Russian Ships' 'Very Strange' Black Sea Manoeuvre Raises Questions

Russian ships appear to be acting with more caution in the Black Sea after a series of Ukraine marine drone attacks decimated Putin's navy in the region.

In a recent "interesting incident," a group of Russian vessels appeared to approach the Bosporus Strait before unexpectedly turning around instead of crossing to Russian-held Crimea, according to a Ukraine navy spokesman.

"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. But at some point they just turned around and headed back," Dmytro Pletenchuk, the Ukraine Navy spokesman, said on Ukrainian television, according to Unian.

While it was unclear what the motive for the U-turn was, Pletenchuk speculated that the ships' commanders may have been tipped off about a "threat," noting that it represented a "positive tendency" for Ukraine.

"These vessels were forced to move along the Turkish border, in effect hiding out in Turkish territorial waters. Thus not taking the shortest route, which they would normally take, but instead fleeing to their hiding spots," the spokesperson added.

While Pletenchuk did not identify the specific ships in question, OSINT analysts recently spotted a number of such occurrences in the Black Sea involving the Russian fleet, including those under US sanctions.

"Very very strange: Civilian vessel in name only,@USTreasury," wrote Yörük Işık, a Bosphorus OSINT observer.

"Sanctioned SC South owned Russian flag cargo vessel Sparta IV, comes all the way to the southern entrance of Bosporus, about to transit, traffic gets suspended due to fog. Sparta IV turns around & is heading to Aegean," the analyst noted.

"Russian tanker Yaz which usually transports aviation fuel from occupied Feodosia's unlawfully seized oil terminal to Russian Air Force operating in Syria also makes the mysterious u-turn after arriving all the way to Bosphorus. Fake civilian vessels not daring to sail the BlackSea?"

A recent assessment by the UK found that Russia's tactics against Ukraine's creative warfare in the Black Sea were falling short.

Russia can still strike at Ukraine from the eastern parts of the Black Sea, but 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," the British Defense Ministry said in February 2024.

Ukraine does not have a large navy, but has made impressive use of naval drones to carry out dramatic strikes on Russia's Black Sea assets that have proved deeply embarrassing to Moscow, leading to losses of several landing ships, Tarantul-class corvettes, a submarine and Russia's flagship, Moskva.

Russia's Black Sea operations have been "greatly complicated, if not paralyzed," by the nearly two years of all-out war between Moscow and Kyiv, Ukraine's navy said in early February.

This is a breaking story and will be updated shortly.

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