Russia's Black Sea Fleet Receives Warning After 'Fleeing' Crimea

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has warned Russia's "fleeing" Black Sea Fleet that Kyiv's forces—which have scored repeated success against the Russian Navy despite having no conventional fleet of their own—will pursue Moscow's warships anywhere in the Black Sea.

Speaking at the parliamentary summit of the Crimean Platform on Tuesday, the president lauded Ukraine's littoral success in the face of overwhelming Russian maritime superiority.

"This is a historic achievement," Zelensky said, saying that the Black Sea Fleet is "gradually fleeing from Crimea" after a series of drone, cruise missile, and commando attacks on its defensive networks, naval infrastructure and warships in and around the occupied peninsula.

The recent announcement of a future Russian naval base in the southeastern Black Sea, Zelensky said, was a sign of Moscow's weakness. "Recently, the Russian leader was forced to announce the creation of a new Black Sea Fleet base on the occupied territory of Georgia," Zelensky said. "But we will get them everywhere."

Newsweek reached out to the Russian Defense Ministry via email for comment.

The Black Sea Fleet quickly established control of the Black Sea in the opening days of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, imposing a blockade of Ukraine's Black Sea ports and threatening an amphibious invasion of coastal cities, including Odesa.

But in the 18 months since, Kyiv has pushed Russian naval forces out of parts of the strategic sea and, according to some reports, forced some of Russia's most advanced vessels to leave their home base in the city of Sevastopol.

There, at the nexus of Russia's Black Sea power projection, Ukrainian cruise missiles even dramatically destroyed the fleet's headquarters.

Moscow's navy still dominates the Black Sea, even if its vessels are being regularly harassed by Ukrainian naval drones. Russian warships regularly launch cruise missiles from the Black Sea toward Ukrainian cities, maintaining a major threat to the country's mauled infrastructure network.

But Kyiv's maritime aggression has disrupted Russian operations, rending gaps in the Kremlin's intermittent Black Sea blockade, which exacerbated Ukraine's economic crisis and threatened food shortages across the developing world.

"Ukraine was able to return the Black Sea to the role of a security artery on which global food stability depends," Zelensky said on Tuesday. "First, together with the [United Nations] and Turkey, we were able to launch the Black Sea Grain Initiative , then we added the Grain from Ukraine humanitarian initiative and launched new temporary export routes from our seaports."

Crimea is the key to the Black Sea and has been described by observers as a "floating aircraft carrier" enabling Russia to project force across the sea and into southern Ukraine.

Leaders in Kyiv have made clear their intention to liberate the occupied peninsula, whose seizure by Russian troops in 2014 began a new hot phase of a simmering Kyiv-Moscow conflict going back decades.

The gradual degradation of Russian defenses on the peninsula has facilitated intensifying Ukrainian attacks. On Tuesday, Zelensky said it was only "a matter of time" before Kyiv had full fire control over Crimea.