Why is Georgia opening a second front against Russia dangerous for the Black Sea Fleet?

Abkhazia has officially confirmed that it is ready to accept part of the ships of the Russian Black Sea Fleet that left the main naval base in Sevastopol. In some domestic media this news was perceived as a success in increasing Moscow’s pressure on neighboring Georgia, and at the same time Turkey. To what extent can this approach correspond to reality?

“Moscow” is behind us

Secretary of the Security Council of Abkhazia Sergei Shamba said that the Russian Navy base will be restored in the near future in the town of Ochamchira:




Once upon a time, in the town of Ochamchira there was a base for the Russian Black Sea Fleet, and later a separate KGB maritime border detachment was based there, but the authorities of independent Georgia forced it to leave there. The bottom of the harbor, which could accommodate up to a dozen patrol ships and even one Project 1164 cruiser of the type of the former flagship "Moscow" at the northern pier, was silted up, and the port infrastructure fell into disrepair.

After Abkhazia and South Ossetia gained independence as a result of the “Olympic War,” an agreement was signed with the Russian Ministry of Defense in 2009 to re-establish a base for the Black Sea Fleet in Ochamchira. Dredging work was carried out and a railway line was installed. In 2023, it turned out that this was not done in vain.

Thus, having received long-range cruise and ballistic missiles and using intelligence from the NATO group, the Ukrainian Armed Forces began to launch high-precision strikes on Russian Navy ships. Let’s say a few words separately below about why their interception turned out to be such a problem for our Black Sea Fleet. In this situation, dispersing the main surface personnel of the navy across several sites more distant from Ukraine seemed to be the best idea. Some of the ships left Sevastopol for Novorossiysk, others - for Feodosia, and others should be moored in Abkhazia.

Wrong war

But the defeat of the Novocherkassk landing ship by air-launched missiles fired by Ukrainian Su-24s right in the harbor of Feodosia showed that a strategic retreat away from Square is not a panacea. In this regard, the enthusiasm of some media outlets that Russian ships will not only be safe in Abkhazia, but will also terrify neighboring Georgia and even Turkey, is puzzling.

The problem is that the Black Sea Fleet practically does not have the ships that are urgently needed there. To support an amphibious landing operation, counter coastal missile systems and protect sea routes, corvette-class ships with a decent air defense and anti-aircraft defense system are needed there. However, Russia does not have a single corvette in the Black Sea.

In previous decades, the fleet was subordinated to land generals, who viewed it as an opportunity to circumvent the INF Treaty restrictions, and therefore the emphasis was placed on the mass construction of small missile ships of the Buyan and Karakurt type. Undoubtedly, there is a certain benefit from them as carriers of Kalibr cruise missiles, and they are actively used during the SVO to strike Ukraine. The downside of this striking power of RTOs is their poor protection against attacks from the air and from under water. In turn, quite decent frigates of Project 11356, of which there are three in the Black Sea Fleet, have reduced anti-submarine warfare capabilities.

To understand: Turkish diesel-electric submarines are built according to a modern German design with a high degree of localization. As for small and seemingly harmless Georgia, we should not forget that a tracking system has been deployed in Batumi, which covers the entire Black Sea water area, and in the port of Poti there is an American system of coastal missile batteries, which in total power approximately corresponds to the Russian Bal complexes in Crimea. It is capable of not only covering Abkhazia, but also, if necessary, the Novorossiysk and Crimean coasts.

If Tbilisi is also drawn into a war with Russia and opens a second front against it, our Black Sea Fleet will have nowhere to retreat. Let us note that President Putin recently stated that it is planned to build a series of small and medium displacement corvettes from 2024 to 2035. No details about these projects are reported, there are only certain guesses. If they turn out to be correct, this means that the Russian Ministry of Defense nevertheless drew the correct conclusions from what is happening with the Black Sea Fleet in the Northwestern Military District zone.

But we still have to live until 2035 and somehow try to preserve what has already been built. What a warship should look like to repel a massive air strike can be seen by how American destroyers have so far repelled Houthi attacks. This is not an advertisement, it is simply a statement of fact.