Eurasia Outlook: What a Russia-Ukraine Ceasefire Means for Black Sea Security
by Glen E. Howard
Background
As Ukraine and Russia potentially move toward a ceasefire agreement being brokered by the United States, a recent peace proposal by Ukrainian President Zelensky has suggested a suspension of fighting for 30 days on land, air, and sea. Experts in the West are now postulating what the ground and air dimensions of the ceasefire might be but no one has examined how the maritime dimension of a ceasefire could affect Black Sea security.
Any halt in fighting in the Black Sea would immediately usher in discussion on the 1936 Montreux Convention and whether the government of Turkiye might suspend Article 19, which allows Ankara to regulate the regime of the Turkish Straits (Bosporus). On February 27, 2024, Ukrainian President Zelensky requested the government of Turkiye to close the Straits to the passage of Russian military vessels under Article 19 of the 1936 Montreux Convention. Article 19 states:
“That if Turkey is not at war in a time of a war situation, warships of any warring state will be prohibited from passing through the straits.”
Within five days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 22, 2022, Turkiye closed the Straits to prevent any outside warships from entering the Black Sea – Russian or European – and it has been closed ever since. The last American warship to visit the Black Sea was the USS Arleigh Burke, which exited the Bosporus in December 2021 and no American vessel has returned since.
The Naval Status Quo in the Black Sea
After Turkiye made its decision to implement Article 19 in early 2022, the Kremlin has been unable to reinforce its Black Sea Fleet. During that time, Russian naval forces experienced significant naval losses to Ukrainian attacks, losing approximately 20 percent of its naval forces as a result of Ukrainian strikes using its technologically advanced Uncrewed Surface Vehicles (USVs), Neptune Anti-Shipping Missiles (ASMs), and British supplied Storm Shadow cruise missiles against the Russian Black Sea Fleet (BSF). Ukrainian attacks forced the BSF to withdraw into its naval bastions in Sevastopol and Novorossisk.
With no surface fleet to speak of Ukraine has managed to damage or destroy at least 27 Russian ships and one Kilo-class submarine using missiles and naval drones. According to one estimate, the Russian Black Sea fleet has lost 75 percent of its ability to conduct combat missions due to these losses. Moreover, the flagship of the Russian navy in the Black Sea - the missile cruiser Moskva - was also destroyed by Ukraine near Snake Island on April 14, 2022. Since then, Ukraine has neutralized the operational amphibious landing capabilities of the Russian BSF, destroying the large landing ships Olenegorsky Gornyak, Minsk, Saratov, Novocherkassk and Caesar Kunikov. Indeed, of the 15 landing ships and boats that were in the Black Sea in February 2022, only five currently remain active.
Operationally, after three years of war, Ukraine has effectively pushed Russian naval forces from the northwestern corner of the Black Sea to its far northeastern quadrant near the Kerch Straits. The persistent threat of Ukrainian USVs forced Moscow to redeploy the bulk of its surface and undersea naval assets from Sevastopol to the port of Novorossisk which has led to severe overcrowding due to a shortage of pier space. These efforts have given Ukraine enough breathing space to renew Ukrainian grain exports from Odesa and restore its shipments to pre-war levels. In the first half of 2024, Ukrainian exporters increased their physical sales volumes by 35%, reaching pre-war export levels.
The Doubled-Edged Sword of Montreux
Due to the imposition of the Montreux Convention’s Article 19, the 1936 agreement has become a double-edged sword for Russian policymakers. As a result of mounting losses at sea, Moscow has been unable to bring new assets into the Black Sea from other theaters as the only means to reinforce its forces is through the Volga-Don canal - an internal waterway that connects the 3,000-mile Volga River to the Black Sea.
The shallow waters of the Volga have deteriorated as a result of massive silting as Europe’s longest river has become navigable to only small Russian warships. Larger Russian vessels such as the Moskva’s sister warship the Marshall Ustinov, are unable to use the internal Russian waterway. However, the minute Article 19 is suspended, large-scale combatants like the Ustinov can return to the Black Sea, allowing Moscow to dispatch additional naval forces to replace its wartime losses and dramatically bolster Russian naval forces within weeks of the suspension of Article 19.
Who Will Lead a Black Sea Peacekeeping Mission?
Once a 30-day ceasefire takes hold and a more in-depth negotiated settlement is initiated by the United States, then Washington and its European allies will have to make a decision regarding a future naval presence in the Black Sea assuming the government of Turkiye suspends Article 19 to permit a return of allied naval forces.
By far Odesa remains of vital strategic importance to Ukraine’s national security. As much as 30 percent of Ukraine’s GDP comes from Odesa, which elevates the port to a Black Sea version of Rotterdam. Moscow is well suited to renew its ‘boa constrictor’ strategy of tightening its maritime noose around Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire or negotiated settlement, depending on its outcome. More importantly, Ukraine only retains 18 percent of its pre-war coastline, which makes its maritime corridor to the Black Sea even more strategically important to defend.
Warships from non-littoral countries outside the Black Sea, such as the Royal Navy and the US Navy, would likely seek to immediately return to the Black Sea to protect what is left of Ukraine’s remaining coastal waters. Up until the onset of the war in 2022 the United States, Great Britain, and the Netherlands consistently rotated in and out of the Black Sea as part of their naval deterrence mission against Russia but withdrew these forces (the USN Arleigh Burke) before the war out of concern by the United States that their presence might be interpreted by Moscow as provocative.
The only NATO member state in the Black Sea with any naval forces is Turkiye and its role in a future peacekeeping operation is uncertain. Earlier this month Turkish President Tayip Erdogan indicated that his country would be open to participating in European-led peacekeeping operations in Ukraine led by the United Kingdom and France. Turkish participation in a European-led peacekeeping mission at sea would be strongly welcomed by NATO member Romania as it is the only other Black Sea country with any significant naval forces to speak of to assist non-littoral European nations in safeguarding Ukraine’s maritime security.
Should Turkiye not participate in a naval peacekeeping mission then it would leave the United States, Great Britain, France, and possibly the Netherlands as potential participants in a naval peacekeeping mission. This assumption, however, rests on the idea that the United States could agree to participate as a back door to the ground-based peacekeeping operations in Ukraine while it might also perform a similar role in the maritime component of these actions.
Assuming the US agrees to participate in a Black Sea peacekeeping effort, then the same pre-war conditions of Montreux would remain for the US Navy and its non-littoral NATO allies. As before these naval forces will be forced to adopt ‘21 days at a time naval strategy’ to operate in the Black Sea according to Article 19:
“Vessels of war belonging to non-Black Sea Powers shall not remain in the Black Sea more than twenty-one days, whatever be the object of their presence there.”
The Article 19 clause forces non-signatory countries to Montreux to leave the Black Sea and “reset the clock” before they can return to the region. For the United States, it would mean US warships must leave the region and alternate their deployments to the Black Sea by returning to their NATO naval base in Rota, Spain. It is worthwhile to note that despite Article 19 the United States and NATO forces were able to maintain a robust naval presence in the Black Sea for over two and half decades. NATO held the Sea Breeze exercises annually making the defense of Ukraine a major focus of those operations. Launched in 1997 Sea Breeze was held without interruption until July 21, 2021, and involved as many as 30 different countries.
Before the advent of a 30-day ceasefire, the United States and key naval allies like Great Britain and France would have to conceptualize how to safeguard the Ukrainian city of Odesa as part of a Ukraine-Russia ceasefire agreement and hopefully find a way for Turkish naval forces to participate in such a monitoring mission and should be involved in any negotiations with the United States and its allies in implementing a ceasefire.
Ukraine’s Post-Ceasefire Naval Dilemma
Once a 30-day ceasefire takes hold Ukraine will have to make some difficult choices about its future maritime capabilities in the Black Sea and whether it should use that time to revisit its future naval operations in light of lessons learned from the three-year-old war. Much has happened during the war in terms of Ukraine’s shrinking Black Sea shoreline. Due to territorial losses in the war, Ukraine currently retains only 18 percent of its pre-2022 maritime littoral in the Black Sea so its operating space in a postwar security agreement will be vastly different than before the war.
Ukrainian leaders face a major naval dilemma because Kyiv has no operational surface fleet to protect its remaining coastline since Kyiv scuttled the Hetman Sahaidachny[1], its only large surface warship, early on in the Russian invasion. With no remaining surface fleet to speak of, Kyiv has invested heavily in its naval future by purchasing two Ada-class multipurpose warships from Turkiye. Launched in 2022 the first of the two $300 million warships Hetman Ivan Mazepa is operational and equipped with a Turkish-trained 300-man crew and has been undergoing training in Turkey while waiting on a suspension in hostilities in the war for its final delivery to Ukraine. The second Ada-class warship Hetman Ivan Vyhovskyi was launched on August 1, 2024, and will make its maiden voyage in 2026.
Turkish-built Ukrainian corvette Ivan Mazepa in dry dock
While these two Turkish-built corvettes can become the nucleus for a new surface navy, Ukraine has limited experience operating surface warships as the Sahaidachny became nothing more than a ceremonial emblem for Ukrainian pride and was frequently used in official government ceremonies, such as Ukrainian Independence Day or Ukrainian Navy Day, as a symbol of national pride, to demonstrate Ukrainian ties to the Black Sea. The fact that the warship was scuttled within hours of the 2022 invasion attests to the reality of the warship’s vulnerabilities to Russian air and naval strikes.
During a possible 30-day ceasefire Ukraine could in theory deploy one of the two Turkish-built corvettes to assist European-led peacekeeping forces in enforcement. However, Ukrainian policymakers face a major problem in figuring out where to base their new warship and even the European-led naval forces if they are deployed for peacekeeping operations in the Black Sea.
Ukraine has four potential ports to host its new surface warships: 1) Odesa; 2) Pivdny; 3) Chernomorsk; and 4) Ochakhiv. However, Ochakhiv is unlikely to be a future home for Ukraine’s new corvettes due to its vulnerable location near Russian bases in nearby Crimea. Odesa by far would be the best option but it has a problem with pier space due to its importance as Ukraine’s grain export hub.
The other two best options are Pivdny and Chernomorsk. Neither of these ports has the infrastructure required to service large Ukrainian warships and would require significant Ukrainian economic investment to turn these facilities into a suitable naval base or even support a European-led peacekeeping force at sea. Due to these limitations, any European or US, or European-led maritime force operating in the Black Sea would likely have to rely on the Romanian port of Constanta to support their peacekeeping operations.
Ukraine’s Naval Paradox: Asymmetric vs Symmetric Warfare?
One of the great naval paradoxes for Ukraine is rooted in the large surface warship versus small warship naval strategy that confronts most countries eager to invest in naval forces. In the case of Ukraine, the concept is relevant as to whether large warships like the Turkish-built Hetman Mazepa are the best defense investments in their defense capabilities in fighting Russia’s superior war-fighting capabilities in the region. The larger strategic question is whether Ukraine is better suited to fight Russia asymmetrically or symmetrically in the Black Sea as its own proven experience in using small USVs against the Russian Black Sea fleet in three years of war confirms this point of view.
For policymakers in Kyiv, the scuttling of the Hetman Sahaidachny should be enough to force Kyiv to give up on its notion of building a surface fleet whose fate could be upended in a moment should Russia launch a Kalibr missile strike against a lone stationary target based in a Ukrainian port. A Russian aerial attack could immediately send Ukraine’s $300 million naval investment to the bottom of the sea in a matter of minutes.
Without question, one of the true lessons of the war is that Ukraine is well suited to fight asymmetrically at sea as it demonstrated with its use of the Magura 5 USV. In the annals of naval warfare, Ukraine has proven that a country without a surface fleet can effectively neutralize a larger superior navy like that of the Russian Black Sea fleet by eliminating up to 20 percent of its naval assets. Moreover, Ukraine effectively pushed Russian warships back into their defense “bastions” of Sevastopol and Novorossisk and prevented the Russian navy from seizing the prized port of Odesa on several occasions in the first year of the war (2022-2023).
Ukraine neutralized the Russian navy’s ability to exert command of the sea using a mixture of Uncrewed Surface Vehicles, anti-shipping missiles (such as the Neptune), and air-launched Storm Shadow cruise missiles against Russia’s far superior surface fleet and pushed the prized Russian fleet out of its home naval base at Sevastopol to Novorossisk naval base located on the far Northeastern corner of the Black Sea.
Russia on the other hand continues to wage war symmetrically focusing on destroying surface assets, towns, cities, power infrastructure, ports, etc. By investing $600 million in purchasing two Turkish-made warships Ukraine is making the same mistake. It has spent millions training several hundred Ukrainian naval personnel to operate its surface warships that may never go to so sea out of fear of meeting the Russian navy in a head-to-head fight. Moreover, Ukraine will need to invest millions more in port infrastructure development to house the warships, build a support infrastructure to service the warships, and invest millions more in air defense weaponry to protect the warships.
Swedish built CB-90s Operating in the Baltic
Return to the Mosquito Fleet?
A key post-ceasefire challenge for Ukraine is whether it should continue building on its abilities to fight asymmetrically at sea by simply relying on its fleet of Ukrainian USVs, or whether Kyiv should return to its pre-war notion of building a Mosquito fleet of fast-moving naval attack craft that would additionally bolster its ability to strike Russia asymmetrically. Since the war started in 2022, Ukraine has completely stopped using the term mosquito fleet in its discussions with its Western allies regarding Ukraine’s defense requirements as the term has become a taboo subject at the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense and is no longer used by the Commander of the Naval Forces of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Oleksii Neizhpapa.
Ukraine’s shelving of the mosquito fleet naval concept comes despite the efforts of its Western allies to help Kyiv in this capacity by gifting Ukraine some of the best small boat naval strike craft in NATO-member state forces. The government of Sweden, for example, has gifted Ukraine 16 Swedish-made CB90 fast attack boats worth $1.2 billion that will dramatically improve Ukraine’s naval strike capabilities in the Black Sea.
With a speed of up to 40 knots (72 mph) and a range of 300 nautical miles. Each boat will be armed with anti-shipping missiles and capable of carrying 16-man special forces teams that could become the core of a new naval operational arm for the Ukrainian navy as part of a new Jeune École school of naval warfighting. Altogether Ukraine will have as many 38 CB90s (32 from Sweden 3 from other donors and 3 boats from the Netherlands) once the transfers are complete.
Swedish CB-90 fast attack craft require nowhere near the level of investment in naval infrastructure or basing to house the attack boats as the Turkish-built corvettes and could be equally distributed into as many as four different attack fleets based among Ukraine’s coastal ports on the Black Sea. Moreover, the CB-90s could become a new operational arm for Ukraine to launch strikes against Russian surface vessels or conduct asymmetric raiding operations against the Crimean coast.
The Swedish-made CB90s are the modern-day equivalent to the World War II era German-made Schnellboots, or E-Boats, that became the naval workhorse for German littoral operations in inland seas and rivers during the Second World War, particularly in the Black Sea. Unfortunately, Ukrainian government officials have become fixated on purchasing large surface warships and are ignoring the fact that Ukraine is better suited to fighting Russia asymmetrically, not symmetrically.
Outlook
With the commencement of a ceasefire agreement with Russia – 30 days or longer, Ukraine and its allies in the West will have important decisions to make regarding the maritime security of what is left of Ukraine’s Black Sea littoral. Given that the Black Sea is to grain what the Persian Gulf is to oil, the lifeblood of the Ukrainian economy remains its ability to export grain.
Ukraine and Russia remain locked in a geopolitical battle in Africa to obtain influence as grain is a key tool of that ongoing struggle. Moreover, due to the strategic importance of exporting grain to the Ukrainian economy, Kyiv cannot depend on the surface fleets of its Western allies like those of the United States or Great Britain for its long-term security, particularly when their naval presence in the Black Sea are bound by the ‘21 days at a time’ rule pursuant to the terms of the Montreux Convention.
To enhance its long-term security, Ukraine must return to its pre-war Mosquito fleet strategy and operationalize its new Swedish armada of fast attack boats to limit Russia’s ability to close off what is left of Ukrainian ports in the northwestern quadrant of the Black Sea. American, British, and French warships can only safeguard some elements of Ukraine’s maritime security but they are not a long-term solution to that problem. Kyiv should make the most of any short or long-term ceasefire to reconsider its naval requirements and stop focusing on $300 million warships like the Hetman Mazepa, which makes sense diplomatically in terms of building closer defense ties with Turkiye, but makes little sense operationally in waging an asymmetric war at sea against Russia’s numerically superior naval forces.
Glen E. Howard is the President and Chairman of The Saratoga Foundation
[1] It should be noted that Kyiv has spent millions of dollars since 2011 in upgrading the Ukrainian warship, a former Krivak Class vessel, to refit the warship and enable it to return to active duty. During the Russian invasion of Crimea Ukraine lost an estimated 80 percent of its naval forces, which were based mostly in Crimea.
[2] Each corvette will be equipped with American Harpoon anti-ship missiles, MBDA VL MICA short-range anti-aircraft missile system, Leonardo Super Rapid 76-mm artillery system, Rheinmetall Millennium 35-mm anti-aircraft system, 12.7-mm Aselsan STAMP machine gun systems, and 324 mm torpedo tubes with MU90 Impact anti-submarine torpedoes.
Thank you for your support! Please remember that The Saratoga Foundation is a non profit 501(c)(3) organization. Your donations are fully tax-deductible. If you seek to support The Saratoga Foundation you can make a one-time donation by clicking on the PayPal link below! Alternatively, you can also choose to subscribe on our website to support our work.
https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=XFCZDX6YVTVKA