In March 2024, Ukraine appeared to be gaining the upper hand in the battle for the Black Sea, but a peculiar incident sparked curiosity about the activities of the Russian Navy in the area.

Ukraine may not have made real progress with its counteroffensive during the summer of 2023, but Kyiv did achieve some big victories on the Black Sea at that time, and those victories continued into 2024. 

One interesting incident on the Black Sea in March 2024 indicated that the Ukrainians might been making more progress against Moscow than was reported at the time, and it left some war analysts puzzled. 

Ukrainian Navy spokesperson Dmytro Pletenchuk revealed that a group of Russian ships near the Bosporus Strait had acted strangely while they had escorted a ship to the vital global trade waterway. 

"Recently, an interesting incident occurred when they sent two ship units to escort their vessels from the Bosporus. That doesn't happen often, only about once a month,” said Pletenchuk before revealing more details. 

Photo Credit: Twitter @YorukIsik

“But at some point, they just turned around and headed back," Pletenchuk explained to the Ukrainian News outlet Unian according to Newsweek. What prompted the two ships to turn around was not known, but there were some theories. 

Photo Credit: Twitter @YorukIsik

Pletenchuk speculated that the commander of the ships may have received information that they were in danger and went on to explain that the route they had taken in Turkish territorial waters was outside of the norm for Russia. 

“These vessels were forced to move along the Turkish border,” Pletenchuk explained to the Ukrainian news outlet, adding that the ships were hiding in Turkish territorial waters rather than taking a direct route to their destination. 

“Thus not taking the shortest route, which they would normally take, but instead fleeing to their hiding spots," Pletenchuk added, hinting that the vessels may have been hiding from Ukrainian naval drones, which dominated the sea at that time and continued to do so today. 

Business Insider’s Rebecca Roman noted at the time that Kyiv's success in the Black Sea theatre had been one of Ukraine's “standout successes of the two-year-long war,” and much of that success was due to the country’s use of powerful new naval drones. 

The British Ministry of Defence reported on February 25th, 2024 that at the outset of the war in Ukraine, Russia had the freedom to navigate throughout the whole of the Black Sea but Kyiv’s use of asymmetrical alternatives changed things. 

Russia was forced to reassess its appetite for risk and relocated its main operating area to the Eastern Black Sea. Persistent attacks on Russian naval assets have put Moscow on the back foot and made Russia far more cautious.

The British Ministry of Defence noted that “it is increasingly evident that the defensive posture adopted to mitigate against Ukraine's non-conventional approach to maritime warfare is not working as intended.”

Photo Credit: Wiki Commons by Автор: Ssu.gov.ua, CC BY 4.0

“At a strategic level, Ukraine's approach has denied Russia the ability to interfere with its maritime trade routes,” the defense ministry report explained. “Ukraine's momentum has allowed it to dominate the western Black Sea.”

Ukraine's domination of the Black Sea in March 2024 may have explained why the two Russian vessels traveling in Turkish territorial waters at the start of March were acting so strangely. They may have indeed been trying to avoid being attacked. 

On March 5th, the Russian patrol vessel Sergei Kotov became one of the latest ships at that time to be sunk by Ukrainian naval drones in an attack that officials in Kyiv claim killed seven sailors and sent the Sergei Kotov to the bottom of the Black Sea. 

"Right now this ship is on the seabed," Dmytro Pletenchuk said according to BBC News, adding that a Russian helicopter may also have been aboard the ship when it was sunk by Ukrainian naval drones. 

Photo Credit: Wiki Commons Main Directorate of Intelligence, CC BY 4.0

"There are no safe havens for Russian terrorists in the Black Sea and nor will there be," Volodymyr Zelesnky said on March 5th. Ukrainian intelligence reported that Sergei Kotov was destroyed by five Magura V5 sea drones. 

Photo Credit: Wiki Commons СпецТехноЕкспорт

More than six months on from March, the Ukrainians have only increased their hold on the Black Sea. In July, Russia pulled its last naval patrol ship out of its port in Crimea according to Reuters.

"The last patrol ship of the Black Sea Fleet of the Russian Federation is bolting from our Crimea just now. Remember this day," Navy spokesman Dmytro Pletenchuk claimed in a post on Facebook. However, it was not clear at the time if that move was permanent.

As of October 9th, Russia has lost 28 naval ships and submarines since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, 21 were destroyed and  7 were damaged, according to the Dutch open-source intelligence firm Oryx.

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