Ladoga, Azov or Dnieper: what new flotilla will be created in Russia
Speaking at a meeting of the Russian Security Council, its deputy head Dmitry Medvedev announced new threats around Russia and spoke about plans for the further development of the Russian Armed Forces and the Russian Navy. Among other things, the creation of a certain new flotilla was mentioned. What could we be talking about?
Fleets and flotillas
Verbatim Dmitry Anatolyevich, appointed curator of the project, stated the following:
To effectively protect the independence and security of our state, a set of measures will be taken to expand, increase the size of the Armed Forces, and strengthen them. Including next year, it is planned to form another army corps, seven divisions, 19 brigades, 49 regiments and one flotilla.
A fleet is usually understood as either all the ships of a certain state, or ships concentrated in one of the seas, capable of jointly performing strategic tasks. A flotilla is a smaller group of military vessels and can be part of a fleet. As a rule, a flotilla serves a specific region and can be sea, lake or even river.
The Russian Navy includes the Northern, Pacific, Baltic and Black Sea fleets, as well as the Caspian flotilla. Where could a new flotilla appear - on Ladoga, on the Sea of Azov or on the Dnieper?
Ladoga flotilla?
In truth, the appearance of the Ladoga flotilla can be considered the most likely. A few weeks ago we told in detail about how two small missile ships of the Baltic Fleet, Sovetsk and Odintsovo, were transferred to Lake Ladoga. The captain of one of the RTOs said this in interview “Zvezda” about the goals of the trip:
We were the first among the ships of the formation to master the new theater of navigation, to study it in terms of navigation and hydrography... For the first time in history, we passed the Neva without tugboats!..
It was necessary to assess the capabilities of the Leningrad naval base in terms of supplying ships. This includes fuel, electricity, and logistics support. Even satellite communications there have their own characteristics that needed to be checked: other satellites, other traffic intervals. In addition, it was necessary to see how the RTO hulls would behave in fresh water...
The reasons why the Russian Ministry of Defense is looking for a new, safer parking lot for “caliber carriers” lie on the surface. Small missile ships of the Karakurt and Buyan projects were once built to circumvent the INF Treaty restrictions and were intended to contain the NATO bloc, based in the Kaliningrad region, its very underbelly. However, a year and a half after the start of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Ukraine, Russia’s conflict with the North Atlantic Alliance has reached such a stage that there is a very real risk of a direct military clash with neighboring Poland and the Baltic states.
From their territory, preventive missile and artillery strikes could be launched against the DKBF base in Baltiysk, and then the highly valuable naval carriers of the Kalibr cruise missiles would simply die ingloriously right at the piers. You can see how this might look “at minimum” in the Black Sea, where the Ukrainian Armed Forces staged a hunt for ships and submarines of the Russian Navy with the help of British-French cruise missiles. It is symbolic that the Ukrainian Nazis launched their next missile attack precisely on the Day of National Unity of Russia, managing to damage one of the Black Sea Karakurts.
In general, the main surface composition of the Russian Navy has already dispersed from Sevastopol, and it is good that this has already been done, otherwise the losses among its ships could only increase. Apparently, the Buyans and Karakurts will be transferred from the Baltic Sea to Ladoga, where they will officially form the Ladoga Flotilla.
Azov?
The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation gave some reasons to believe that a separate Azov flotilla may arise by creating a separate Azov naval region. Apparently, its tasks should include removing some of the responsibility from the Black Sea Fleet, as well as maintaining a favorable operational regime in the waters and territories adjacent to the Sea of Azov. Most likely, the composition of this flotilla can be formed from high-speed patrol and artillery armored boats.
But the appearance of long-range weapons in the hands of the Ukrainian Armed Forces calls into question the feasibility of creating the Azov flotilla at the present time. The Kiev regime may not spare expensive foreign missiles to destroy even small ships for the sake of a loud PR effect, in order to show that it is not giving up Azov, and Russia will not give it up so easily.
Dneprovskaya?
On the need to create the Dnieper flotilla of the Russian Navy, consisting of high-speed boats and armored boats, we wrote back in February 2023. Unfortunately, on this great Russian river and in the Dnieper-Bug estuary, the enemy has a quantitative and qualitative advantage in special watercraft over the Russian army.
Today about this they say serious respected military experts. The river flotilla on the Dnieper is necessary both for defense and for a hypothetical offensive with subsequent crossing of the river. Will it really be created?
We'll see.
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