The Mainstream Media has hyped up Russia’s losses in the so-called “Battle of the Black Sea” as being purely the result of Ukrainian efforts, which are aimed at boosting morale as the conflict’s dynamics shift and Kiev is pushed back on the defense, especially after its defeat in Avdeevka last weekend. The statistic being bandied about nowadays is that a whopping one-third of Russia’s Black Sea fleet has been disabled, which amounts to 25 ships and one submarine, despite Ukrainian not having a navy.
Numerical disputes aside, the fact is that while Ukraine was the country directly carrying out these attacks, they wouldn’t have been possible without support from the Anglo-American Axis (AAA) that’s the one really waging NATO’s two-year-long proxy war on Russia through that former Soviet Republic. The drones and cruise missiles employed to this end are the result of those two’s technologies, whether in part or in whole, especially when it comes to satellite targeting and other related forms of intelligence.
The purpose behind this campaign is to inflict asymmetrical military costs on Russia via proxy means, and ships happen to be high-profile targets that are comparatively easier to hit than others. They’re usually stationary at the time of attack and can only be defended through a combination of anti-air systems and those newly created ones for destroying surface and underwater drones. The first can be distracted and overwhelmed while the second have yet to be perfected since they’ve only just recently been fielded.
Russia is unable to retaliate in a symmetrical way since Ukraine lacks a navy, which further contributes to the information warfare narrative being propagated for boosting Western morale amidst Kiev’s battlefield losses and the continued gridlock in Congress over more aid. Although it’s well-known that the AAA is responsible for Russia’s losses, relevant facts are deliberately omitted from the Mainstream Media’s reporting in order to reinforce the false notion that “David is beating Goliath”.
The takeaway from all of this is that naval strategies will have to be revised as a result of the ongoing proxy war since such assets can no longer be assumed to be as safe as before. Rather, they’ve been exposed as comparatively easy high-profile targets whose destruction brings reaps enormous information warfare dividends with little cost to the attackers. In many ways, surface vessels are now more of a liability than an asset, with only submarines ones being safe and only if they aren’t surfaced.
All major players’ naval planning will therefore change as a result of what’s been learned from the past two years’ experiences in this conflict. This has important implications for the Red Sea Crisis and any theoretical one over Taiwan, particularly with respect to the costs that the AAA and their vassals are prepared to accept in the worst-case scenarios. Far from the smooth sailing that they expect, the storm clouds that are gathering on the horizon suggest that they’ll be more trouble than previously thought.
