Andriy Klymenko, Head of the Monitoring Group of the Black Sea Institute of Strategic Studies and Editor-in-Chief of the BlackSeaNews

 

Here is a broader general configuration of the situation on the Black Sea in relation to the Russian-Ukrainian war, i.e., the one that goes beyond the military aspects alone.

Both the Ukrainian and foreign readers are, of course, well aware of one of the biggest surprises of this war — namely, the defeat of the Russian Black Sea Fleet (BSF), that as a result, has been forced to largely abandon its historic main base in the occupied Sevastopol. That case is now, certainly, being closely studied by all the general staffs and military academies of the world.

But the uniqueness of the current situation is that simultaneously with the actual hot war in the Black Sea, we also see certain "hybrid" processes, so to speak, that   while seemingly unrelated to the war, occur in parallel to it.

If we somehow manage to completely tune out Ukrainian missile and drone attacks on the BSF and Crimean ports, Kerch ferry crossing and Russian Black and Azov coast oil refineries, as well as Russian missile and drone attacks on Ukraine from Crimea and Russian coastal regions — in particular, on the port infrastructure of the Black Sea Odesa region and the Danube — in other areas, it may seem, there is basically no war, since we see almost normal maritime traffic there.

Admittedly, that “tuning out” wouldn’t сome easy, considering that in January-June 2024, for instance, the Russian army used the occupied Crimea to strike at the regions of Ukraine with no less than:

• 38 Kalibr sea-launched cruise missiles from the BSF surface ships and submarines
• 69 Iskander-M ballistic missiles
• 1 P-800 Onyx anti-ship missile
• 3 3M22 Zircon hypersonic missiles and
• 977 Shahed-136/131 strike UAVs launched from both Crimea and Russian regions combined.

At the same time, first of all, for almost a year now, since mid-August 2023, cautiously at first, and in full force since mid-September, the Ukrainian sea corridor has been operating not only from the Danube ports, as before, but also to/from the ports of Greater Odesa — Chornomorsk, Odesa, and Yuzhny — at what’s estimated to be the 2021 level. That is a separate extraordinary development in itself, that doesn’t seem to be a military one, but that without our military, would not have been possible.

Speaking of that, we certainly can’t avoid feeling the glaring absence in the Ukrainian economy of the now occupied Mykolaiv and Kherson ports. That’s just yet another daily reminder of the war.

Secondly, during all this time, there has been no change to the huge undisturbed Russian maritime traffic from the Black and Azov Seas ports, that facilitates one of the most fundamental export bases of the Russian economy, mainly of crude oil, oil products, grain, coal, sulfur, fertilizers, etc., totaling tens of millions of tons.

To that, we should also add a considerable and, alas, also undisturbed maritime traffic from the ports of the occupied Crimea — mainly, Russia's covert export of stolen Ukrainian grain from the occupied southern Ukraine, that is, from parts of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, as well as from the Crimean peninsula itself, amounting to over 1 million tons per year.

Third, the maritime activity of our Black Sea neighbors also continues as usual. Underwater gas pipelines from Russia to Turkey — the Blue and Turkish Streams — remain operational. There is also natural gas exploration and production in the Romanian and Turkish offshore fields, as well as traditional shipment to and from Romanian, Bulgarian, Turkish and Georgian ports. To them, the only occasional reminders of the ongoing war in and over the sea come in the form of sea mines and drones washed ashore on those countries’ coasts, as well as Russian drones that occasionally fly into Romania and Moldova.

Having said that,  despite business as usual, for our maritime neighbors, the war has nevertheless brought some new focus, circumstances, and multi-vector changes. For example, while Romania has significantly increased its port capacities for the transit of Ukrainian grain, Turkey has significantly increased its Russian oil and oil products imports not only from the Black, but also from the Baltic Sea, for further processing and re-export to Europe and Africa. We also see now something akin to the start of the Russian oil products re-export operations happening via Georgian ports. Finally, a decent-size Moldovan-owned tanker fleet for the transportation of Russian oil has also suddenly appeared on the horizon.

In these circumstances, it’s not appropriate to compare Ukrainian maritime business’s current and pre-war performance.

With regard to Ukraine and its maritime industry, we must understand that it’s one thing to discuss peacetime maritime trade and port operations happening before February 26, 2014, i.e. before the occupation of Crimea, and another — after the Ukrainian economy lost not only the Crimean ports, but also, all its huge maritime cruise business, where Ukraine had been the undisputed Black Sea leader in the number of cruise ships received.

Furthermore, considering the following period, prior to the start of the Great War on February 24, 2022, peaceful for the Ukrainian maritime business is also quite a a big stretch. Since February 26, 2014, Russia has de facto controlled a large part of the Ukrainian sector of the Black Sea and its shelf by not just seizing the Ukrainian offshore gas fields, but by also deploying military personnel and equipment on those stolen gas platforms across the vast area from Zmeinyi Island near Odesa to Crimea’s Tarkhankut Peninsula.

It was at that time that Russia radically renewed its BSF combat capacity by replenishing it with 13 ships and submarines with Kalibr missiles, dozens of aircraft and modern coastal missile systems, such as Bal, Bastion and Iskander, now stationed on the occupied peninsula. And it was then that it declared a huge part of our sea “Russian” and began regular naval exercises with missile firings and large-scale blockades of sea areas to prevent Ukrainian ports operation.

Incidentally, even though ironically, NATO Maritime Command and the US 6th Fleet, that each year since 2014 had been consistently ensuring not just high, but unprecedented, level of the non-Black Sea NATO states warships’ presence in the Black Sea to guarantee freedom of navigation,  suddenly stopped those deterrence operations on January 3, 2022, a month and a half before Russia's large-scale invasion of Ukraine. That has left the Black Sea completely at Russia's disposal due to the West’s now customary fear of "escalation".

The next stage, from February 24, 2022, to July 2023, was marked by our mainland Ukraine seaports being completely blocked, with only those on the Danube left operating. It was then followed by the UN grain corridor, Ukraine's emergency efforts to develop the Danube ports, and finally the current period, since August 2023, when the Ukrainian sea corridor became functional.

For commercial shipping, all of that can be only described as marine wartime economy, i.e., when you have war at sea, in the air over it, and across the radio waves.

Under such conditions, many of the maritime transportation and port business mechanisms that had worked in Ukraine before and continue to work in countries untouched by hostilities, can’t possibly work here now. Not to mention, that the key players have also changed, and so should the criteria for the performance evaluation.

Gone are the times what it was the Russian Navy that was the main player on the Black Sea, including in port business. Now it’s the Ukrainian Navy and, broadly speaking, the Ukrainian Defense Forces, that run the show. That is, the Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard and special services — the Security Service of Ukraine, the Defense Intelligence Agency, etc. They are the ones who primarily determine how our maritime traffic in the Black Sea operates.

Today, ships enter and leave Ukrainian seaports only when they are authorized to do so by our military in accordance with its own safety criteria for ships and crews, and only along the routes chosen not due to their economic efficiency, but exclusively to their military expediency. The latter boils down to the army’s ability to guarantee the ships and crews an acceptable level of protection from such threats as running into a sea mine or being attacked from the sea or air.

Hence, the traditional economic approaches to assessing port performance are senseless now. However, journalists traditionally writing about ports, as well as economic experts and officials, keep trying to compare the current indicators with the peacetime ones. Truth is, though, it’s time for completely different indicators.

For instance, in the media, we see comparisons with the 2021 cargo volume transported for export through the Ukrainian sea corridor. But there is a reason why the data given is reported by just one state body — the port administration — and not by a whole bunch of both state and non-state sources, as was the case before the war. And note, dozens of indicators, that state source now reports just one — the total volume of export transportation, with a clause simply phrased as "including agricultural products." While being an absolutely sufficient information dose for wartime, it certainly, isn’t for the traditional market analysis.

I am convinced that what is important today is the very fact that for many months, almost a year now, we have become accustomed to seeing our western part of the Black Sea and ports being actively used for civilian shipping.

Here is an indicator that we have been monitoring every day for many months: since the beginning of this year, more than 200 vessels have called at the three ports of Greater Odesa each month, averaging seven-nine vessels per day.

For comparison, when the maritime export corridor was operating under the UN auspices with the participation of Turkey and Russia, in the first month of its operation, an average of six ships called at Odesa seaports daily, which soon turned into five, three, one and a half, and finally, zero. On average, during the year of the UN corridor operation, there were about three ships per day entering the three ports, or one ship per port daily.

But how great is it now to sometimes see almost the entire berthing front in all three Odesa ports packed with ships. Naturally, the port workers are even happier than us, and so is Ukraine’s state budget. In other words, the Ukrainian corridor is on average three times more efficient than the UN one.

I'd like to once again emphasize that in the situation where every ship’s voyage is in fact, a successful military operation, it is the number of ships that matters, not their deadweight (cargo capacity) or any other parameters.

So, without the sensitive information disclosure, below is a general outline of how it works.

A huge role in the success of the Ukrainian sea corridor has been played by the combined operations of the Ukrainian Defense Forces that have effectively made the Western part of the Black Sea off-limits to Russian surface ships due to the risk of being hit and sunk. That accomplishment has a fairly long history by now, that includes the liberation of Zmeinyi Island, the destruction of Russian surveillance equipment, helipads and mini-garrisons on those same offshore gas platforms in the northwestern part of the sea, and last but not least, the massive destruction of the BSF ships.

Below are the numbers our monitoring has yielded. Since February 22, 2022, the AFU have carried out at least 43 effective attacks on Russian warships in the Azov and Black Seas — both in ports and on the high seas — with the use of missiles, small unmanned boats, UAVs, and sea mines.

As a result, the Russian fleet in the Black Sea suffered the following losses:

• 22 ships and boats destroyed, excluding those damaged beyond repair
• 21 ships and boats damaged, including those beyond repair.

Ukrainian attacks on the occupied Crimea have played an equally important role. Over the past 1-1.5 years, those have been taking place approximately once every two to three days, sometimes even more often than that. 60% of them are aimed at the western coast of Crimea. After all, it is there that not only the main Russian fleet base in Sevastopol is located, but also their missile positions, radar stations controlling the sea space, and military airfields.

As a result, the Russian Navy and other armed forces units either don’t have the technical capability for or are reluctant to risk actually interfering with our maritime traffic. That’s the status quo for now.

But I want to stress the “for now” part. We shouldn’t assume that the enemy has no further plans. There can be no doubt they do, since they certainly realize that our maritime exports, that are currently even growing, mean more resources in the Ukrainian budget for continuing repelling Russia. And once again, conversely, Russian maritime exports discussed above, keeps generating cash flow that funds the war against us, and in significant numbers, totaling billions of dollars.

Overall, what’s happening right now may be referred to as a parallel economic war at sea. So far, despite the seething emotions upon seeing hundreds of ships calmly leaving your enemy’s ports, which generates billions of dollars in revenue, the warring parties have not yet been openly attacking each other’s civilian vessels.

Speaking of that, in July 2023, right after Russia's unilateral withdrawal from the UN grain corridor, the Russian Ministry of Defense declared every ship sailing to Ukrainian ports being now a "legitimate military target," to which on the following day, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense responded in kind.

So, the line between the "hybrid war" and the "hybrid peace" in the Black Sea is indeed a very tentative one and can be deliberately or accidentally crossed at any moment. And that is the reality of our truly "hybrid times," that both the Ukrainian military and the Ukrainian maritime business have been continuously operating in on the way to our victory.