BBC, Bloomberg, SIF Service, Russian Ships, UKR Inform, MarineTraffic
Reproduced here with permission from Geopolitical Futures.
KYIV-BERDYANSK-MARIUPOL – The familiar sounds of reverberation from huge harbor cranes in the Azov Sea ports of Berdyansk and Mariupol are eerily absent.
From afar and up close, the dock-aligned cranes appear suspended as if under a magical spell.
They should be contributing to moving about 6 to 8 percent of the country’s yearly freight volume. Here in Ukraine’s far southeastern corner, they perform mostly export functions by shipping locally sourced steel and grain to foreign buyers. Significantly, Mariupol is just miles from the Donbas war’s frontline, whereas Berdyansk is closer to Russian-occupied Crimea.
Deputy Defense Minister for European Integration Lt. Gen. Anatoliy Petrenko gets ready to board a gunboat with journalists on December 2 in the state-run Mariupol seaport.
Moscow actually is the spell master. After attacking three Ukrainian vessels in shared waters on November 25 and taking 24 servicemen captive, Russia has refused vessels passage to and from the Azov Sea.
“It’s a real blockade by Russia,” Ukraine’s Infrastructure Minister Volodymyr Omelyan said at a news conference in Mariupol on December 2 after visiting the two ports. “It’s turning out to be a dead zone.”
Now, these ports find themselves on a new frontline with Russia. Thanks to a meek Western response and Ukraine’s military inferiority, Russia is completing a stranglehold upon the Azov Sea, choking the local economy and maritime shipping.
The numbers speak for themselves.
Turnover has halved in the two ports since 2014, when Russia invaded Ukraine – starting with the covert takeover of Crimea and then the easternmost part of the Donbas. In May, a four-mile bridge was completed that links mainland Russia to the Crimean city of Kerch; its lower height clearance has decreased the two ports’ shipping capacity by 30 percent, said Mr. Omelyan.
Mark Raczkiewycz
Harbor cranes at the Mariupol seaport stand mostly idle on December 2 as a result of Russia’s selective shipping blockade in the Azov Sea.
Around the same time, Russia started “arbitrary” checks of vessels during their passage through the Kerch Strait. To date, the disruption and violation of a 2003 bilateral treaty with Russia for free passage has caused more than $350 million “in total damages” to the local Ukrainian economy, $200 million of that to shipping companies, the infrastructure minister said.
Foreign investments to develop the ports’ infrastructure are now frozen, Mr. Omelyan added. Down the road, he fears that companies will just stop betting on passage due to Russia’s “selective” inspections. Each day of delay causes $5,000 to more than $10,000 in losses, said Raivis Veckagans, chairman of the state-run Sea Ports Authority.
Kyiv loudly protested Russia’s latest escalation and belligerent military expansion. In turn, Moscow accused Ukraine’s Naval Forces of a “provocation” that led to the attack.
Following the Russian naval attack, President Petro Poroshenko repeatedly urged more Russian sanctions and an increased presence of NATO ships in the Black Sea, where the Kremlin has increased its naval activity after conquering Crimea. Perhaps, that’s why Russia partially unblocked shipping on December 4, Mr. Omelyan announced. Still, there was a backlog of 170 ships waiting to pass through the narrow Kerch Strait, the Border Guard Service of Ukraine reported.
Infrastructure Minister Volodymyr Omelyan speaks to journalists in the seaport city of Berdyansk on December 2. General Electric wind turbine blades are seen stacked in the background.
The 29-nation member defensive bloc said it was “enhancing” its presence in the region, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said in Brussels a day earlier.
“Last year, we enhanced the presence of NATO ships in the Black Sea from 80 to 120 days,” he said. “We have an air police mission in the region, and we have a multinational brigade in Romania.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ultimate goal, according to Ukraine’s leaders, including President Petro Poroshenko, is to launch an amphibious attack in the area to create a land bridge between occupied Donetsk and Crimea.
Russia now poses the biggest military threat to Ukraine since 2014, when it first invaded the country, Ukraine’s Armed Forces Commander Viktor Muzhenko told the Reuters news agency on December 4.
Mr. Poroshenko said this week that the country is surrounded by a military force that is ready for invasion. More than 80,000 Russian soldiers are at Ukraine’s borders, including the annexed Crimean peninsula and in the occupied parts of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts.
Moreover, more than 80 Russian military ships and eight submarines are in the Black, Azov and Aegean seas, he added. Russia also has permanent airfield and other military installations near Ukraine’s border and has amassed 250 tanks as close as 18 kilometers from the border, according to Mr. Muzhenko.
Ships in the Azov Sea port of Berdyansk on December 2.
“Directly, we assess that the threat of further escalatory actions to be undertaken by military means of the Russian Federation is highly credible,” said Deputy Defense Minister and Lt.-Gen. Anatoliy Petrenko in Mariupol on December 2. “That’s why we created the Joint Forces Operation to reflect on that fact… and understand the developing military mind of the Russian Federation, which is concentrated in very specific operational directions of Ukraine.”
More specifically, the threat of further Russian invasion is “between 70 to 80 percent, especially during the upcoming holiday season,” said Ihor Koziy, a military expert at the Institute for Euro-Atlantic Cooperation. “For three to five days, nobody in the world would care about what is going on.”
He also said the Russian president is waiting for justification to pull the trigger. “Putin is still not ready for a very open traditional method because there is no psychological readiness for it inside the Russian army, but it is still on the table,” Mr. Koziy said.
Harbor cranes at the Berdyansk seaport stand mostly idle on December 2.
In response, Russian presidential spokesperson Dmitry Peskov rejected talk of the perceived military threat as “groundless” and “absurd”.
Providing analysis, John Lough of the British-based think tank Chatham House wrote that last week, “Russia’s actions… were designed to underline its influence over Ukraine and show that the West is powerless to respond. Moscow knows NATO will not deploy naval forces close to the Kerch strait since such a move would increase tensions rather than reduce them.”
Combat-age males from Russia between the ages of 16 and 60 are banned from entering Ukraine now that Kyiv has imposed martial law in 10 regions that border Russia, coastal areas and breakaway Transnistria region of Moldova. More than 730 Russian citizens were denied entry into the country as of December 5, according to the Border Guard Service.
Mr. Poroshenko justified the imposition of martial law on November 28 as designed not to repeat the scenario of 2014 when the military was caught flat-footed with only one brigade, or 6,000 soldiers, in complete combat readiness and able to execute orders when Russia invaded.
Mr. Putin has refused direct contact with his Ukrainian counterpart since the naval attack that has resulted in three Ukrainian ships being impounded and 24 captured servicemen taken to Moscow to face trial for “trespassing on Russian territory.”
The Kremlin leader, according to the Russian news wire TASS, said he didn’t “want to partake in his [Poroshenko’s presidential] election campaign,” referring to the Ukrainian president’s perceived attempt to improve his re-election chances. “He masterfully creates crises and provocative situations whose fault he places on Russia,” Mr. Putin alleged.
The Ukrainian naval command ship Donbas docked in the state-run Mariupol seaport on December 2.
Ukraine has also begun preparing for a possible invasion by putting the military on full alert and increasing security at strategic infrastructure sites. Large-scale military and reservist training began on December 3. They are expected to end before the new year.
To longtime Ukraine observers, Russia’s latest rapacious actions, including the Azov Sea blockade, are a component of Moscow’s hybrid warfare toolbox. Its key features are stealth, covert actions along many fronts, and slow-motion strangulation. Such an approach limits Ukraine’s choices for counteraction and often leads to choices that don’t offer good outcomes.
“Russia’s hybrid hostilities have extended far beyond the country’s thinly veiled military intervention in eastern Ukraine, with Moscow also making use of targeted assassinations, cyberattacks, trade embargoes, and disinformation campaigns to keep Ukraine permanently destabilized and to prevent the country’s final escape from the Kremlin’s sphere of influence,” wrote British citizen and Kyiv resident Peter Dickinson for the journal Foreign Affairs on December 5.
The “one constant” in all this is Russia’s desire to disguise involvement and have “plausible deniability,” he wrote.
Thus, Ukraine is taking no chances and still wants more Western action beyond statements of “concern” and “condemnation.” Later this month, the European Union is scheduled to rollover existing sanctions on Russia, but no country has indicated it will enact stiffer sanctions or broaden them after the naval attack.
As Ukraine braces for a full-scale invasion, one which Russia has rehearsed in numerous military drills over the past five years, Infrastructure Minister Omelyan made a historical reference.
Remarking on the precarious balance between drawing investment for economic growth and staving off enemies, he said: “The Kozaks, even when they were in the fields to cultivate the land during harvest time, would carry their sabers on their belts in case of any sudden attacks by barbarians.”