The Maritime Character of the Russo-Ukrainian War
In this photo released by the Russian Defense Ministry Press Service on Friday, July 21, 2023, a warship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet fires a missile while taking part in naval drills in the Black Sea. The Russian Defense Ministry said the navy conducted drills that simulated action to seal a section of the Black Sea. The maneuvers come after Moscow declared large areas of the Black Sea dangerous for navigation following its withdrawal from a deal allowing exports of the Ukrainian grain. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP)
Russia’s recent wave of attacks on Odesa and its surrounding ports demonstrate again the maritime fundamentals of the Ukraine War – and again reinforce the need to consider both faster materiel transfers. It also presents a major opportunity for NATO to consider the reimposition of deterrence and escalatory ceilings. The U.S. should grasp this opportunity and accelerate military deployments to the Black Sea region, working in concert with Romania to provide a defensive bubble for Romanian and adjacent air and maritime space.
After nearly 18 months of war, Russia and Ukraine remain locked in combat. Ukraine has gone over to the offensive, waging a long-term anti-logistical campaign with the intent of ultimately punching through Russia’s defenses in southern and eastern Ukraine. Russia, meanwhile, is fighting back hard, leveraging its improved fortifications to stymie Ukrainian advances, while also feeding forces as far forward as possible to prevent a Ukrainian breakthrough. Both sides are searching for relative advantage in the east. But the south remains the decisive axis. Russia hopes to press Ukraine near Svatove, both to split its attention between axes and, more critically, to prevent a Ukrainian punch in the northeast. The line that defends Svatove lacks natural fallback points if broken, meaning Russia is at serious risk if Ukraine lands a telling blow there.
The above indicates neither a stalemate nor a concluded offensive, but rather an intense, brutal battle between equally matched adversaries. Ukraine understands it has one shot at a genuinely decisive breakthrough and has been conservative in large-scale force commitments because it grasps that an operational failure will make it vulnerable by early spring 2024.
Ukraine has therefore shifted to its deep strike playbook, which succeeded in the Donbas, around Kharkiv, and in Kherson Oblast – but which takes time to bear fruit and shows few territorial gains until the enemy is sufficiently degraded. At some point, Ukraine’s offensive will culminate, the result of materiel attrition from months of combat. But there are weeks, more likely months, of hard fighting ahead, particularly since Ukraine still receives fresh equipment from the West. With the new announcement of cluster munitions transfers, Ukraine now has an enormous reserve of artillery shells on which to draw. All the while, Russia loses a combined-arms battalion’s worth of equipment each day.
Again, the above implies no guarantee of victory. Rather, the reality is that Ukraine still has time to make a strategically significant breakthrough, and that despite unavoidable combat damage, it retains the means to generate that breakthrough with proper planning and sequencing and sufficient operational skill.
Yet Western media has again embraced a defeatist narrative, like that of summer 2022, where a Ukrainian success is deemed impossible. This is the defeatism that Russia seeks to exploit through its strikes on Ukrainian ports.
The Kremlin understands that it must fight a multi-year war to achieve its two objectives, the conquest of Ukraine and the destruction of the U.S.-backed European security system. Russia’s invasion in February 2022 was not meant to be the final, major confrontation with NATO that would prove Putin’s pièce de résistance, but rather a coup de main that resurrected the Russian Empire within the span of a few months.
Yet Russia has adjusted its strategy. It seeks to maintain influence in Africa and the Middle East, evade Western sanctions, and destroy the global commodity market, all to create a confluence of pressures on individual Western powers that incentivize negotiations. This explains the Wagner Group’s presence in Africa – a presence that has continued despite Prigozhin’s aborted putsch – Russia’s continued position in Syria, and the Russian diplomatic offensive throughout Africa and the Middle East.
Russia’s strategy has not worked yet. No member of the pro-Ukrainian coalition has broken ranks on any fundamental question of substance. But there are obvious long-term divisions between Europe and the United States, and within Europe, on Ukraine’s future, particularly over NATO membership, which flared into public view at Vilnius. Meanwhile, there have been an increasing series of leaks that distance the U.S. from Ukraine’s offensive, setting the conditions for the U.S. to pursue an independent diplomatic path if it so chooses. Never mind that Russia has no intention of actually settling this war: it still seeks conquest and domination and would use any ceasefire to rearm and divide Ukraine from the West.
This demonstrates the parlous current situation. Russia is now locked in a broader struggle for Europe’s future. It seeks to stoke political divisions within the Western camp, and gain a major power to break ranks, thereby allowing it to press Ukraine while the West devours itself in a cycle of recriminations.
This explains Russia’s recent attacks on Ukrainian food exports, including on Odesa and, most alarmingly, the city of Reni, a small Ukrainian city on the Danube just 190 meters from Romania. Russia has withdrawn from the Black Sea Grain Agreement and attacked Ukrainian grain infrastructure again to undermine global commodities, trigger another food crisis later in the year, and increase the pressure Ukrainian grain has generated on European farmers. Russia can act in this manner only because it retains significant maritime strategic depth. The Russian Black Sea Fleet is largely undamaged apart from the Moskva, allowing Russia to continue its strategic strike campaign and cut Ukrainian exports off.
The Reni strike demonstrates, in turn, Russia’s blither indifference that NATO will counter escalate. Hitting targets only meters from Romania indicates that Russia wholly discounts the possibility of any NATO reaction even if a weapon hits a NATO member’s territory.
This pernicious red line has all but vaporized Western deterrence as the West narrows its own options. The Atlantic Alliance has a fundamental series of interests well beyond the pure territorial security of its members: territorial security is far more costly absent a rational strategy that includes other factors. Ukrainian independence from Russian rule is one of these additional factors, as is Ukrainian control over Crimea. Both point to a baseline reality, that NATO has a major interest in breaking Russia’s control over the Black Sea. Doing so would prevent Russia from executing its current disruptions, severely curtail Russian leverage over the Caucasus and Turkey, and prevent Russia from executing a coherent campaign in Ukraine at anything but extremely high cost.
American policy should therefore include a series of expedited anti-ship missiles, launched from shore batteries or from a fleet of fast attack craft that can probe and disrupt Russian naval operations. Combined with Ukraine’s improving force of air and naval drones, even a relatively moderate force of anti-ship weapons can have a significant impact on Russian maritime operations. The objective should be to create a corridor that enables Ukrainian export, and at minimum makes any Russian strikes against this corridor extremely risky.
Yet reestablishing deterrence requires going much farther than just transferring weapons. The West must demonstrate its willingness to erode red lines just as Russia has. For if Russia is the only actor modifying the escalatory framework, then it gains the power to dictate the scope and pace of escalation – which it has been able to do throughout this war.
Two options are available. First, an EARNEST WILL style escort operation would compel Russia to consider its position carefully, since it would place Western ships between Russia and Ukrainian grain without engaging in any military operations. Russia has never escalated when presented with an unmistakable NATO response and is unlikely to do so now. Second, and more aggressively, the West should strongly consider the non-confirmed transfer of new air defenses to Romania – ideally employing new counter-drone technologies – that can intercept future Shahed waves.
The advantage of Western missile defense deployment to Romania lies in its potential deniability. There is no reason to expect that Ukraine would not receive weapons that any other NATO country employs, or that it would not defend its Black Sea and Danube ports to preserve export capacity. Hence Moscow would, once again, cry foul as to NATO military participation but be incapable of doing anything about it. Russia has allowed U.S. and Western arms to reach Ukraine throughout the war. It has shown no appetite for the open strike on NATO territory that would trigger a response.
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