By Paolo Chirafisi, Italian geopolitical analyst
On 31 July 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed the brand new maritime doctrine of the Russian Federation, thus renewing the earlier one, courting again to 2015.
Along with setting formidable and maybe unrealistic targets within the Arctic Ocean, the Indo-Pacific Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, the brand new maritime doctrine has an vital focus, in fact, on the Black Sea.
In comparison with the earlier doctrine, characterised by a willingness to cooperate with different maritime actors, on a world scale, this 2022 model exhibits, in his tones and contents, a way more aggressive geopolitical posture and is marked by the conflict with the present maritime hegemon, the USA.
Relating to the strategic situation wich is object of study, the Russian marine doctrine previews a “whole strengthening of the geopolitical place of Russia” within the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov in addition to in all of the adjoining seas of the Federation and specifically an enlargement of army infrastructure within the Crimean peninsula, illegally annexed to the Federation in 2014, and a deliberate strengthening of the Russian Black Sea fleet.
In accordance with statements made by the Minister of Protection Shoigu in current months, the ports of Berdiansk and Mariupol, on the coasts of the Azov Sea, would “absolutely functioning” and in perspective Russia would intend to determine there “bases for help ships, emergency rescue providers and models for the restore of ships of the navy” (Russia to determine naval bases in two occupied Ukraine cities: Protection Minister | Al Arabiya English).
Evidently the Russian Federation doesn’t really feel very secure within the ports of the “Crimean fortress”, after the successes reported by the Ukrainian raids within the port of Sevastopol, after the sinking of the flagship “Moskva” and after the Ukrainian reconquest of Snake Island and intends intends to create further army bases within the Sea of Azov, aiming to show it right into a “Russian lake”.
It needs to be famous, nonetheless, that Russian management of Berdiansk and Mariupol is threatened by any counter-offensive from Kiev, because the territory of the rear port, at the moment occupied by Moscow troops, doesn’t possess a strategic depth to make sure enough safety of those port websites, doubtlessly assaultable by land from the north.
As well as, the Volga-Don Canal, a brief however strategic synthetic infrastructure of about 63 km that connects the homonymous rivers, is utilized by Russia to maneuver vessels from the Caspian Sea to the Azov Sea however has been for many years in quite precarious situations: in some locations it’s became a shallow swamp and is characterised by quite a few loops and bottlenecks; this determines the impossibility of transferring to the Sea of Azov warships of nice dimension.
In current months they’ve returned to speak about this waterway, within the context of ever nearer cooperation between Iran and Russia (Russia Invests in Volga-Don Canal as Commerce With Iran Booms (maritime-executive.com)) that takes place on a number of ranges, not least the business one; on this context, evidently the Authorities of the Russian Federation has determined to allocate USD 1 billion to increase the canal, permitting the passage of bigger vessels with a bigger tonnage.
This may clearly permit a double use of this infrastructure through which the facet of army cooperation between Russia and Iran would tackle a not secondary significance, given additionally the current agreements to supply Russia with Iranian drones and missiles (Drone evaluation in Ukraine suggests Iran has equipped Russia since struggle started | Ukraine | The Guardian ).
As well as, it has been proposed prior to now by Russia and Kazakhstan and extra lately by the Eurasian Financial Union (Kazakhstan proposes giant scale waterway mission to attach Europe and Asia (brusselstimes.com)) the development of a brand new wider and extra environment friendly waterway, the Eurasia Channel; however in the intervening time there isn’t a hint of such an initiative.
On one other aspect, the pharaonic mission pursued by Turkish President Erdogan known as “Istanbul Channel” appears worthy of larger consideration: it could, actually, represent a substitute for the Bosphorus Strait, to which he would run parallel, thus permitting Turkey and different international locations to ignore the previous Montreaux Conference of 1936, which restricts the passage by means of the straits of army vessels not belonging to the Black Sea coastal states.
If this Channel had been really carried out, it could be an infrastructure of robust geopolitical worth that will put Russia in a sophisticated scenario from the standpoint of its naval army projection within the Black Sea, undermining the targets laid down within the new 2022 maritime doctrine, at a future time when there can be free entry for the army vessels of the NATO international locations, and specifically these of the US and UK fleet.
