Russia’s navy sought a safer spot, but is still at the mercy of Ukraine’s drones and missiles, experts say

Russia’s Black Sea Fleet has suffered heavily, with the UK’s armed forces chief saying in February that 25% of Russian vessels in the waters had been sunk, damaged, or destroyed since the start of the war.

Ukraine’s attacks have forced Russian warships to withdraw from Crimea and relocate to safer waters, where they have also come under attack.

According to the Naval Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, on Tuesday, seven Russian warships were spotted in the Azov, two of which were equipped with Kalibr cruise missiles.

Matthew Boyse, a senior fellow with the Hudson Institute’s Center on Europe and Eurasia, told BI that Russia’s control over the entire coastline of the Azov makes it “difficult for Ukraine to deploy sea drones against Russian vessels.”

But this doesn’t mean ships there will be safe from Ukraine’s aerial drones and missiles, experts told BI.

“The Azov Sea is relatively safer since the surface fleet can, theoretically, benefit from superior land-based protection and is seemingly unreachable by Ukraine’s maritime drones,” said Basil Germond, a maritime security expert at the UK’s Lancaster University.

But he added that “Russia’s warships in the Azov Sea are still at the mercy of Ukrainian missiles and aerial drones.”

A secluded area

According to Mark Temnycky, a nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, the apparent move away from the Black Sea is a sign that Russian forces are “slowly learning from the mistakes they have made over the past two and a half years.”

“Seeing their fleet was being destroyed by Ukraine, the Russians are now exploring new options to fortify and protect the areas they illegally occupy,” he told BI.

The Sea of Azov is near Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine, meaning Russian vessels will be better protected there, he said.

Russia has also been building defenses around the Kerch Strait.

Earlier this month, satellite images showed that Russia has set up barges and floating boom defenses around the Strait.

Ukrainian sea drones would need to travel through that transit route to reach the Azov Sea, Scott Savitz, a senior engineer at RAND, a nonpartisan think tank, told BI.

“This facilitates Russian detection and targeting of those USVs,” he said, using an acronym for unmanned surface vehicles.

“Moreover, in the confined Sea of Azov, Russia’s ships can also shelter beneath land-based missile defenses,” he said.

That could hamper Ukraine’s drone and aircraft attacks.

Ukrainian planes would have to fly around Crimea and risk being attacked by air defenses on their way to launch points over the Black Sea, according to Bryan Clark, a former US Navy officer and defense expert at the Hudson Institute.

Meanwhile, Russian “missiles can reach most of Ukraine from the Sea of Azov and ports along the Russian Black Sea coast,” Clark said.

But the safety provided by the Sea of Azov is not “absolute,” Steven Horrell, a non-resident senior fellow with the Transatlantic Defense and Security Program at the Center for European Policy Analysis, told BI.

“Moored ships are still very vulnerable to longer-range precision strikes, like Western-provided systems,” he said.

It may end up being another fiasco

Igor Delanoë, the deputy head of the French-Russian Analytical Center Observo, said Russia’s navy may face the same issues in the Azov as it did in the Black Sea.

“The Ukrainians, generously supplied by their sponsors, can still use missile attacks or drones to inflict damage to surface vessels in the Azov Sea,” he said.

Ukraine may also find a way to more effectively target Russian ships there, according to Savitz, “taking advantage of their confinement within a small body of water, which makes them easier to track.”