Major leaks that suddenly erupted in the Nord Stream gas pipelines that run from Russia to Europe have generated plenty of theories but few clear answers about who or what caused the damage.
And now once again the most obvious suspect, for reasons of both motive and means, in yesterday's birthday present to Ras-Putin in the midspan of the Kerch Bridge, is the Russian navy. From the point of view of navy general staff and especially the Black Sea Fleet headquarters command, it has been Moscow's war policies all along that have left naval assets vulnerable not only to the sinking of Moskva by an enemy with no navy, but also the attack in August on a Crimea naval airbase, followed shortly thereafter by a purely symbolic but deeply insulting explosion on the very roof of the fleet headquarters in Sevastopol (not to mention the sinkings of various vessels in Berdiansk harbor and off Snake Island, and the loss of the island itself...)
From a naval point of view in Russian policy circles, the Black Sea Fleet has been left vulnerable to being Pearl-Harbored not just once but repeatedly throughout this war. And this in an effectively landlocked nation with extremely limited access to the world's oceanic trade routes: the very geography of the Russian nation shows easily that Russia has not one navy but essentially four, in the Black and Baltic Seas, in the Sea of Japan, and along the Arctic coastline. The vast distances, extreme navigational hazards, and labyrinthine international relations which must be dealt with continually in order for Russia to have anything like a unified single navy or act as a serious global naval power, have vexed and infuriated the Russian state since the time of Peter the Great, who was so obsessed with transforming a backward agrarian nation of illiterate peasants into a major sea power that he once spent months in Rotterdam working side-by-side with Dutch shipbuilders in order to master that trade himself.
The ultimate illustration of Russia's ongoing naval impotence can be seen in not one but three separate occurrences in 1905, during yet another failed war of conquest, this time against Japan in Manchuria and on the high seas. The Japanese empire had recently emerged as one of the premier naval powers of the Pacific during the closing decades of the 19th century, and was so effective as a combat force that it had mined and blockaded the entire Russian Pacific fleet at Port Arthur, and taken that force entirely out of the war. (#1)
In response (#2), Tsar Nicholas II ordered elements of both the Black Sea and Baltic fleets (yes, halfway around the planet) to steam through the Suez Canal and around the Cape of Good Hope, respectively, rendezvous in the Indian Ocean, and make for the port of Vladivostok in the north Pacific to engage the Japanese fleet.
The voyage was a catastrophe, from its opening days when various Baltic Sea Fleet vessels fired on British ships in the north Atlantic believing them to be Japanese (!), to its first and final engagement off Japan itself, after this exhausting and crippling semi-circumnavigation of 15,000 miles to arrive in the war zone, at Tsushima Straits, where the Japanese fleet was able to sink, damage or otherwise disable the entire combat capability of the ad-hoc Russian squadron in a matter of hours.
Shortly thereafter word had arrived in the Black Sea fleet of the defeat of their own colleagues as well as elements of their brother fleet from the Baltic at Tsushima. In a bizarre and largely undirected chain of events to follow, several vessels of that fleet underwent mutinies (#3) , resulting in the fleet's flagship (!) of that time, the battleship Potemkin, being steamed around from one end of the Black Sea to the other by rogue sailors in search of a friendly port. The Potemkin was eventually docked at a Romanian port and surrendered to that nation's authorities, as the now-stateless sailors variously made their way home to Russia or became fugitives from then on.
The naval disasters of 1905 were occurring simultaneously with rippling rebellions, demonstrations and strikes throughout Russia set off by the generally failed war effort in Manchuria and its attendant shortages and repressions, which taken in sum severely disabled the autocratic rule of the Romanov dynasty and left it far more vulnerable to further unrests during the first world war in 1917 which eventually saw the end of the dynasty and eventual installation of the Lenin-Bolshevik regime.
Historic parallels are always a risky and intellectually shaky exercise, but historic precedents must be examined nonetheless. 2022 is not 1905, and Putin is not Nicholas the Second. But the map of the world is the map of the world, and Russia's centuries-old maritime disability (also the primary reason that Alaska is no longer Russian), of being hogtied from enjoying full access to both oceanic trade routes and global naval dominance, remains much the same now in the early 21st century as in the early years of the 20th.
And the Black Sea fleet has suffered the most catastrophic losses of its fighting capabilities, and its prestige as a serious military force, of the entire Russian war effort. Why would at least some elements of that fleet NOT go rogue, and involve themselves in such shenanigans as precision undersea explosions in four different locations of the Nordstream pipeline complex, or an obviously very carefully-timed blast on the Kerch bridge at the very dawn of the 70th birthday of that fleet's most existentially threatening enemy, Comrade Putin himself?
None of this hypothesis presumes that the Russian navy has gone over to the Ukrainian side in this war, nor that Ukrainian intelligence or military commands even have anything to do with these acts. Far more plausible is that the navy is doing whatever it must and taking out whatever targets it can, in order to get back in the war, on the side it was on to begin with, and at long last play a decisive role in securing victory for Russian arms.
There is in my view nothing to celebrate here with the crippling of the Crimea bridge, not if those I think are responsible truly are, who have direct access to the security apparatus checking all the cargoes between Crimea and the mainland, and could readily have converted a freight truck into a car bomb headed one direction, while knowing the precise timing of a fuel train headed in the other, and used uniformed personnel to do the job in broad daylight.
And now once again the most obvious suspect, for reasons of both motive and means, in yesterday's birthday present to Ras-Putin in the midspan of the Kerch Bridge, is the Russian navy. From the point of view of navy general staff and especially the Black Sea Fleet headquarters command, it has been Moscow's war policies all along that have left naval assets vulnerable not only to the sinking of Moskva by an enemy with no navy, but also the attack in August on a Crimea naval airbase, followed shortly thereafter by a purely symbolic but deeply insulting explosion on the very roof of the fleet headquarters in Sevastopol (not to mention the sinkings of various vessels in Berdiansk harbor and off Snake Island, and the loss of the island itself...)
From a naval point of view in Russian policy circles, the Black Sea Fleet has been left vulnerable to being Pearl-Harbored not just once but repeatedly throughout this war. And this in an effectively landlocked nation with extremely limited access to the world's oceanic trade routes: the very geography of the Russian nation shows easily that Russia has not one navy but essentially four, in the Black and Baltic Seas, in the Sea of Japan, and along the Arctic coastline. The vast distances, extreme navigational hazards, and labyrinthine international relations which must be dealt with continually in order for Russia to have anything like a unified single navy or act as a serious global naval power, have vexed and infuriated the Russian state since the time of Peter the Great, who was so obsessed with transforming a backward agrarian nation of illiterate peasants into a major sea power that he once spent months in Rotterdam working side-by-side with Dutch shipbuilders in order to master that trade himself.
The ultimate illustration of Russia's ongoing naval impotence can be seen in not one but three separate occurrences in 1905, during yet another failed war of conquest, this time against Japan in Manchuria and on the high seas. The Japanese empire had recently emerged as one of the premier naval powers of the Pacific during the closing decades of the 19th century, and was so effective as a combat force that it had mined and blockaded the entire Russian Pacific fleet at Port Arthur, and taken that force entirely out of the war. (#1)
In response (#2), Tsar Nicholas II ordered elements of both the Black Sea and Baltic fleets (yes, halfway around the planet) to steam through the Suez Canal and around the Cape of Good Hope, respectively, rendezvous in the Indian Ocean, and make for the port of Vladivostok in the north Pacific to engage the Japanese fleet.
The voyage was a catastrophe, from its opening days when various Baltic Sea Fleet vessels fired on British ships in the north Atlantic believing them to be Japanese (!), to its first and final engagement off Japan itself, after this exhausting and crippling semi-circumnavigation of 15,000 miles to arrive in the war zone, at Tsushima Straits, where the Japanese fleet was able to sink, damage or otherwise disable the entire combat capability of the ad-hoc Russian squadron in a matter of hours.
Shortly thereafter word had arrived in the Black Sea fleet of the defeat of their own colleagues as well as elements of their brother fleet from the Baltic at Tsushima. In a bizarre and largely undirected chain of events to follow, several vessels of that fleet underwent mutinies (#3) , resulting in the fleet's flagship (!) of that time, the battleship Potemkin, being steamed around from one end of the Black Sea to the other by rogue sailors in search of a friendly port. The Potemkin was eventually docked at a Romanian port and surrendered to that nation's authorities, as the now-stateless sailors variously made their way home to Russia or became fugitives from then on.
The naval disasters of 1905 were occurring simultaneously with rippling rebellions, demonstrations and strikes throughout Russia set off by the generally failed war effort in Manchuria and its attendant shortages and repressions, which taken in sum severely disabled the autocratic rule of the Romanov dynasty and left it far more vulnerable to further unrests during the first world war in 1917 which eventually saw the end of the dynasty and eventual installation of the Lenin-Bolshevik regime.
Historic parallels are always a risky and intellectually shaky exercise, but historic precedents must be examined nonetheless. 2022 is not 1905, and Putin is not Nicholas the Second. But the map of the world is the map of the world, and Russia's centuries-old maritime disability (also the primary reason that Alaska is no longer Russian), of being hogtied from enjoying full access to both oceanic trade routes and global naval dominance, remains much the same now in the early 21st century as in the early years of the 20th.
And the Black Sea fleet has suffered the most catastrophic losses of its fighting capabilities, and its prestige as a serious military force, of the entire Russian war effort. Why would at least some elements of that fleet NOT go rogue, and involve themselves in such shenanigans as precision undersea explosions in four different locations of the Nordstream pipeline complex, or an obviously very carefully-timed blast on the Kerch bridge at the very dawn of the 70th birthday of that fleet's most existentially threatening enemy, Comrade Putin himself?
None of this hypothesis presumes that the Russian navy has gone over to the Ukrainian side in this war, nor that Ukrainian intelligence or military commands even have anything to do with these acts. Far more plausible is that the navy is doing whatever it must and taking out whatever targets it can, in order to get back in the war, on the side it was on to begin with, and at long last play a decisive role in securing victory for Russian arms.
There is in my view nothing to celebrate here with the crippling of the Crimea bridge, not if those I think are responsible truly are, who have direct access to the security apparatus checking all the cargoes between Crimea and the mainland, and could readily have converted a freight truck into a car bomb headed one direction, while knowing the precise timing of a fuel train headed in the other, and used uniformed personnel to do the job in broad daylight.