ISTANBUL, Turkey — If you had to rank the spots around
the globe where the militaries of the US and Russia could physically run into
each other, the Black Sea would probably be near the top of the list.
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The giant body of water on Europe’s southeastern flank has
long been a theater of international competition between the US and its
European allies on one side and Russia and its sphere of influence on the
other, a dynamic that has been supercharged by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The Russian air force’s downing of a US surveillance drone
last week served as a stark reminder to the many countries operating in and
around the Black Sea of the region’s potential to become a flashpoint,
accidentally or otherwise.
“It has always been complicated, it remains complicated, but
the stakes are much higher now,” said Ian Lesser, vice president of the German
Marshall Fund of the US, a research group. “And the longer the conflict goes
on, the higher the risks of things spinning out of control.”
“It has always been complicated, it remains complicated, but the stakes are much higher now… And the longer the conflict goes on, the higher the risks of things spinning out of control.”
The Black Sea is larger than California, with six countries
on its coast. Three of those countries — Turkey, Romania, and Bulgaria — are
members of NATO, while others, including Ukraine, are friendly to the alliance,
which has long considered the Black Sea essential to its efforts to contain
Russia.
Turkey has tremendous influence over the Black Sea since it
controls two straits, the Dardanelles and the Bosporus, which ships must pass
through to transit between the Black Sea and other global water ways. The
Montreux Convention of 1936 gives Turkey the right to close the straits to most
military traffic in times of war, a power it exercised after Russia invaded
Ukraine last year.
‘Almost a Russian lake’The Black Sea is hugely important to the efforts of Russian
President Vladimir Putin to expand Moscow’s influence and, stemming from that,
it has been a locus of instability. The surrounding region in recent years has
seen Russia’s war with Georgia in 2008, political uprisings against
Russian-backed leaders in Ukraine and Belarus and a war between Azerbaijan and
Armenia in 2020, eventually mediated by Moscow.
But Putin’s biggest power play around the Black Sea was the
occupation of Crimea, a strategic peninsula that Russia seized from neighboring
Ukraine in 2014. That enhanced Russia’s position in the Black Sea and gave it
control of Sevastopol, Russia’s only warm-water port.
In the years since, Putin has increased Russia’s naval
presence in the Black Sea, so much so that in 2016, Turkish President Recep
Tayyip Erdogan warned that the sea had “almost become a Russian lake”.
Russia’s foes responded by intensifying their own military
maneuvers around the Black Sea. NATO members flew regular surveillance flights
and the United States and Britain often dispatched warships, although
international conventions kept them from remaining longer than 21 days.
Then Russia invaded Ukraine, causing both sides to further
expand their maneuvers in the area.
The Black Sea is hugely important to the efforts of Russian President Vladimir Putin to expand Moscow’s influence and, stemming from that, it has been a locus of instability.
“The tensions in the Black Sea were obviously amplified
after the war,” said Arda Mevlutoglu, an independent Turkish defense analyst.
The war complicated maritime trade for Black Sea nations,
and Russia initially blocked the export of grain from Ukraine, one of the
world’s top producers, raising fears of an exacerbated hunger crisis in poor
nations.
But Turkey helped broker an agreement overseen by the United
Nations that has facilitated the export of more than 22 million tonnes of that
grain through Turkey’s territorial waters.
Straits, seas, and skiesTurkey’s closure of the straits to most military traffic,
which was meant to prevent Russia from bolstering its naval force against
Ukraine with ships from elsewhere, also kept ships from the US and other NATO
nations from entering the Black Sea.
At present, only countries with Black Sea coastlines have
vessels in the water, said Yoruk Isik, a nonresident scholar at the Middle East
Institute who closely monitors marine traffic through Turkey’s straits.
Of those, only Russia and Turkey have powerful navies, Isik
said. Romania and Bulgaria have smaller forces, Georgia has only a coast guard,
and the movements of Ukrainian vessels are complicated by the war.
But the skies remain open, so NATO members have increased
surveillance flights over and around the sea, and Russia has responded with
fighter jets as a show of force.
The downed droneThe Pentagon said the drone that came down last Tuesday was
unarmed and had taken off from Romania for a routine surveillance flight. About
120km south of Crimea, two Russian fighter jets intercepted it, dumping fuel on
it, presumably to blur its camera. The jets also flew close to the drone in a
way that US officials described as dangerous.
The downing of the drone has heightened tensions between the US and Russia, although neither side has shown any inclination to allow the situation to escalate.
One of the jets clipped the drone’s propeller, causing its
US operators to bring it down, the Pentagon said.
The Russian Defense Ministry told a different story, saying
in a statement that the Russian air force had scrambled fighter jets to
identify the drone, which then maneuvered sharply, lost altitude, and hit the
water.
US officials had worried in recent months that some sort of
incident over the Black Sea, even an accidental collision or miscommunication,
could spiral out of control.
The downing of the drone has heightened tensions between the
US and Russia, although neither side has shown any inclination to allow the
situation to escalate.
But analysts said that the war in Ukraine had led to so much
more military activity in and around the Black Sea and elsewhere that the
longer it lasts, the greater the chances that such incidents will occur.
“It simply points out that the potential geography of
confrontation and escalation is much broader than what one may assume by
reading the daily news,” said Lesser.
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