The Ukraine war had a maritime element from the beginning, aside from the agonizing land battles and disastrous airstrikes. Shortly after the February 2022 war, Russia imposed a de facto marine embargo on Ukraine, only to see its ships wonderfully defeated during a competition for power of the Black Sea.
However, it appears as though the waves conflict is about to end.
Both sides of the conflict agreed to ensure” safe navigation, reduce the use of force, and avoid the use of corporate vessels for military purposes in the Black Sea” in accordance with words of a deal reached by the US on March 25, 2025, according to a White House statement.
The naval aspect of the Ukraine war has gotten less attention than events on land and in the skies. However, I think it is a crucial factor with potentially long-reaching consequences.
Moscow’s ability to project its naval power across the globe has been hampered by Russia’s Black Sea losses, which has also contributed to Russia’s growing cooperation with China, where Moscow is emerging as a junior party to Beijing on the high seas.
Battle over the Black Sea
The history of geopolitical theory has a tendency to oversimplification global politics. Countries were classified as either land powers or maritime powers by theories dating back to the late 19th century.
Thinkers such as the British geopolitician Sir Halford Mackinder or the US theorist Alfred Thayer Mahan characterized maritime powers as countries that possessed traits of democratic liberalism and free trade. In contrast, land powers were frequently depicted as militaristic and despotic.
Although these generalizations have been used to demonize enemies in the past, there is still a pretended to divide the world into land and sea powers. An accompanying view that naval and army warfare is somewhat separate has continued.
And this division gives us a false impression of how far Russia has progressed in the conflict with Ukraine. Moscow has certainly had some successes both on land and in the air, but that shouldn’t detract from the stunning defeat of Russia in the Black Sea, which required Russia to retreat from the Ukrainian coastline and keep its ships far away from the battlefront.
As I describe in my recent book,” Near and Far Waters: The Geopolitics of Seapower“, maritime countries have two concerns: They must attempt to control the parts of the sea relatively close to their coastlines, or their “near waters”, meanwhile, those with the ability and desire to do so try to project power and influence into “far waters” across oceans, which are the near waters of other countries.
Turkey to the south, Bulgaria and Romania to the west, Georgia to the east, Ukraine and Russia to the north, and the Black Sea is a tightly enclosed, relatively small sea that includes the near waters of the nations that surround it.
Control of the Black Sea’s nearby waters has been a source of contention for the past ten years and has contributed to the current Russian-Ukraine conflict.
Russia’s seizure of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 allowed it to control the naval port of Sevastopol. What were Ukraine’s waters de facto turned into Russia’s waters. Russia’s trade, especially the export of grain to African far waters, was impacted by these close waters because of their control.
But Russia’s actions were thwarted through the collaboration of Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey to allow passage of cargo ships through their near waters, then through the Bosporus into the Mediterranean Sea.
In the first quarter of 2024, Ukraine exported between 5.2 million and 5.8 million tons of grain per month thanks to the use of these other countries ‘ near waters. To be sure, this was a decrease from the 6.5 million tons of exports that Ukraine made each month before the war, which was then halted by Russia because of Russian threats and attacks.
Prior to the announcement of the ceasefire, the Foreign Agricultural Service of the US Department of Agriculture had forecasted a decline in Ukrainian grain exports for 2025.
However, efforts to restrain Russia’s access to far waters for economic gain and keep the Ukrainian economy afloat meant Ukraine was still able to access far waters for economic gain and Russia’s unwillingness to face the consequences of attacking ships in NATO countries ‘ near waters.
Feeling sluggish
Alongside being thwarted in its ability to disrupt Ukrainian exports, Russia has also come under direct naval attack from Ukraine. Ukraine has successfully sunk or damaged Russian ships using unmanned attack drones since February 2022, slitting roughly 15 of its prewar fleet of about 36 warships and causing many injuries to other ships.
Russia has been forced to station its ships in the eastern part of the Black Sea and encroach on Sevastopol. It cannot effectively function in the near waters it gained through the seizure of Crimea.
Russia’s naval defeat of Ukraine is just the most recent example of its historical struggles to project sea power and its tendency to concentrate primarily on the defense of nearby waters.
Russia was shocked by a dramatic naval loss to Japan in 1905. Yet even in cases where it was not outright defeated, Russian sea power has been continually constrained historically. Russia and the British Royal Navy worked together to limit Turkish trade and military reach in the Black Sea during World War One and German merchant activity in the Baltic Sea.
Russia was heavily dependent on the Allies for material support during World War II, and its ports in the Baltic Sea and Black Sea were largely blocked. Many ships were brought close to home or stripped of their guns as artillery or offshore support for the territorial struggle with Germany.
Although the Soviet Union built quick-moving missile boats and some aircraft carriers during the Cold War, its reach into distant waters relied on submarines. The Soviet Mediterranean Fleet’s main goal was to stop NATO’s invasion of the Black Sea.
And now, Russia has lost control of the Black Sea. It is unable to function in these previously secure waters. Its ability to project naval power from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean Sea is diminished by these losses.
Ceding captaincy to China
Russia, as a result of being faced with a glaring loss in its backyard and placed in a weak position in its immediate waters, can only project power to far waters through cooperation with a China, which is itself investing heavily in a far-water naval capacity.
Joint naval exercises in the South China Sea in July 2024 provide proof of this cooperation. Wang Guangzheng of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy’s Southern Theater said of the drill that” the China-Russia joint patrol has promoted the deepening and practical cooperation between the two in multiple directions and fields”.
And looking forward, he claimed that the exercise “effectively increased the ability for the two sides to jointly respond to maritime security threats.”
This cooperation, which is a project of sea power projection, makes sense in terms of purely military terms for Russia. But it is largely to China’s benefit.
Russia can assist China in defending its northern near waters and ensuring access to far waters through the Arctic Ocean, an increasingly significant arena as sea ice is reduced by the effects of global warming. Russia continues to be the junior partner, though.
Moscow’s strategic interests will be supported only if they match Chinese interests. More directly, sea power is about economic gain projection. China will likely rely on Russia to safeguard its ongoing economic ties to the Far East, including the African, Pacific, European, and South American waters. But it is unlikely to jeopardize these interests for Russian goals.
Russia obviously has interests in far-off-shore economics, particularly in Sahel and sub-Saharan Africa. Additionally, China’s expanding naval presence in the Indian Ocean helps it secure its own, and larger, global economic interests. It also secures Russia’s interests in Africa. But cooperation will still be at China’s behest.
Russia has been confined to its Black Sea near waters for the majority of the conflict with China, with only access to Africa and the Indian Ocean’s far waters as a junior partner, which sets the terms and conditions.
Even if it does, a maritime agreement with Ukraine won’t make up for Russia’s persistent inability to independently project power across the oceans.
Colin Flint is distinguished professor of political science, Utah State University
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