"It Immediately Brings To Mind The Submarine *Kursk*"

• 28.07.2026, 13:56

A Ukrainian captain described what remains of the Russian fleet.

For the second year in a row, Putin has canceled the main naval parade in St. Petersburg. Instead of a display of “naval might” a modest ceremony was held at the Admiralty. Russian authorities now claim that large parades are supposedly no longer necessary in Russia.

What is the current state of the Russian fleet? Can Russia still be called a “great maritime power”?

The website Charter97.org posed these questions to Captain 1st Rank of the Ukrainian Navy and head of military programs at the “Strategy XXI” Center for Global Studies Pavlo Lakiychuk:

— Putin was hiding in the Admiralty not because there is no navy, but because, according to Ukrainian drones could reach St. Petersburg. This isn’t a problem for the navy; it’s a problem for air defense. Of course, with that submarine in the background, Putin looks rather unflattering. It immediately brings to mind the submarine “Kursk,” and that’s not at all flattering to the Russian Navy. But this is more of a problem for Putin than for Russia.

The Black Sea Fleet cannot be viewed as an indicator of the state of the entire Russian Navy, because starting in 2022, Turkey, citing the Montreux Convention, has closed the Black Sea straits to warships of belligerent states.

This applies to both Ukraine and the Russian Federation. For Ukraine, this is certainly a problem, but not a critical one. For example, it cannot bring in minesweepers from Britain to clear the grain corridor. Russia, for its part, cannot deploy a task force from the rest of its fleets into the Black Sea. In 2022, there were about a dozen and a half Russian Navy ships near the straits and in the vicinity of Syria. Among them was the cruiser “Varyag,” the same class as the cruiser “Moscow,” which was sunk by the Ukrainian Defense Forces. Incidentally, the “Varyag,” which is now part of the Pacific Fleet, was originally named “Chervona Ukraina.”

Evidently, the Russians’ plan was as follows: once the operation began, an additional task force would be immediately deployed to the Black Sea, giving them a decisive advantage in strength. They did not expect such a move from Erdogan. After two years of stalling in the Mediterranean Sea, this task force disbanded. The ships returned to their respective fleets because the Russians realized the situation would not change.

On the other hand, on the eve of the invasion, at least five large landing ships from the Baltic and Northern Fleets were deployed to the Black Sea. Among them was the Project 11711 “Pyotr Morgunov.” There are only two such ships in total. These are large and expensive vessels, representing one of the latest designs for the Russian Navy.

But the Ukrainians sank half of this group, and the remaining ships have to be hidden in Novorossiysk. The “Pyotr Morgunov” does not leave Novorossiysk Bay.

— Indeed, the Black Sea Fleet has lost Sevastopol as a safe base, but even in Novorossiysk, Ukrainian drones are targeting it. In effect, the fleet has been driven into a trap. What might its future hold, and is it still capable of carrying out major combat missions?

— In 2022, the Black Sea Fleet was assigned four strategic tasks: blockading the Ukrainian coast, conducting an amphibious landing operation, supporting ground forces along the coastal front, and participating in missile strikes deep into Ukrainian territory.

Currently, the Black Sea Fleet is capable of carrying out only the last of these tasks. That is, if we’re talking about a period of hostilities. Let’s say the war ends and the Black Sea straits are opened. Then Russia will be able to rapidly increase the size of the Black Sea Fleet by drawing on other fleets.

The Black Sea Fleet is not the largest within the Russian Navy. Russia has two strategic fleets—the Northern Fleet and the Pacific Fleet. There is the Black Sea Fleet’s twin—the Baltic Fleet—as well as the Caspian Flotilla.

Incidentally, the Caspian Flotilla is connected to the Black Sea via the Volga-Don Canal. Ships that aren’t very large can travel from there to the Black Sea. In 2022, at least six boats were deployed from the Caspian Sea to prepare for an amphibious operation: two or three gunboats and roughly the same number of landing craft. Right now, transferring anything to the Black Sea simply means sending ships to their doom. Therefore, this is unrealistic. That’s all regarding the Black Sea and the Caspian Flotilla.

Ukrainian drones have also already reached the Caspian Flotilla. The latest target was the missile boat “Stupinets.” And this is the new “Stupinets.” The old missile boat of the same name, Project 1241, which was part of the Caspian Flotilla, has been decommissioned.

The new boat was being prepared for commissioning starting in 2025. As far as I know, it hadn’t even completed its testing yet, but it’s already been hit. Earlier, Ukrainian drones attacked Kaspiysk, the main base of the Caspian Flotilla. This also came as something of a surprise to the Russian command.

As for the Baltic region, this primarily includes the Kaliningrad enclave and Baltiysk, where the Kaliningrad Naval Base is located, as well as, to some extent, Kronstadt.

A lot of attention is currently focused on St. Petersburg, but only the Navy headquarters has been relocated there from Moscow. Kronstadt, located on Kotlin Island, and the Leningrad Naval Base make up a smaller part of the Baltic Fleet. Its main forces are concentrated in the Kaliningrad enclave.

In terms of quality, the Baltic Fleet is roughly comparable to the Russian Black Sea Fleet. It is unlikely to be able to carry out any large-scale operations. This is especially true given that the situation in the Baltic is not as favorable for Russia as it is in the Black Sea.

Turkey believes that the Black Sea theater should be managed primarily by the Black Sea states. It is trying to restrict access there by outside forces, which somewhat strengthens the Black Sea Fleet’s position. In the Baltic, things are completely different. The navies of NATO countries consider the Baltic and North Seas their domain. The major naval powers operate there, so the Baltic Fleet is in a rather unenviable position.

So far, we have been discussing operational-strategic formations. The main forces of the Russian Navy, which provide the maritime component of the nuclear triad, are concentrated in the Northern and Pacific Fleets. The Pacific Fleet currently has fewer such forces. Clearly, Russia is not prioritizing the development of the Far East and Siberia at all. Therefore, the Pacific Fleet is weaker than the Northern Fleet. The main military force is concentrated in the North and, to some extent, in the Pacific Fleet. Objectively speaking, the Russian Federation continues to build up its forces there.

Of course, one can laugh at the cruiser *Pyotr the Great*, which they are finally planning to decommission, and at how painstakingly commission the modernized “Admiral Nakhimov,” which has been undergoing a major overhaul since 1997. They’re trying to turn it into a sort of Trump-style missile battleship.

Not to mention that the “Admiral Kuznetsov,” Russia’s only aircraft-carrying cruiser, is on its last legs. But the backbone of the Russian fleet here consists of nuclear submarines. These include both ballistic missile submarines and multi-purpose nuclear submarines. In this regard, over the past decades—despite the active phase of the war—the Russian Federation has been building up its forces in both the North and Kamchatka. Huge amounts of money are being directed there.

It seems to me that this is no longer so much a competition with the Americans as it is with the Chinese. Because, despite all of Russia’s efforts to build its own naval power, China is clearly ahead of it. It is no longer Russia, but China, that is the queen of the seas.

— Ukrainian drones have carried out hundreds of strikes against ships, and traffic in the Sea of Azov has effectively been paralyzed. What does this mean for the Russian Federation’s military and economy?

— The operation in the Sea of Azov began as a continuation of the operation by the Unmanned Systems Forces—and not only them—to impose a so-called logistical lockdown. The idea behind a logistical blockade is to bleed the advancing enemy forces dry, cutting them off from their rear areas, ammunition, fuel and lubricants, and everything else.

It is difficult to cut off logistics in the east, in the Donetsk direction. “Cutting off supplies” is a good term here because the supply routes there are like capillaries. It is very difficult to find critical, key points. In the south, everything is perfectly clear. The primary artery runs from Taman through Crimea. This includes the Crimean Bridge, the Kerch ferry crossing, and shipments by Black Sea Fleet vessels and auxiliary ships from Temryuk to Kerch, as well as from Tuapse and Novorossiysk to Feodosia and Sevastopol.

The second artery is the so-called land corridor. This is the route along the front line from Taganrog through Mariupol, Berdyansk, and Melitopol. These are two obvious supply routes; cutting them off should halt rear and logistical support for Russian troops in the south. Since both routes converge on Crimea, the peninsula indirectly becomes a sort of casualty of this operation.

Apparently, Putin’s generals consulted and decided: Why do we need two roads when there’s an entire avenue—like Broadway—running from the Azov Sea? Let’s shift our logistics across the sea; the Ukrainians can’t reach us there. But the Ukrainian Armed Forces did reach it. The main objective was to cut off this route.

As it happens, over the past few decades, a sort of pirate zone of uncontrolled off-port transshipment has formed south of the Kerch Strait.When a ship arrives at the port, it is registered, logged, and loaded with cargo. All of this is accessible, visible, and transparent. But it’s possible to carry out off-port transshipment. A ship arrives at an anchorage; other ships approach it and transfer cargo onto it. Formally, no one entered the port, and no cargo was received. And supposedly, no one knows where it came from.

There are also Russian vessels subject to sanctions that are supporting Putin’s war. They are registered in Russia, frequently violate navigation rules, turn off their Automatic Identification System (AIS), and are used for covert operations. They, too, can be partly described as a shadow or covert fleet. It is precisely these vessels that have been targeted by the Unmanned Systems Forces in the Sea of Azov.

The ocean-going shadow fleet consists of vessels flying the flags of Liberia, Ghana, and other countries. The “river-sea” class vessels are part of the Russian coastal fleet that services them.

They depart from Taganrog Bay, load their cargo somewhere on the Volga River or in the occupied Ukrainian ports of Mariupol and Berdyansk—including stolen Ukrainian grain—and then head south toward the Kerch Strait.There are two anchorage points there for waiting, and two more south of the Kerch Strait. Ocean-going vessels from the shadow fleet approach these southern anchorage points.

Small “river-sea” class vessels pass through the Kerch Strait, literally swarming around the large ship. About a dozen of them can gather around a single vessel. They quickly transship the cargo and head back. This type of transshipment is called “ship-to-ship.” It was precisely this shadow cargo transshipment in the Kerch Strait area that came under fire from Madyar. The Sea of Azov is becoming a no-ship zone because there’s no longer any point in sailing there. It was precisely this pirate-style black-market transshipment in the Kerch Strait area that generated the main profits for ships of the “Volgo-Don” and “Volgo-Balt” types. Now it has been halted. Therefore, there’s no point in them simply sailing back and forth.

Terminals on the Black Sea are still operating for now. These include the “Tolyattiazot” terminal in Taman, facilities in Tuapse and Novorossiysk, the Russian “Sheshkharis” transshipment complex, as well as the CPC with Russian, Kazakh, and American participation. Transshipment is still taking place there. Will it be halted? Perhaps this will be the next operation by the Ukrainian Armed Forces.