian ports more frequently and threatening cargo ships. Ukraine, in turn, has declared six ports on Russia’s Black Sea coast as war-risk areas and threatened retaliatory attacks on freighters, tankers and port facilities.

On Wednesday, a Ukrainian attack targeting Russia’s Black Sea fleet damaged two Russian naval vessels and port infrastructure in Sevastopol, a city in Crimea. Russia said on Thursday it destroyed nearly two dozen Ukrainian drones targeting Crimea, which Moscow illegally annexed in 2014, and Black Sea patrol ships.

As a gateway to the rest of the world, the Black Sea has immense strategic and economic importance for both Russia and Ukraine. But other countries with coasts on the Black Sea — particularly the NATO members Turkey, Bulgaria and Romania — also have interests there.

During the Russian Empire and, later, in Soviet times, the Black Sea formed the southern flank of the great power. It has remained a springboard from which Russia can exert its influence in the Mediterranean, the Middle East, North Africa and Southern Europe. The Black Sea also gives the Kremlin access to more distant countries where it is militarily active, such as Libya and Syria, which hosts a Russian naval base in Tartus.

Russia’s military centrepiece in the region is its Black Sea fleet, which has been headquartered in the Crimean port city of Sevastopol since 1793. Annexed from Ukraine in 2014, the facility has special significance for Moscow as a rare deep-water port that can be used for military purposes even in winter.

The Kremlin’s eagerness to retain hegemony over the Black Sea region has been demonstrated by numerous, deliberately instigated regional conflicts in recent years. As a result, Russia now controls roughly one-third of the coastline, despite owning only about 10% of it under international law. In 2008, Russia intervened in Georgia and established two republics loyal to the Kremlin, including Abkhazia on the eastern coast of the Black Sea.

In 2014, Russia illegally annexed the Crimean Peninsula. In February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine, occupying large parts of the country’s south. The Black Sea is immensely important to the Kremlin’s trade policy. Russia exports a significant proportion of grain, fertilizer and other goods through Black Sea ports. The utility of the trade route has also increased in a short time because it provides access to countries that have not signed on to Western sanctions against Russia.

The Black Sea is even more consequential for Ukraine. In peacetime, over 50% of Ukraine’s total exports went through Odesa, the country’s largest Black Sea port. As one of the world’s most important grain-producing regions, this was the chief export until the grain agreement with Russia ended in mid-July. Before the war began, Russia and Ukraine together exported just under 24% of the world’s wheat and about 19% of its barley, along with 60% of the global exports of sunflower oil.

Russia and Ukraine are now increasingly strategically targeting each other’s merchant ships on the Black Sea.

Both countries would suffer economically if there were a slowdown in trade. Ukraine remains especially dependent on this route, even though the country has diversified its export routes and now ships only 40% of its grain via the Black Sea, sending the rest along the land route through the European Union.