Russia invests great pride in its Black Sea Fleet.
Organized in 1783 by Prince Grigory Potemkin and based primarily in the Crimean port of Sevastopol, for nearly 250 years the Fleet has projected Russian military power in the Black Sea, the Sea of Azov, and the Mediterranean Sea. With a storied history, it has rarely tasted defeat but has instead soundly defeated many foes, including the Turks, the French, the British, the Ottomans, the Nazi Germans and many others. Its current order of battle includes 40-45 surface warships, 7 diesel-attack submarines and numerous associated auxiliaries. It sails with a large number of guided missile frigates (small warships of less than 3000 tons displacement), guided missile corvettes (even smaller ships of less than 1000 tons) and at least one guided missile cruiser, the 12500 ton flagship Moskva. Amphibious landing ships, minesweepers, sub chasers, oilers, stores ships, tenders and other support vessels make up the remainder of the force afloat. Though the Fleet is very modest by American standards and would survive only hours if challenged by some Western navies, its history, mystique and depth of national investment make service in the vaunted Black Sea Fleet one of the most prestigious postings in the Russian military.
With its heavy complement of missile-firing vessels - Moskva, the frigates, most of the corvettes and even some of the support ships are capable of launching navalized versions of most Russian guided, cruise, hypersonic and ballistic missiles - it's not surprising that the Black Sea Fleet is responsible for many of the costly recent long-range precision strikes on Ukrainian assets, like the hit on the training facility at Zhytomyr, or the fuel facility at Lviv. That, after all, is what these various classes of surface warships were designed to do: to utterly obliterate land targets from far away with huge precision-guided warheads at little risk to themselves. They're pretty good at it, they're still busy in the water offshore, and there's still a lot more where that came from.
Now, to achieve its bare minimum goals of Russian withdrawal while maintaining the territorial integrity of Ukraine, the West has to take the Black Sea Fleet off the table. Finally. After two and a-half centuries. Off the table. With hundreds of powerful missiles in its ordnance lockers including some with thermobaric warheads and others with nuclear tips, and with thousands of naval infantry embarked aboard its amphibious landing ships, this monster is simply too great a threat to turn your back on it. It must be neutralized.
That means either (a) persuading or menacing its commanders to withdraw to beyond striking range of Ukraine, at least 1500 miles, chasing the Fleet into its distant ports on the Sea of Azov and bottling it up there, or (b) sinking or disabling enough of the Fleet, through combat, capture, mine warfare or sabotage, to render the whole of it permanently out of action. The first requires constant vigilance to make sure deterrence is maintained, though the burden in lives lost is light. Disabling or sinking the Fleet would cost enormous casualties among its ships' crews, but the action itself would be a one-and-done and a more or less permanent elimination of the Russian threat emanating from the direction of the Black Sea.
It is impossible to imagine persuading the Fleet's commanders to withdraw before a fight. The Black Sea Fleet would never retreat to port unless it's been pretty thoroughly mauled. That leaves destroying its combat power as the only option available. When there were only three weapons that navies could use to destroy their enemies - mines, torpedoes, and gunfire - Ukraine's navy, which consists of only a dozen surface combatants, mostly patrol boats, would not have had an option. Fortunately, developments in naval doctrine and weaponry makes an asymmetric Ukrainian victory more possible than it ever was before.
That victory will depend on robust infusions of (a) Mi29 aircraft with naval strike capabilities or any other similarly qualified aircraft that can be crewed by Ukrainian airmen, (b) missile- and rocket-launching long-dwelling UAVS able to damage a ship's superstructure if not sink it altogether, (c) any of a variety of highly lethal land- and air-launched anti-ship missiles, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles able to explode and sink even large ships, and (d) unmanned submerged autonomous kamikaze vehicles designed, like tethered anti-ship mines, to tear open and sink large hulls. None of these are dependent on the Ukrainian Navy. All could be readily acquired off-the-shelf and fielded, from dry land, almost immediately. The cost would be substantial but surprisingly modest compared to many other armament programs, and it would be more than justified by Ukraine's relief from long-range precision strikes, and by the severity of the blow to Russian military capability and national prestige when the missile-firing warships of the Black Sea Fleet are finally resting on the bottom.
Ukraine and its Western allies have many blips on the screen that must be answered, but let's not lose track of the enormous danger that looms across the water on the southern horizon. Let's agree that the time has come to muster the will and dispatch the resources to sink the Black Sea Fleet and scatter its remnants.