Russia & CIS

The Gazelle III, a solar vehicle developed by Iranian students at University of Tehran, continues its 8-day journey around Iran.

At least one person has been killed and an unknown number injured in a shooting at a shopping centre in the German city of Munich.

VHS has come unspooled. It has been taped over. The screen has filled with static, then gone blank.

The teams from Russia, Israel, Italy, Bulgaria, Spain, Japan and the US also advanced to the finals.

The journalist was killed on Wednesday morning in a car blast in Kiev as he was driving a colleague’s automobile.

Ministry of Education banned activities of 27,157 education workers.

Azerbaijan stands ready to grant Nagorno-Karabakh the highest autonomous status within its territorial integrity.

President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan has urged the militia to release the hostages and to surrender their weapons.

Peskov declined comment on Western media reports about alleged Russian strikes on US base in Syria.

More than 44,000 people at state institutions have been suspended from their duties amid a nationwide probe into the July 15 coup attempt.

A terrorist group trying to infiltrate Iran using the country`s border with Turkey were busted Thursday morning by the IRGC forces, IRNA reports.

U-19 European championship finals will be managed by FIFA referee Aliyar Aghayev.

The ongoing doping scandal against Russia has been gathering pace thanks to the efforts of one man only, Grigory Rodchenkov, who used to chair the anti-doping laboratory in Sochi, to the greatest shame of the laboratory. According to him, all Russian athletes without exception were taking doping. How many lies are there in his words?

An Azerbaijani has been appointed Lukoil Vice-President for coordination of petroleum product marketing and distribution.

In April 2016, I published a short article in the Oxford Analytica Daily Brief discussing the role of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet post-Crimea annexation. Here’s the text, as usual with no edits other than restoring some cuts made for space reasons.

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SUBJECT: The growing power of the Russian navy in the Black Sea region.

SIGNIFICANCE: Russia’s annexation of Crimea has reshaped the geopolitical environment in the Black Sea and its neighbourhood. New frigates and submarines are being acquired, and cruise missiles will provide a much extended range. With its strategic options no longer constrained by Ukrainian sovereignty over the Sevastopol base, Moscow can use naval and air forces to dominate the sea and create a forbidding environment for potential adversaries, including NATO.

Impacts

• The deterioration in relations with Turkey could manifest itself in maritime tensions between the two states.
• Access to the Bosphorus may restrain both Russia and Turkey from encroaching on one another’s maritime rights despite hostile rhetoric.
• US and European militaries will review naval capacity and may reinforce Mediterranean patrols to counter the increased Russian presence.

ANALYSIS:

The Black Sea Fleet ranks third in importance for the Russian navy, behind the Northern and Pacific fleets, but ahead of the Baltic Fleet and the Caspian Flotilla. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Black Sea Fleet has had four main missions:

• protecting shipping in the Black Sea;
• controlling maritime access to the sea in general and to the Caucasus in particular;
• supporting the navy’s Mediterranean squadron and counter-piracy operations in the Indian Ocean; and
• maintaining links with the Russian naval base at Tartus in Syria.

The bulk of the fleet is based at Sevastopol in Crimea, as is its land-based air arm.

The Black Sea is of great economic significance to Russia, whose commercial ports — mainly Novorossiysk — carry 30% of its total maritime exports.

For Russia, the sea is an access route to the Mediterranean and to the Atlantic and Indian oceans, and hence important for both economic and geopolitical reasons. The Black Sea Fleet is needed to underpin that access, as well as to deal with potential instability in the Caucasus. It provides logistical support to the Mediterranean squadron which was reconstituted in 2013.

Reviving the fleet

During its post-Soviet history, successive lease agreements of the Sevastopol naval base from the Ukrainian government stipulated that Russia could not base new ships in Crimea.  This clause was intentional, designed for the fleet to rust away.  By 2014, the Moskva cruiser was the only Black Sea Fleet surface ship able to operate out of area for extended periods of time. Even its basing arrangements in Ukraine were such that it had little need to defend the peninsula, since this was Ukrainian territory.

After annexing Crimea, Russia moved quickly to rebuild its forces on the peninsula. The fleet is undergoing a dramatic transformation and is rapidly rebuilding its forces. The Sevastopol base is central to Russian anti-access/area denial efforts in the Black Sea and its airspace. There are several components to the ongoing build-up:

• up to six new Admiral Grigorovich-class frigates;
• two Buyan-M-class missile corvettes;
• six improved Kilo-class diesel-powered submarines;
• Su-30SM interceptors and Su-34 tactical bombers; and
• nuclear-capable Tu-22M3 long-range bombers.

Three of the frigates will be commissioned in 2016, while the others will take some years to complete because Ukrainian-made gas turbines are unavailable. Both the corvettes and two of the six submarines have been commissioned, with the remaining submarines to enter service within two years.

Cruise missiles extend fleet’s reach

The corvettes and submarines will carry the 3M-54 Klub anti-ship system, a supersonic cruise missile allowing the navy to deny access to much of the Black Sea. They will also be armed with the 3M-14 cruise missile designed to attack targets on land at ranges of up to 2,500 kilometres.

The combination of coastal and air defences, maritime aviation and corvette-based groups will free the submarine and frigate force to operate in the Mediterranean.

Amphibious capacity

The Black Sea had been likely to receive one of the two French Mistral helicopter carrier/amphibious assault vessels that Russia ordered in 2010. Since France cancelled the sale in August 2015, there has been no announcement from Moscow about acquiring amphibious ships from elsewhere. Nor is it clear what will happen to the old Alligator- and Ropucha-class landing ships which were instrumental to the occupation of Crimea.

Naval support for Syria campaign

The Russian military intervention in Syria, begun in September 2015, has redefined the mission of the Black Sea Fleet:

Transport

Before Russia aircraft were deployed in Syria to bomb rebel forces, vessels from the fleet were playing a key role in the military supply operation known as the ‘Syrian express’. Initially, older landing ships were used to supply arms and equipment to the Syrian military. Once Russia decided to launch air attacks, the Black Sea Fleet provided the maritime transport.

The conventional wisdom that Russia was incapable of conducting military operations beyond its immediate vicinity was confounded by the successful use of large transport aircraft, naval freighters and even Turkish commercial cargo ships reflagged as Black Sea Fleet vessels.

Missile strikes

The Russian navy provided long-range air defence with the S-300 missile system carried on the flagship Moskva in the first half of the operation. Having a ship-based, long-range air defence system allowed Russia to protect Syrian airspace while avoiding tensions with Israel, which had made it clear it would be unhappy if such weapons went to the Syrian army.

In October 2015, the Russian navy launched 3M-14 cruise missiles against targets in Syria from relatively small vessels in the Caspian Sea. By launching missiles from the Caspian, Russia demonstrated its strike capacity from well inside its air defence perimeter. The cruise missiles were also meant to show NATO military planners and neighbouring states the successful development of a missile capability that would be difficult to neutralise.

Once the Black Sea Fleet acquires vessels armed with 3M-14 cruise missiles, its range will extend to most of Southern and Central Europe and the Middle East.

Russia’s demonstration of new naval strike capabilities continued in December 2015, when Kalibr cruise missiles were launched against targets from a new diesel-powered submarine which was transiting the Mediterranean en route to its permanent base at Sevastopol. This use of hard-to-track platforms further highlighted the threat to Russia’s potential opponents.

New missions for the post-Crimea context

Russia’s annexation of Crimea has remade the geopolitical environment in the Black Sea. Crimea’s geographic position allows the country that controls it to dominate the maritime environment. Sevastopol is by far the best harbor on the sea. By taking Crimea, Russia has ensured that its military will not be constrained by Ukraine. This will allow its navy and air force to dominate the Black Sea, creating a forbidding A2/AD environment that will be difficult for any potential adversary, including NATO, to penetrate.

Given the adversarial nature of Russia’s relationship with the West, the Black Sea Fleet will take on additional missions beyond the Black Sea in the coming years. In addition to continuing to provide sealift for Russian operations in Syria, the BSF’s cruise-missile equipped ships and submarines will have a power projection role in the Mediterranean. Even with a fairly small number of frigates and diesel submarines, the fleet will present a potential threat to other naval forces in the region, even U.S. carrier strike groups.

This does not mean that the Russian Navy should be expected to undertake aggressive actions in the Med. Rather, its objective will be to create conventional deterrence against a Western attack by threatening to use its air and sea capabilities to inflict unacceptably high casualties on enemy naval forces attempting to engage Russian forces in the Black Sea or eastern Mediterranean.

CONCLUSION: In the context of Russia’s adversarial relationship with the West, the fleet is likely to be assigned tasks outside the Black Sea such as sustaining a capable naval force in the eastern Mediterranean and continuing to support the Russian military presence in Syria. The fleet will also deliver conventional deterrence through its implicit capacity to inflict unacceptably high casualties on potential adversaries in the Black Sea or the eastern Mediterranean.

The individuals, whose names appear in the WADA report as direct executors, will be suspended from their posts pending investigation, said President Vladimir Putin. According to the Russian president, the uneasy atmosphere that has developed around international sports and the Olympic movement brings up the situation from the early 1980s

WADA has called to suspend Russian athletes from all international competitions, including the Olympics. Putin's official spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Monday, July 18, that the Kremlin was strongly opposed to the use of doping in sports. Russia believes that there an anti-Russian coalition being created in sport

I was on the Blog Talk Radio show Midrats today, talking about the Russian Navy, the coup in Turkey, Russian relations with China, and the like. The recording is now available on the show’s website. The show description is as follows:

Episode 341: Russia in 2016 with Dr. Dmitry Gorenburg

From the sacking of the Baltic Fleet leadership, fighting in Syria, to developments from Central Asia to the Pacific – Russia in 2016 is on the move.