Statement for side-event
“Threats for Human Dimension Issues in Maritime Sector: Ukrainian Examples”
Human Dimension Implementation Meeting 2019, 20 September 2019
Distinguished participants,
I will give You some points regarding the civil infrastructure as a method of maritime blockade against Ukraine in Black and Azov Seas. Russia has strengthened its Black Sea Fleet by part of Caspian fleet and used the Kerch bridge to test discriminatory checks of ships and physically block the strait (more than 1200 ships were detained). There were unilaterally established regulations / mode of passage of vessels through the arch of the Kerch Bridge. The captured “Boyko rigs” were converted into military facilities and are used by Moscow for radio intelligence against NATO and Ukraine by the Russian Black Sea Fleet. “Neva-BS” type monitoring systems (radars) installed on the rigs are intended for radar detection and tracking of ships and low-flying targets. It is noteworthy that the radar receives and intercepts data through the channels of the International Automatic Identification System.
Information is transmitted in real time to the Border Guard Department of the Federal Security Service in the occupied Crimea, and also gets into the intelligence system of the Black Sea Fleet of the Southern Military District of the Russian Federation. Such placement of systems and configuration of the drilling locations provide the aggressor with almost complete control over the traffic of commercial ships and warships that sail from the Bosporus and Dardanelles to the ports of Ukraine.
Such systems are deployed and operate 61 km from Cape Tarkhankut at the facilities of Golitsyn field, 72 km from the same cape at the Stormovoye field, 66 km north-east of Zmiyiny Island at the Odessa field. The supplier is still the same – CJSC “Morskie Kompleksy i Sistemy”. This is military technology designed to detect military submarines by their direction finding, tracking of coordinates and motion parameters. The data obtained are transmitted according to the protocol of information and logistic interaction for processing and subsequent visualization by software, which is used by the command of the Russian Black Sea Fleet when conducting military actions.
A similar tactic of creating conditions of “casus belli” for a possible preventive strike was tested by the Russian military command during the shelling and capture of the Ukrainian naval boat group in November 2018. It is clear that the marine infrastructure in the framework with the Nord Stream-2 and TurkStream projects will also be adapted to carry out such combat missions.
We are dealing with the formation by Russia of a military “test site” for development of the suppression of economic freedom of navigation and merchant shipping in general, where the key tool is the integration of civil infrastructure for the military needs of the aggressor state.
Nord Stream – 2 and Turk Stream are a matter of energy security not only in Ukraine but also in Europe because of possible monopolization of the gas transit market by Russia. The gas market of Southern Europe does not need so much of Russian gas because of putting into operation of Trans-Anatolian pipeline, which supplies Turkmen gas through Turkey to the Balkans. The Russian Federation uses pipelines as a lever of military influence including capability to block part of the Baltic and Black Seas to protect its own infrastructure.
In fact, we can talk about the blockade of maritime traffic using civil infrastructure. Such a strategy of the Kremlin is designed to weaken the effect of presence of NATO military contingent in the Black Sea, which was a response to the occupation of the Crimea and the militarization of the Black Sea region, as well as weaken the shipping capabilities of the Black Sea countries, which is a gross violation of the 1982 Convention, to which Russia itself is a party. And under the guise of an artificial pretext (receiving a signal from the security system) about the alleged is implementing an offensive strategy of the economic and military isolation of the region in the Black Sea.
Formerly, Mike Pompeo mentioned the similar problems with the activity of radar reconnaissance in Alaska and the Mediterranean Sea. It is significant that the NATO has sent additional forces to the Black Sea for direction finding and radio interception. Also, the Alliance member countries have cautioned that civilian vessels can be used by Russia to spy on NATO under far-fetched occasions of protection from storming their own ships, carrying out repairs, etc.
Oleg Lisnyi, Think Tank “Politics”