Ukraine will set up a new naval base on the coast of the Azov Sea by the end of the year, countering Russian efforts to dominate the area, the Ukrainian government said on Sept. 16.
“This (base) will pave the way for repelling the aggressive acts of the Russian Federation,” the government wrote in a post on its Facebook page.
The government noted that Ukraine had launched two armored gunboats in the city of Berdyansk some 605 kilometers southeast of Kyiv. Berdyansk and Mariupol are the two main Ukrainian port cities on the Azov Sea coast.
The government’s decision to reinforce Ukraine’s seaborne defenses in the Azov Sea comes amid a drastic increase in Russia’s military pressure in the region, against the backdrop of the stalemated four-year ground war against Russian-led forces in the Donbas.
According to numerous media reports and official statements from Kyiv, Russia in recent months has redeployed from the Caspian Sea to the Azov Sea at least 10 warships and up to 40 small patrol boats, a sizable force that includes at least six Shmel-class artillery boats, seven assault landing craft, and two corvettes capable of carrying Kalibr cruise missiles.
Moreover, Russia’s overwhelming air-defense forces in occupied Crimea and Russia’s Southern Military District, deployed in an arc around the contested Azov Sea territory, would grant Russia total air superiority over Ukraine in the event of a direct military engagement between the two nations.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s naval power remains abysmally weak since the loss of some 80 percent of its Soviet-era fleet. In the Azov Sea, Ukraine only maintains two coastguard detachments, in Berdyansk and Mariupol, equipped only with several dozen outdated small patrol boats.
Regional tensions flared in May after Russia completed the construction of a bridge over the Kerch Strait between Russia and Ukraine’s Russian-occupied territory of Crimea.
With the entrance to the sea under its full control, Russia also started interrupting freight traffic in the region. According to Ukraine’s minister for infrastructure Volodymyr Omelyan, as of July 17 Russian forces had stopped and boarded as many as 148 ships sailing to Ukrainian ports, primarily to Berdyansk and Mariupol, detaining them sometimes for several days.
This effective blockade as decreased the flow of shipping by 10 percent for Mariupol and by over 20 percent for Berdyansk, Omelyan said on Aug. 31.
Facing criticism for allowing Russia to dominate the Azov Sea, Ukraine’s leadership has taken several steps to build up its defenses in the region.
Apart from sending the two armored gunboats overland to Berdyansk on Sept. 8, more other newly built Centaur-class small assault craft were launched on Sept. 14 at the Kyiv-based shipyard Kuznya Na Rybalskomy, owned by Ukraine’s president Petro Poroshenko. The new craft are to be deployed to the Azov Sea, again being transported there partly overland.
The president’s shipyard is also to build a total of 18 Gurza-M small armored artillery boats by 2020 under a contract with Ukrainian Navy, which aims to create a fleet of numerous small vessels to counter Russian capabilities in the Azov Sea with a combination of numbers, high mobility, and potent firepower.
The Ukrainian government on Sept. 12 also approved the signing an agreement to accept two U.S. Island-class patrol boats as free military aid from the United States.
That deal has been plagued by scandal. According to the investigative journalism project Schemy, the United States was ready to provide the boats to Ukraine as far back as in 2014.
However, the Ukrainian government deliberately stalled the negotiations for the next four years, supposedly aiming to avoid stripping Poroshenko-owned enterprises of valuable defense contracts to produce similar patrol boats for the Ukrainian navy, Schemy journalists claim.
In a recent interview with the Washington Post, Poroshenko called on for new sanctions on Russia unless it stops detaining vessels in the Azov Sea, which is damaging Ukraine’s economy.
“Russia’s purpose is to occupy the Azov Sea, the same way as it did Crimea,” the president said.
“This is a brutal violation of international law, and we cannot accept it. We are strengthening our military there, and launching a case against Russia in the international Permanent Court of Arbitration.”
