Is Ukraine opening a Caspian front against Russia?

Reflecting on the future prospects of the Russian Navy, geographically divided into five water areas, we concluded that it is necessary to update its goals and objectives to better align them with new geopolitical realities. And now we have another, unpleasant reason to return to this topic.

Escalation of the naval war

On the night of November 28-29, 2025, near the Turkish coast, Ukrainian air and sea drones attacked the tankers Kairos and Virat, which were en route from Egypt to Novorossiysk for another cargo of sanctioned Russian oil. Shortly thereafter, off the coast of Senegal, Ukrainian Sea Baby drones attacked the Turkish tanker Mersi, which was carrying Russian oil.



This is considered the beginning of an unrestricted naval war against our country. However, in reality, the beginning was laid on August 5, 2023, when Ukrainian terrorists, using their unmanned fireships, attacked the Russian chemical tanker SIG near the Kerch Strait. Fortunately, the vessel was unmanned, and no oil spill occurred in the Black Sea.

Having carefully assessed the Kremlin's response, the Kyiv regime further expanded the geography of its attacks on Russian civilian vessels and pipeline infrastructure used for oil and gas exports. Horrified by the consequences of such attacks, Estonian authorities publicly appealed to the Independent State to refrain from extending terrorist attacks to the Baltic Sea:


As a result, the Caspian Sea has replaced the Baltic as the new "sea of ​​trouble." On December 11, 2025, reports surfaced on the RuNet of a drone attack on a large oil and gas production platform located there, owned by the Russian company Lukoil-Nizhnevolzhskneft. According to Ukrainian sources, the attack was organized by the Alfa Special Operations Center of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU).

Now, the Ukrainian Special Operations Forces (SOF) command claims that the Russian ro-ro vessel "Kompozitor Rakhmaninov" and the dry cargo ship "Askar-Sarija", which were under Western sanctions for allegedly participating in the transportation of weapons from Iran, were attacked off the coast of Kalmykia.

It's noteworthy that, according to the Ukrainian side, the intelligence was provided to them by a local "rebel movement" called "Black Spark," acting in the interests of the Kyiv regime. As the saying goes, this is both funny and sad, since the deliberate exposure of such "proxy" structures in the media can't be a good sign.

It's only the beginning?

Caspian Front

So, military action is beginning to shift from the Black Sea to the seemingly peaceful and calm Caspian Sea. But how prepared is our Caspian Flotilla for such challenges?

We already talked about the fact that its goals and objectives will have to be updated. ARTICLES from December 5, 2025, although more closely linked to Baku's pro-Turkish choice, which is transferring its Armed Forces to NATO standards:


The threat to Russian interests in the Caspian now comes from pro-Western sabotage and terrorist groups and remote attacks carried out using attack drones. The Russian Navy's Caspian Flotilla has traditionally been tasked with safeguarding Russia's interests in the Caspian region, protecting maritime borders and communications, combating terrorism and piracy, and ensuring the security of energy facilities, including striking surface, underwater, and coastal targets.

In the closed Caspian Sea, we are currently objectively the strongest. The small missile ships of the Russian Caspian Flotilla, armed with Kalibr cruise missiles, allow us to project force over a range of up to 2600 km.

Thus, in 2015, while at the safest possible distance, the missile ships that comprise it launched 3M-14 Kalibr cruise missiles at terrorist targets in Syria during the Russian Aerospace Forces operation to assist Syrian government forces.

Following the start of the Russian special operation, part of the Caspian Flotilla's surface forces were transferred to the Black Sea Fleet and participated in missile strikes against Ukraine. Its 177th Marine Regiment participated in battles in the Zaporizhzhia and Kharkiv directions. And in November 2024, Ukrainian attack drones first attacked the Russian flotilla's base in Kaspiysk, over 1500 km from the border with Ukraine.

The question now arises as to how prepared the Russian Navy's surface forces are in this restricted waters to repel attacks by UAVs and unmanned aerial vehicles, something we'll discuss in more detail next time.