Not sure about 2022. It spent some time in the Med “supporting” the Syrian government a year or two back. It’s certainly based out of Sevastapol . But it’s been the “flagship” of one of Russia’s lesser fleets and not a terribly up to date military asset. But it was a key strategic cog in this conflict due to Russia not being able to get better ships into the Black Sea.
But also keep in mind that it was the HEART of the air defense system protecting most of the Black Sea fleet attacking Ukraine (64 S300s up to 300km diameter, plus others).
That fleet is currently MUCH MORE VULNERABLE to missile attacks from land, sea and air.
It isn’t quick and easy to replace the multiple overlapping systems of ship mounted SAMs that were on Moskva and especially the coordinated electronic systems that were supposed to prevent missile attacks getting through.
Arresting the commander in chief of the Black Sea Fleet may also not quickly result in finding competent replacements for the senior command levels whose corruption and general uselessness presumably contributed to the inability to protect from Ukrainian shore to ship missiles.
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Doubt that there would be any better in the Mediterranean.
The four ships that were blocked from joining the Black Sea Fleet after Ukraine’s request were reported by Reuters as “two destroyers, a frigate and an intelligence vessel”.
Russia cancelled Black Sea passage bid of four warships: Turkey | Russia-Ukraine war News | Al Jazeera [edit: fixed wrong link]
Only ship with better air defense I am aware of is the Flagship of the Northern Fleet:
BTW I am pretty sure Moskva did not leave Black Sea in 2022. Last report I could find was:
Edit add:
The other two Slava class ships comparable to Moskva WERE positioned in Mediterranean and so WOULD have been available as replacements if they had been moved to Black Sea instead of Mediterranean. But their home ports were Baltic and Pacific, not Black Sea so blocked by Turkey.
Not thinking about that is rather like not thinking about where the Russian financial reserves were held.
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Does Ukraine have any warships in the Black Sea and Sea of Azov? Would there be any naval battles on the sea ( or attacks from aircraft flying over the sea) compared to attacks on Russian warships from coastal lands?
I imagine Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey would be careful not to initiate attacks on any Russian warships from land or sea.
Was more thinking that there would be a more numerous and higher quality fleet available if Turkey hadn’t closed the strait. The Black Sea fleet isn’t as potent as the Northern Fleet. I’m sure there would be a more modern ship to use as your command and control center than a 40 year old ship that had missed a critical modernisation upgrade.
Ukraine Navy was a small fraction of the USSR Black Sea Fleet, mainly small boats - rest went to Russia’ Black Sea Fleet which has overwhelming dominance. Russians captured many and the only frigate was scuttled to prevent capture.
Me too. I haven’t checked recently but my assumption back on February 27 was that, even with other NATO fleets including US joining in, Russia would have local naval dominance in the Black Sea as opposed to anywhere else:
Sending NATO troops to Ukraine would not be particularly helpful. Russia has complete local dominance in its region (land, sea and air) and would defeat NATO in such battles. But if the West wanted to do more than just send arms and other supplies to the Ukrainian resistance it could certainly cause serious military problems for Putin instead of just making speeches. For example Turkey could and should close the Bosphorous to bottle up the Russian fleet (as could and should have been done over Syria). NATO naval forces would be completely dominant everywhere else and could cut off most of Russia’s revenue from trade. It would be up to Russia whether it wished to escalate from a losing position or would prefer to withdraw quickly. A lot of lives could be saved if the West was not so completely gutless. But the peoples of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine will still win in the end. The long term result will be regime change in Russia again.
But recent developments change that. NATO could and should enter the Black Sea RIGHT NOW.
Along with ship to shore missiles from Ukraine it would currently dominate a Black Sea fleet that has lost the heart of its A2/AD.
My guess is that the lack of rebuttal of articles pretending that Turkey blocks this was related to the previous reality that NATO could not take on the Russian Fleet on its home ground and was staying away to avoid the “risk” of “incidents” but could not argue that merely entering the Black Sea is itself an act of war that involves immediate combat like shooting down Russian aircraft and attacking Surface to Air Missile sites as would be required to “Close the Skies”.
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The ship was supposed to have had type refit for Life Extension through to 2040. It certainly does not look like a ship that was fresh from such a refit in 2021
“On 3 July 2020, Moskva completed two and a half months of repairs and maintenance intended to allow her to remain in service until 2040”
Also, maybe it has not been mentioned before, but the Moskva was built in Ukraine. ( 45 years ago)
Irony.
Not bringing in more vessels into the black sea prior to the start of the war is pretty big oversight in planning and more evidence they weren’t expecting much resistance or much international response
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Might have just had a new engine put in. That would “add” 20 years to the life of a ship
Northern Fleet is more “potent” in the sense that it could handle any plausible conflict in the Artic and wreak destruction on the penguins. Its a good place to park Russian naval forces which travel from there to more interesting places.
Does have a flagship with superior A2/AD than the Moskva (I said homeport Baltic above but actually homeport must now be Arctic - Severomorsk).
The Baltic Fleet is quite weak (Kaliningrad is an exclave and St Petersburg, like Vladivostok, requires ice breakers some of the time).
Black Sea Fleet has the only true “warm water port” and I think it is the heart of Russian naval power.
WHICH IS VULNERABLE RIGHT NOW
Russia better leave the penguins alone.
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there are no penguins in the Arctic - you have your poles wildly confused
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Indeed an enormous oversight - like not moving their financial reserves out of reach of sanctions.
It is clear that they did not plan adequately for easily anticipated international response like Turkey fulfilling its obligation to close the Dardanelles. Very plausible that they did not expect the level of international response, including sanctions that actually seized their reserves.
They accurately estimated that there would not be a No Fly Zone but I assume they expected less effective immediate supplies of munitions (as did most observers, including me).
But I’ll take the opportunity to return to some earlier discussion on whether they “weren’t expecting much resistance”.
The size of the forces they committed clearly show that they expected resistance and equally clearly shows that they did not hope to establish a puppet government and occupy Ukraine - too large for no resistance, too small for occupation.
The failure of the first offensive to achieve what they WERE trying to do may well involve the same level of incompetent planning etc and expectations etc but full credit should be given to both the heroic Ukrainian defense and the rapid Western supply of shoulder mounted missiles etc.
The actual evidence that has been cited for claims that they were expecting to achieve their objectives within a few days (ie without effective resistance) is not just weak but actually supports the opposite conclusion.
From nearly 2 weeks ago:
Actually it isn’t even circumstantial evidence for the claim.
It is certainly plausible that the documents are real, not faked and if so, they conclusively support the conclusion actually claimed about them in the Forbes article at that link:
If so, they nonetheless support what analysts observing Russia’s military buildup had long been saying: plans for a potential invasion of Ukraine had been laid, at least as a possible contingency, months in advance—and Putin’s exasperated assurances to world leaders including Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron that he was not contemplating any such thing were the most shameless of lies.
But establishing call signs and radio frequencies for 15 days of operations does not IN ANY WAY provide evidence that they expected to take Kyiv in some similar period.
Manual distribution of printed lists of call signs and radio frequencies is an indication of really primitive secure communications. Certainly the standard practice would be to update such lists at frequent regular intervals rather than risk relying on the enemy not having got copies (which did in fact eventually occur in this case).
But as it happens the operation to seize the city of Melitopol took only 4 days. I would also describe it as being virtually without resistance though the wikipedia report describes it as a “battle”:
I cannot read the tactical maps correctly and would be very interested in a report from somebody who can.
Impression I got was that an attack on 4 axes was planned, from the 1st BTG of 810th Naval Infantry linked up with the 177th Naval Infantry regiment and using Air Assault troops.
That is for taking occupying a small city of 150,000.
Kyiv has about 3 million - 20 times the population.
Document is evidence that MUCH larger forces would have been deployed against heavily defended Kyiv if the intention was to take and occupy it rather than to position forces that could shell it from 10 km away (a more feasible objective which they spectacularly failed to achieve).
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Indeed I do.
I’m not sure how well the Russian fleet would do against polar bears.
Might confuse them with poles…
Reportedly, 6 warships from the Baltic and Northern Fleets transited the Straits to the Black Sea in early February, a couple of others moving to the eastern Med missed the cut off. IIRC Turkey asked those without a Black Sea or Azov home base to leave within X days, but no further reporting on exits.
There would have been other Russian warships based in the Black Sea, used to prohibit ship movements in certain zones. The IMO had been seeking a blue maritime corridor to allow merchant ships to leave. There are some Ukraine crew from merchant ships docked at Mariupol at risk of starvation and death at Russian hands.
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Interesting article!
" The truth is that the loss of the Russian flagship to a state without a navy will go down in naval history,…"
FWIW my wild speculation is that added to the negligence described there could also have been an underestimation of the coordination achieved between the Ukrainians rushing to deliver Neptune missiles due for April and the NATO intelligence liaison - both of which dramatically accelerated once the war broke out.
My impression is that NATO would have good understanding of ship electronics for tracking NATO missiles due to careful observation, bribes etc and would incorporate such knowledge into the Electronic Counter Measures of NATO missiles.
The “electronics” is basically software for a:
So it might have been possible to simply upload enhanced software at the same time as delivering the missiles that were not due until late April.
Concealing both the missile delivery and the update from Russia would not have been particularly difficult.
Some slight support for this speculation is that after the Admiral in charge of thinking about such issues was arrested, Russia suddenly launched a missile strike against the Kyiv design offices of the company that produces the missile.
Presumably it was not the actual production site or it would have been targeted earlier.
L8R
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