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The missile cruiser Moskva (Moscow) seen in a 2008 file photo, was perhaps the victim of the most high-profile naval action in Ukraine. (VASILY BATANOV/AFP via Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — While the Ukraine conflict has largely been fought on land and in the skies, there were still a few naval elements to the conflicts first year. But as Russia’s war enters its second year, two senior US Navy officers are predicting naval warfare will likely decrease, not increase, as part of the conflict moving forward.

The reason, the two men said, is directly related to an underappreciated but vital strategic success from Kyiv: the Ukrainians’ success in denying Russia’s Black Sea Fleet the space to launch attacks freely off Ukraine’s coastline.

“You’ve seen the Russian effectiveness from the maritime [domain] has been declining. The very reason [is] that the Ukrainians have become better at targeting and using the weapons that we that we provided them,” said Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday earlier this month. The Ukrainians have “limited the Russians maneuverability to put themselves in a better position.”

That assessment of the Ukrainian’s abilities is shared by one of the Navy’s top intelligence officers, Rear Adm. Mike Studeman, who said during the West 2023 conference that the “battle so far for the Black Sea… [is] largely over.”

“The A2AD, anti-access area denial, was achieved by the Ukrainians and therefore, you have a marginalization of the maritime activities,” said the commander of the Office of Naval Intelligence. “You have long-range fires that the Black Sea Fleet … will launch into Ukraine, but by and large there’s been a neutralization of many of the capabilities here that the Russians had intended to use” against Ukraine.

Studeman added that the long-term effect may be that whenever Russia decides to rebuild its land and air forces, it may be forced to rely more heavily on its navy — which would have implications both for Russia’s strategy on a global scale, and for wear and tear on its fleets.

Gilday and Studeman’s positions give them access to intelligence about the war that is not in the public domain. But in interviews with Breaking Defense, various national security analysts came to similar conclusions as the flag officers — albeit not always for the same reasons.

“The Russian navy has been left to, basically, just firing occasional precision guided missiles at energy infrastructure and that sort of thing in Ukraine,” said Dmitry Gorenburg, a senior researcher at CNA, a federally-funded research and development agency that provides advice to the Pentagon.

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“The problem with that is that there’s a limited mound of those missiles left in Russia’s arsenal, so even that side is somewhat less significant than maybe it was a few months ago,” he added.

Sebastian Bruns, a researcher at the Institute for Security Policy at Kiel University and formerly a visiting professor at the US Naval Academy, echoed Studeman’s notion that the Russian navy may end picking up the slack later given how worn down the country’s army has become.

“The Russian navy could emerge as the branch that is most unscathed, and provide reserves anywhere from the frontlines to creating headaches for the West for years to come, in and around Europe, and elsewhere,” he said.

But Bruns also said “there is a real probability that the naval and maritime matters will gain in importance” over the coming year, citing requests by Andriy Melnyk, Ukraine’s deputy minister for foreign affairs, for Germany to send submarines to help stave off Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.

Could Ship Donations Be Coming For Ukraine?

It would be no small act of political will for a country to donate a warship to aid in Ukraine’s fight. But if the US, Germany or any NATO ally did offer such aid, then there would be no guarantee such a ship could even reach Ukraine’s coastline in the Black Sea.

The primary entrance in and out of the Black Sea is the Bosphorus, a strait controlled by Turkey and governed by a decades-old international agreement known as the Montreux Convention. The agreement has strict limitations on which warships may enter the Black Sea and those rules are tightened when countries are at war.

Cornell Overfield, also a researcher at CNA, told Breaking Defense the Montreux Convention only guarantees a warship’s passage into the Black Sea if it is returning to its base. That means a new warship donated by a foreign country would not enjoy this “right to return” and, based on Turkey’s historical interpretation of the Convention, could be denied entry to the Black Sea.

But could Ukraine attempt to declare a newly-received warship as homeported in the Black Sea? They could try, but Turkey probably won’t play along, Overfield said.

“Turkey’s behavior to date suggests that it would not be sympathetic to Ukraine’s argument — just look at the several [Russian] warships in early March that were refused transit through the straits because they were not homeported in the Black Sea,” he said.

He added that even if Ukraine convinced Turkey to allow the loophole, it would be a pyrrhic victory at best, as Russia would likely be able to recompose its fleet to supplement its Black Sea presence.

“I would be surprised if Russia had not explored the re-base loophole, and that they didn’t use it/floated it unsuccessfully speaks volumes to me,” Overfield added.

Brad Bowman, a military and political analyst with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said the inherent nature of Russia’s war — against the territorial integrity and political sovereignty of Ukraine — meant its focus would always be on the land. That combined with the fact Ukraine has been able to receive security and humanitarian assistance across western land borders “has reduced the need to contest control of the Black Sea.”

But he also warned of the fickle nature of the war — one that some observers once predicted would end in less a week and has now gone on for more than a year.

“We should also bring some humility to our predictions. We don’t know how long wars will last or what character they will take. We should scrutinize anyone who suggests with confidence that a particular conflict will remain relegated to a particular domain indefinitely,” he said.