Exploding, low-tech boats churn up Russia’s Black Sea interests and standing

The mother of all metaphorical storms hit Russia’s operations in the Black Sea over the past few days, with giant waves thrashing Moscow’s military and economic interests, smashing its bargaining chips, and undermining its diplomatic standing on the world stage.

Much of the latest damage can be traced to little kayak-shaped boats that appear to be a DIY assemblage of easily available gear, strung together and operated in the Black Sea with David-meets-Goliath flair.

It started in the early hours of Saturday, with the Russian defence ministry issuing confusing and sometimes contradictory statements. Something was happening around Sevastopol, home to Moscow’s Black Sea Fleet in annexed Crimea. Russia’s navy had “repelled” a drone attack in Sevastopol, said initial statements. Subsequent communiques said the “terrorist attack”, which had been “repelled”, had also caused “minor damage”.

While Russian military officials were trying to get their story straight, analysts and hardware enthusiasts on social media got on the job, accessing video clips, examining them and sharing their findings online.

Hours later, Russia declared it had pulled out of participation in a UN-brokered deal to export Ukrainian grain shipments via the Black Sea. The “repelled” attack that caused “minor damage” was apparently big enough for Moscow to turn its back on the grain deal, one of the few diplomatic successes since the February 24 Russian invasion of Ukraine.

But Moscow’s withdrawal from the landmark Black Sea grain agreement didn’t last long. On Wednesday, Russia announced it was resuming participation in the deal. The sudden U-turn appeared to have come after Moscow realised its bargaining chips could actually sink its diplomatic ship.

It was, in other words, the ultimate revenge of the nerds.

What’s that bobbing on the sea?

The first pieces of the Sevastopol attack jigsaw puzzle appeared early Saturday, with unconfirmed video clips displaying grainy images of what appeared to be a large military ship being approached by a camera recording shaky footage on a choppy sea.

Within hours, the clips had been stabilised and the action on the water was clearer. The dramatic footage showed the hull of a small boat speeding towards the large ship in the distance while dodging explosions in the sea. The boats were charging towards the Russian frigate, the Admiral Makarov, visible on the horizon.

The Russian defence ministry then issued a statement accusing Ukraine of using “marine unmanned vehicles” to conduct a “terrorist attack” aided by “British experts”.

Ukrainian authorities rarely comment on Russian claims of attacks for operational security reasons, although senior officials occasionally celebrate them on social media. Britain’s defence ministry has denied involvement in the drone attack.

It wasn’t long before the hull of the small boat, on which the camera was mounted, was identified online. Open-source investigators matched the hull with that of a small boat that got washed up on September 21 on a beach near Sevastopol.

More than a month ago, Russian sources posted photos of the “kamikaze” drone boat, a strange craft painted in military grey and fitted with a white fixture and what appeared to be a standard jet-ski motor.

The pieces were finally falling into place. Russia’s Black Sea Fleet was attacked by a swarm of little unmanned exploding boats, equipped with cameras, on the sea. The assault involved a total of seven unmanned boats aided by nine aerial drones, according to the Russian defence ministry.

Eight years after Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine, crippling the Ukrainian Navy, Kyiv had conducted a daring maritime attack that heralded a new era in naval warfare, according to some military analysts.

It was Moscow’s latest loss in Crimea following the October 8 explosion on the strategic Kerch bridge linking the annexed peninsula to Russia. Saturday’s attack also came six months after Ukraine sunk Russia’s flagship Moskva in the Black Sea in a humiliating defeat; the biggest sinking of a Russian or Soviet warship in action since World War II.

Historic, strategic but not very destructive

Media reports have variously called them “marine drones” or “remote-controlled boats” or “unmanned exploding boats”. Military experts however refer to them as USVs, short for Unmanned (or Uncrewed) Surface Vessels, and are paying careful attention to their likely role in future naval operations.

“I think the attack will go down in history, like the sinking of the Moskva before. This is a really significant naval action and has implications for the future of naval warfare,” said H I Sutton, a defence analyst, in a 16-minute explainer video posted on YouTube.

While reiterating “the usual caveats” that his analysis is based solely from available footage, Sutton noted that the USVs employed in Saturday’s attack “are something that only Ukraine operates, it’s Ukraine-built, as far as I’m aware”.

The homegrown nature of the remote-controlled boats has struck most military experts. “The Ukrainians are very good at finding solutions. It’s very low tech, which involves designing and building a boat with a polymer, putting a steering device, GPS, camera – that can be bought on the market. It does not require great expertise and Ukrainian engineers are very good,” said Michel Yakovleff, former chief of staff at NATO’s Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE), in a phone interview with FRANCE 24.

Yakovleff, however, was careful not to overplay the military significance of the Sevastopol naval and aerial drone attack. “We know very little about exactly how it happened. Some pictures have been released, but there’s no confirmation of the damage done,” he said.

Judging from the available footage, Yakovleff surmised that the warheads on the kamikaze vessels had modest payloads. “The warhead is apparently 65 kilos, which is not enough to sink a ship. It can blast a hole and send a vessel to repair, but there’s very little chance that it can sink a vessel,” he said.

While details of the damage have been hard to corroborate, there was no evidence that the Admiral Makarov – the new Black Sea Fleet flagship since the Moskva’s destruction – had sunk or was listing. Moscow did, however, admit that a minesweeper had suffered damage and that its Sevastopol harbour protection system had been penetrated.

In military terms, the latest attack paled in comparison to the Moskva’s sinking. “The Moskva had a big hull, it was the prestige of [President Vladimir] Putin. The sinking of the Moskva was a big help to Ukrainian morale. It affected Russian naval capacity in the Black Sea very substantially,” explained Yakovleff.

But for Sutton, the importance of Saturday’s attack goes beyond its destructive record. “It has a strategic implication. Even though none of the [Russian] ships appear to have been sunk, which is normally how people interpret a successful attack, this will have an effect on Russia’s [naval] ability,” he insisted. “It makes Sevastopol seem less and less safe.”

Russia falls in a diplomatic trap of its own making

While the deployment of marine attack drones marks a new development in the eight-month Ukraine war, it’s not the first time that kamikaze boats have been employed as a lethal weapon.

The ancient Greeks used ramming boats, which they set on fire, in the Peloponnesian War. In October 2000, al Qaeda used a fiberglass boat with explosives and two suicide bombers on board to ram the USS Cole off Yemen’s coast, killing 17 US Navy sailors.

But in some respects, the biggest damage that Russia suffered in the Sevastopol attack was of its own making – and it was off the frontline.

On Saturday evening, just hours after the attack, Russia suspended its participation in the four-party Black Sea grain deal between Ukraine, Russia, Turkey and the UN. But following Turkish diplomatic efforts to keep the agreement in force, grain shipments in the Black Sea did not stop. Despite the Kremlin’s pullout, 12 loaded vessels left Ukrainian ports on Monday, followed by another three on Tuesday, according to the UN co-ordinator for the Black Sea Grain Initiative.

The international community had called Russia’s bluff.  Faced with the diplomatic nightmare of bearing responsibility for a global food crisis and denying grain shipments to economically precarious countries in Africa and Asia, the Kremlin backed down. In a humiliating U-turn, Moscow on Wednesday announced that it was back in the deal.

The UN delegation to the Joint Coordination Centre (JCC), which runs the Black Sea grain deal operations in Istanbul, confirmed Thursday that traffic and ship inspections with the Russian delegation had resumed.

The Kremlin had fallen into a trap of its own making, and the Ukrainians were not above pointing it out. Moscow’s decision showed that the Russian “blackmail” will not work when met with a resolute response, said Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak on Twitter.

Addressing Russia’s concerns

The Black Sea Grain Initiative is however set to expire in late November and the Kremlin has threatened to leave the deal again if Kyiv violates security guarantees.

The Kremlin on Thursday said Russia had yet to decide if it will extend its participation in the Ukraine grain deal.

“Before making a decision on an extension, we will need to give an overall assessment of the effectiveness of the deal,” Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

Yakovleff believes the interests of global food security would have been better served if the grain shipment arrangement had been tabled as a UN Security Council resolution instead of a deal between four signatories. “Then we would have Russia either agreeing to a UN Security Council resolution – which would make it very complicated to suspend participation – or Russia would have to veto a resolution that could, for example, be tabled by an African member,” he noted.

A UN Security Council resolution could also address Russia’s interests and concerns, added Yakovleff. “The Russians can fight for the language they want. We can then say that the resolution is the result of honest brokering. I can understand that Russia has concerns and wants negotiations. What we have now is just a quadrilateral deal, it’s not international law. You can’t walk out of international law without facing consequences,” he explained.

Moscow for centuries has viewed the Black Sea as its gateway to the Eastern Mediterranean and beyond, a strategic inland waterway that has attracted fierce competition between littoral kingdoms and empires. If President Vladimir Putin calculated that an invasion of Ukraine would facilitate the mighty Russian Navy’s outreach in the Black Sea, he probably did not envisage the prospect of bobbing little DIY boats scuttling his maritime ambitions and humiliating Moscow on the world stage.