Attacking a vessel carrying a volatile substance such as ammonium nitrite might offer a level of deniability which, however implausible, could preclude unambiguous attribution. A direct torpedo attack would be more audacious, but it is worth recalling the time it took to attribute North Korea’s sinking of the South Korean vessel Cheonan in 2010 – four months – by which time the initial international outrage had abated.
The boats can clandestinely lay up to 24 naval mines each during a single sortie.
A deniable attack could be facilitated by the Kilo-class submarines. However, two alternative scenarios might be considered.įirst, Moscow may wish to drive a spike in insurance costs without paying the diplomatic price for pulling out of the grain deal. To an extent, one might argue that Moscow does not need military force to inflict a de facto blockade – simply declaring that it has pulled out of the grain deal, for example, would likely cause insurance rates to spike to exorbitant levels. Moreover, it would follow a pattern of how belligerents attempt to secure a strategic breakthrough when a tactical battlefield breakthrough seems unlikely – with precedents such as the Iran–Iraq tanker war and the British blockade of Germany during the First World War. To an extent, this has been visible in the air and missile campaign witnessed over the winter. However, should the conflict reach a point of enduring, frozen stalemate, Russia may shift its military focus to wearing down the Ukrainian economy, which has already seen a 30% reduction in GDP. In the immediate term, and for good reason, Ukraine’s priorities are likely to remain primarily land-focused. The Relevance of the Black Sea Fleet’s Kilo-Class Submarines
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The skills and capabilities needed for Ukraine to conduct anti-submarine warfare (ASW) along Western lines would be time-consuming and expensive to generate, and are unlikely to be acquired in the foreseeable future, begging the question of how to ‘do’ ASW on a shoestring.
However, if Russia did decide to use them in this capacity, it would raise new challenges for Ukraine’s sea denial strategy, which thus far has had to contend primarily with the (comparatively) easy task of anti-surface warfare. The Black Sea Fleet’s force of four Project 636 ( Kilo) and Project 877 (Improved Kilo) submarines have not been used in a blockading role to date, acting primarily as a launch platform for 3M-14 Kalibr cruise missiles. The risk posed by naval mines represents one vector another is the use of submarines, which have not featured significantly in the conflict thus far. That being said, Russia does have other options with which to menace Ukraine’s maritime economy.
As such, it may prove increasingly difficult for Russia to enforce a renewed surface blockade of Ukraine if it decides that inflicting economic harm is important – a likely assumption if the war of attrition continues over the longer term. The successful attack on the fleet’s flagship, the Moskva, with indigenous Neptune anti-ship cruise missiles and the subsequent Russian defeat at Snake Island denied the fleet the air cover it needs to be able to operate in range of an increasingly credible Ukrainian anti-ship missile threat. One of the signal successes of the Ukrainian armed forces has been denying the Russian Black Sea Fleet’s surface vessels the ability to operate in close proximity to Ukrainian shores.
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