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The sinking of the Russian navy’s flagship vessel “Moskva” in the Black Sea, which reportedly occurred with assistance from intelligence provided by the U.S., marks a key moment in the war in Ukraine. As countries around the world start to feel the impact from the global food crisis that is building due to the ongoing conflict, Vladmir Putin is faced with another embarrassing setback in his invasion. Peter Zeihan says Moscow’s naval strategy is now at a severe disadvantage.
Now, whether you believe the Ukrainian story that the most advanced ship that the Russians have, can’t stop a couple of missiles or the Russian story where sheer incompetence led to the destruction of the most advanced ship that they have, it’s kind of a null point.
The point is that the Russians just lost their flagship on the Black Sea. Uh, they only have 12 surface combatants. This is the second one they’ve lost in the war. And the Russians are now showing an extreme, inability to use their Naval vessels to do very much because if they get near shore, they get shot at. In addition, NATO is in the process of supplying the Ukrainians with more advanced anti-ship weaponry. So we are already past the high point for what the Russians can do with their Navy in the war. And we should start thinking about what it’s going to look like when the Russians don’t have a Naval presence in the Black Sea, because we’re probably gonna be there in a couple of months. Now the Russians have multiple fleets in multiple places. And so in theory, they can take ships from one theater to relocate to the Black Sea, to reinforce for the Ukraine war.
But one of the problems the Russians have always had in being in Naval power is that the, their literals are not connected. Uh, this isn’t like the United States where you can have a North Pacific or a South Pacific fleet or an Indian Ocean fleet and they can sail around Africa and get to wherever they need to go. No, no, no, no. These are completely separated. The two closest theaters that the Russians could fear theoretically reinforce from are the Baltic Sea and the Arctic Sea.
The Baltic Sea is surrounded by NATO members and getting from the Baltic sea to the Black Sea requires sailing by Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania the currently, but maybe not for much longer non-aligned countries of Finland and Sweden, through the Danish Straits, by Norway, by France and the United Kingdom by Spain and Portugal, by France, again by Italy and ultimately having to go through the Turkish Straits, another NATO country, in order to the Black Sea. So that is, that would be asinine.
