The cruiser Varyag and her escort returned to Vladivostok, their Pacific Fleet home port. A mission of more than 10 months which underlines the lack of ships and logistical solutions of the Russian fleet.
It is a long, very long journey that the sailors of the cruiser complete Varyagyou destroy Admiral Tributes and oil tanker Boris Butoma. Belonging to the Russian Pacific Fleet, the three ships struck with the red star arrived Friday, November 18 at their home port of Vladivostok after crossing the great suspension bridge of Rousski Island. The final stage of a 325-day journey that took them far from their favorite area, to the eastern Mediterranean Sea, where they spent more than ten months, counting the 30,000 kilometer round trip via the Suez Canal, Red Sea, Indian Ocean, China Seas and Sea of Japan.
Under the command of Varyagflagship of the Pacific Fleet and sistership from Moscow Sunk by the Ukrainians in the Black Sea last April, the small squadron played a discreet but essential role: ensuring a permanent Russian naval presence in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea during the war in Ukraine. Certainly, the thing is not new. The Russian Navy has been deploying ships in “Medor” for several years now, mainly a few low-tonnage vessels as well as two submarines from the Black Sea Fleet, the closest to the area. This Mediterranean squadron – resurgence of the Soviet 5th Eskadra which faced the American 6th Fleet during the Cold War – is inseparable from the Russian presence in Syria, where Moscow has a naval base in Tartous, the only one in Russia abroad.
Deterrent posture
With the escalation of tensions triggered at the beginning of 2022 by exercises on the Ukrainian border and which changed scale with the invasion of the country on February 24, Moscow has greatly increased its deployment in the Mediterranean. As early as January, detachments from the two large Northern and Pacific fleets were launched, centered respectively around the cruisers Marshal Ustinov et Varyag accompanied by their escort. The objective was of course to try to track the activities of the NATO marines in “Medor”, but also, more fundamentally, to ensure a posture of deterrence. It is to these imposing cruisers of more than 12,000 tons of displacement, equipped with supersonic anti-ship missiles P-1000 Vulkan – weapons known as “killer of aircraft carriers” – that fell to this task. A deterrent all the more credible as these missiles, which make these ships recognizable among all with their inclined launchers located on either side of the bridge, have a so-called “dual” use, their conventional heads being able to be replaced by warheads nuclear. There is no indication that this was the case, but the doubt has a deterrent value.
On paper, Russia had therefore succeeded in regrouping a small armada in the eastern Mediterranean, a sign of the rise in power of the Russian armies. But the reality is quite different: with the exception of two frigates, the ships deployed by Moscow in “Medor” are above all remarkable for their canonical age. The Varyag, Admiral Tributes et Boris Butoma returned this Friday to Vladivostok were commissioned in 1989, 1985 and 1978… i.e. from 33 to 44 years at sea. In the vast majority of navies in the world, such buildings would have already retired, or would be the point of being. As a result, most of the sensors and armaments of large Russian ships have not been modernized, no longer obeying contemporary standards.
The other difficulty is due to the reduced number of Russian offshore vessels capable of taking over from those deployed in January. The Russian Navy has 18 frigates, destroyers and cruisers currently operational and distributed in the four fleets of the North, the Pacific, the Baltic and the Black Sea, extremely distant from each other. But there is no indication that all these ships – only five have been in service for less than 10 years – would actually be able to carry out a mission of several months thousands of kilometers from their home port.
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Therefore, the ships deployed in January 2022 had to play extra time in extremely difficult conditions. You have to imagine sailors spending more than ten months at sea in comfort that is all the more basic because the buildings are old, with the added bonus of the tension induced by the particular geopolitical context of the war in Ukraine. And, above all, extremely limited possibilities for support, repair and resupply. Russia does have Tartous facilities in Syria, but in practice this simple “material and technical base” dating from Soviet times has not yet received sufficient investment to meet the needs of large ships deployed for a long time on the high seas. To date, for example, it is impossible for Russian cruisers or destroyers to moor along the quays, intended for smaller ships.
Russia can therefore hardly sustain its naval presence in the Mediterranean, which has been enhanced since last February. Like the Pacific ships, part of those of the Northern Fleet also left the area. On September 16, it was thus the cruiser Marshal Ustinovthe destroyer Vice-Admiral Koulakov and the oil tanker Vyazma who returned to their home port of Severomorsk in the Barents Sea.
As of November 12, among the large ships, only the frigate remains Admiral Kasatonov – flagship of the Russian Navy, belonging to the Northern Fleet – and the frigate Admiral Grigorovitch, belonging to the Black Sea Fleet, according to the count kept by naval analyst and former Belgian officer Frederik Van Lokeren. To compensate for this attrition, the Russians chose to deploy two class corvettes Steregushchiy of the Baltic Sea Fleet, but such ships, though modern, do not have the endurance of cruisers or destroyers.
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NATO maintains its presence in “Medor”
And the situation should not get better. With the war in Ukraine and in accordance with the Treaty of Montreux in the event of an armed conflict, Turkey has decided to close the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits that connect the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea to all warships. The fleet based in the first, already under severe pressure with the war, will therefore no longer be able to deploy ships to support the Mediterranean “eskadra”, while this solution was geographically the most logical. Black Sea vessels currently in the Mediterranean are only permitted to return to the Sevastopol base. Again, they play extra time in “Medor”, but will not be able to do it forever; at some point they will have to return to port. With the closure of the straits by the Turks, it is also increasingly difficult for the Russians to supply their base of Tartous in Syria, yet more crucial than ever. Warships being prohibited, Moscow uses civilian tankers protected as soon as they enter the Mediterranean by a frigate.
Opposite, the NATO countries maintain a strong presence in the eastern Mediterranean, with, of course, the US Sixth Fleet and its forty ships, and a very dense network of naval bases which is very useful for logistics. The Navy, which permanently deploys a frigate in “Medor”, is not absent either. At the end of its summer technical stop, the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle sailed Tuesday, November 15 from Toulon as part of the “Antares” mission. Although the Ministry of the Armed Forces has remained discreet about the route, we know that the carrier battle group will soon cross the eastern Mediterranean to reinforce “NATO’s defensive and deterrent posture on the eastern flank of Europe” – which it had already done at the beginning of 2022 – before pushing, perhaps, as far as the Indian Ocean depending on the evolution of the international context.
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