March 2, 2025: The Russian navy has about 130 hydrographic research ships. All but fifteen of them are short range vessels for mapping offshore waters no more than a hundred kilometers from the coast. If Russia is involved in another naval war in the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans, or the Black Sea and Baltic Sea, the hydrographic research vessels will provide Russian ships with more accurate information about the local weather and the underwater topography. Russia is preparing for future wars after it lost control of the Black Sea to Ukraine, a nation without a fleet.

Russia’s most recent naval war was in the Black Sea and it was a disaster. The Black Sea Fleet was largely destroyed by Ukrainian aerial and naval drones. Ukraine has a miniscule fleet consisting of coastal and riverine patrol boats. What Ukraine does have is imagination and resourcefulness the Russians lack. Ukraine quickly adapted their drones to take on warships and destroyed most of the Black Sea Fleet. The remnants of that fleet fled to distant ports in the Sea of Azov, over a thousand kilometers from Ukraine.

Before the Ukrainian War, Vladimir Putin believed that Russia must dominate the Black Sea and enable Russian warships and commercial transports to exit the Black Sea and enter the Mediterranean Sea, to demonstrate Russian naval power and increase maritime trade with foreign nations. Russia seized the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine in 2014. Before that Russia fought a brief war with Georgia in the Caucasus and gained control of most of Georgia’s Black Sea coast.

These moves were apparently prompted by the 2013 Russian formation of a Mediterranean Squadron from ships of the Black Sea fleet. In 2015 Russia intervened in the Syrian civil war on the side of the pro-Russian Assad government. This enabled Russia to build its Hmeimim Air Base in Syria’s Latakia province near the Mediterranean coast. Russia also improved the nearby Tartus naval base it leased from Syria. This serves as a base for ships of the Russian Mediterranean Squadron. In North Africa Russia took control of the Al Jufra Air Base in Libya. This was to serve as a military base for further Russian activities in Africa. In late 2024 Russia lost Hmeimim and Tartus as the Assad clan, long a Russian ally, was driven out of Syria. The Assads found refuge in Russia. The Russian ships left Tartus as the Syrian government cancelled the 49 year Russian lease on Tartus and Hmeimim.

This change means Russia no longer has much naval power in the Mediterranean and dares not try to send any ships back into the Black Sea, mainly because Turkey invoked clauses of the 1936 Montreux Convention that enables Turkey to halt warship access to the Black Sea from the Mediterranean via the narrow Turkish Bosporus and Dardanelles straits. Turkey invoked the Montreux Convention after Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022.

Russia lost control of the Black Sea after it invaded Ukraine in 2022. Ukraine used drones armed with explosives to destroy or damage over a third of the Russian Black Sea Fleet warships. The surviving Russian ships fled to distant areas of the Black Sea to escape these novel but very effective Ukrainian attacks. Even in the new, more distant bases, Black Sea Fleet ships were still attacked by new, longer range Ukrainian naval attack drones. This was humiliating for Russia, which lost control of the Black Sea to Ukraine, a country without a fleet. The Ukrainians continue to use their drones against surviving Russian warships and now commercial ones. Ukrainian drones now block Russian tankers and commercial vessels from leaving or entering the Black Sea.

The mighty Soviet Navy, the second largest in the world, fell apart after 1991 when the Soviet Union dissolved and the Russian Federation could not afford to provide crews and fuel for its hundreds of ships. In 1991 the Soviet Fleet had over 500 major warships including 109 nuclear subs and nearly as many older nuclear subs retired but still afloat because Russian could not afford to safely scrap them. There were a thousand smaller patrol craft and support ships, most of which could be sold for scrap. The Kommuna escaped this carnage because it was a salvage and rescue ship and in good shape.

Less than two decades after the Soviet Union disappeared, the Russian Federation navy had about a hundred major warships in service and what little money there was for buying new ships went to build a dozen or so new nuclear powered SSBN ballistic missile submarines and diesel-electric or nuclear attack submarines. There was still not enough money to send ships to sea for long periods.

During the 1990s the navy was forced to retire most of its ships, including nearly 200 nuclear submarines. The nukes were a potential hazard already because some had already sunk off the north coast without regards to what impact the maritime nuclear power plants would have long-term. This prompted Western nations to spend nearly $20 billion in the 1990s to safely decommission the Russian nuclear subs.

As of 2025 Russia is depending on its large fleet of hydrographic research vessels to map the waters around Russia so that a new Russian fleet has detailed knowledge of areas where battles might take place. Rising above the humiliation of the Black Sea Fleet defeat is a very high priority.