On September 15 Russia officially warned that it would intercept and detain Georgian coastal guard boats in the Black Sea, if these attempt to interfere with ships that trade with Abkhazia, or if the Georgian boats otherwise trespass Abkhazia's "maritime border" into "Abkhazia's waters." The warning accompanies the deployment of Russian coastal guard units to Abkhazia (see EDM, September 16).

Under international law, however, trading with the unrecognized Abkhazia is illegal and there is no such thing as Abkhaz borders or territorial waters. Russia's warning and the construction of its coastal guard base in Abkhazia amount to changing the maritime border de facto through the use of force (since August 2008) and enforcing that change by threats of using force again.

This move is a maritime equivalent of Moscow's methods on land in the South Caucasus: shifting land borders de facto through military action, implanting Russian military bases there, arming local proxies to help enforce this dispensation, and co-sponsoring smuggling and trafficking as part of the "controlled instability" paradigm. Those processes characterized the "frozen conflicts" from the 1990s to date, which rendered international law inapplicable in large parts of the South Caucasus.

Moscow is now extending those methods from the South Caucasus land mass, westward into the Black Sea. This move creates the potential for maritime incidents and unlawful trafficking in the Black Sea. By occupying Abkhazia under the excuse of "recognizing" it, Russia has gained 215 kilometers of Black Sea coastline. The lawless (in terms of international law) environment of the frozen-conflict areas may well spread into the Black Sea, unless this process is checked through timely international actions.

Georgia has declared the Abkhaz port of Sukhumi closed to all ships. Sailing there is unlawful, except in individual cases with Georgian consent. Under international law, Georgia reserves the right to impound the offending ship and its cargo and to put them up for auction.

In recent months, Georgia's modest coastal guard (decimated during the 2008 war while at anchor) intercepted several ships that were engaged in the unlawful trade with Abkhazia. Most of these ships originated in Turkey. In the latest incident, the Georgians detained a Turkish ship and crew in mid-August and impounded its cargo of petroleum products bound for Abkhazia. The incident was resolved with Turkey in early September through diplomatic channels. Russia, however, turned the incident into an opportunity to demonstrate its power to overrule international law in a large part of the Black Sea.

Moscow and the Abkhaz authorities characterize such Georgian actions as "piracy." On September 2, Abkhaz "president" Sergei Bagapsh ordered Abkhaz gunboats to attack and destroy Georgian coastal guard boats if these attempt to stop third-party ships (most likely to be Turkish). Bagapsh said, "These actions will be exclusively Abkhaz actions. No Russian forces are needed for this and they will not be asked to do this" (Interfax, September 2).

Less than two weeks later, Russia threatened to intervene in such incidents, albeit not to destroy, but to detain Georgian coastal guard vessels. Bagapsh's warning, however, raises the possibility that the Abkhaz could shoot while Russia disclaims responsibility for its controlled proxy's actions. Such incidents have been standard procedure in the frozen conflicts on land, and the pattern is potentially repeatable at sea.

The Abkhaz have a few armed coastal boats of their own, sufficient to challenge Georgia's modest coastal guard. This possibility, along with the Russian coastal guard's deployment, can deter Georgian attempts to curb the illegal maritime trade. The Abkhaz "black hole" for smuggling and trafficking, long a problem on land where Russian troops were present, could now affect this large portion of the Black Sea under the Russian coastal guard's watch.

With Russia and the Abkhaz deeming Georgia's lawful actions as "piracy," Moscow can potentially use the relevant item in President Dmitry Medvedev's latest doctrine on military intervention abroad. On September 9, the Russian Duma approved in the first reading Medvedev' proposals to amend Russia's Law on Defense. The amendments authorize Russia's president unilaterally to order immediate military action beyond Russia's borders in a variety of situations. These include "fighting piracy and ensuring the safety of maritime shipping" (Interfax, September 9).

Russian naval action in the Georgia-Abkhazia theater would, in fact, qualify as ensuring the safety of smuggling, if third-party shipping bound for Abkhazia is involved. On September 15 in Tbilisi, the ministry of foreign affairs invited the resident ambassadors and expressed its concerns in this regard (Interfax, September 15). Unchecked, Russia can extend its frozen-conflict/protracted-conflict paradigm from Abkhazia to the eastern Black Sea.

Russian naval operations in August 2008 highlighted the security deficit in the Black Sea. As a littoral country, Russia misused the territory of another littoral country, Ukraine, as a staging ground for attacking a third littoral country, Georgia, using Russia's Black Sea Fleet based in Ukrainian territory at Sevastopol. (Warships from Novorossiysk also participated in the operation). The Russian fleet landed thousands of troops on the Abkhaz coast, attacked Georgian coastal guard vessels, as well as shore targets further south in Georgia, and blockaded Poti. In that port, Russian troops blew up Georgian coastal guard cutters at the pier.

The Russian fleet's actions violated Ukraine's neutrality, which Russia otherwise professes to uphold vis-a-vis NATO. The naval operation also breached the 1997 basing agreements, which rule out any involvement in hostilities by the Russian fleet based in Ukraine.

According to Russian media accounts from naval sources in the war's aftermath, the Russian naval group moved slowly from Sevastopol in the direction of Georgia, four or five days before the August 8 assault. Yet, no littoral or non-littoral country or organization reacted at the political level, before or afterward, to Russia's naval operation.

In the war's aftermath, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko issued a decree requiring the Russian Black Sea Fleet command to provide advanced notification to Ukrainian authorities in each case when its ships and personnel exit and re-enter Ukrainian territory. The decree cites international law and the 1997 basing agreements as the basis for this requirement. Ukraine's foreign ministry has repeatedly taken up the issue with its Russian government counterparts. Yet the Russian government and naval command have largely ignored it.

As part of its naval modernization program, Moscow hopes to buy a Mistral-class helicopter carrier from France. Announcing that intention, the Russian Navy's Commander-in-Chief, Admiral Vladimir Vysotskiy, said: "In the conflict in August last year [against Georgia], a ship like that would have allowed the Black Sea Fleet to accomplish its mission in 40 minutes, not 26 hours which is how long it took us [to land the troops ashore]." The navy also hopes to acquire the license to build three or four Mistral-class ships in Russia. Moscow is preparing an international tender for France, the Netherlands, and Spain--countries that also build helicopter carriers of this class--to compete for selling the ship and the technology to Russia (Interfax, September 11, 15).

According to Vysotskiy, the negotiations are in progress. Moscow apparently expects these NATO countries to enhance Russia's military capacity in order to intimidate its neighbors, after the same countries helped block Ukraine's and Georgia's membership action plans with the Alliance.

Moscow has recently introduced adjustments to the command arrangements for its Black Sea Fleet in Ukraine. The fleet shall be subordinated to the Russian North Caucasus Military District (ground forces), headquartered in Rostov-on-the-Don, in the event of "operational missions in the southern and southwestern directions." Prior to this change, the Russian Fleet in Ukraine was subordinated to Russia's Naval Command at all times. The change is designed to integrate these naval forces with Russia's ground forces for operations in the Black Sea region. By the same token this change erodes the provisions of the 1997 Russia-Ukraine agreements that ensure this fleet's separation from the Russian ground forces and precludes the fleet's involvement in hostilities (Nezavisimaya Gazeta, September 3; Interfax, September 11).

Russia openly questions Ukraine's sovereignty in the Crimea while signaling that it will try to prolong the stationing of its fleet beyond the 2017 deadline. For that deadline to be observed, the fleet would have to begin the process of withdrawal by 2011-2012. However, Moscow is unwilling and international attention is also lacking. Even some leading Ukrainian proponents of the orientation toward NATO believe that the Alliance and the United States lack a strategy for securing Ukraine's independence and territorial integrity, particularly in the case of escalating Russian pressures in the Crimea (Volodymyr Horbulin and Valentyn Badrak, Defense Express [Kyiv], September 11).

The existing arrangements for confidence-building and security in the Black Sea are proving inadequate to these challenges. The naval confidence-building undertaking BlackSeaFor and the Black Sea Economic Cooperation Organization (BSEC) are consensus-based groups, unable even to discuss officially, let alone deal with, hard-security challenges such as those relating to the territorial integrity of littoral countries.

Those groupings and arrangements were not designed to cope with hard-security challenges; indeed such challenges were not initially anticipated, went unaddressed after becoming manifest, and are being met with complete silence even now by BlackSeaFor and BSEC. In terms of naval security, the current situation in the Black Sea amounts to a Russian-Turkish naval condominium, with Turkey probably being the stronger side. The Turkish-led exercise Black Sea Harmony, held periodically with Russia in the southern Black Sea, also has no restraining impact on Russia's aggressive behavior in the eastern and northern Black Sea.

Eurasia Daily Monitor. The Jamestown Foundation

September 17, 2009—Volume 6, Issue 170

September 18, 2009—Volume 6, Issue 171