Legal positions and geopolitical realities are different things. No one besides Turkey recognizes the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. Only a handful of countries apart from Russia back the sovereignty of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Nagorno-Karabakh is formally regarded by everyone as part of Azerbaijan. Yet any attempt to substitute the legal position for the geopolitical reality in any of these cases is bound to lead to a collision. Crimea belongs in the same category, only the consequences...
Strategic goals and objectives
Last January, Romania initiated a proposal to create a permanent NATO naval task force in the Black Sea and Bucharest intends to discuss its project during the summit of the Alliance in Warsaw in July. It is noticeably the first concrete Romanian initiative in terms of maritime security in the Black Sea, a naval theater which has been depicted extensively as a Russian-Turkish security condominium since 1991. Romania is a key NATO member in the region, hosting on its...
The Ukrainian crisis gave to Moscow a unique opportunity to annex Crimea, the independence of which had never been fully accepted by Russia after 1991. The regime change occurred in Kiev in February 2014, after Viktor Yanukovich’s running away during the night of February 21-22, brought to power a ruling elite backed by the Euro-Atlantic community, as well as leaders displaying hostile views with regard to Russia. The proposition made on February 23 by the new authorities to abolish the law...
Russia’s March 2014 annexation of Crimea has overthrown the maritime context in the Black Sea region. The full sovereignty recovered by Moscow over the Crimean peninsula is likely to tremendously sustain Russia’s maritime power in the region and beyond, in the Mediterranean[1]. However, the lack of local maintenance infrastructures as well as limited shipbuilding capacities remain a structural challenge to the revival of Moscow’s maritime and naval might in the Black Sea region...
Part Two:
What are the consequences for the buildup of the Black Sea Fleet?
Having examined the plans for the economic development of Crimea and the construction of infrastructures in the peninsula in our previous paper, we now raise issues related to the impact of Russia’s seizure of Crimea for the modernization of the Black Sea Fleet. The buildup of the Black Sea Fleet ‘1.0’ was initiated years before Russia’s takeover of Crimea which has recast Moscow’s paradigm...
Part One:
Economic Development: First Steps, First Challenges
Russia’s annexation of Crimea on March 18, 2014 has raised issues related to the economic impact of such a move for Moscow. The takeover of the peninsula as well as Moscow’s involvement in the Ukrainian crisis have sparked economic sanctions from the Euro-Atlantic community. On the diplomatic stage, Western countries have sought to isolate Moscow and boosted their efforts to ease Kiev’s economic rapprochement with the...
