War on the Euxine Sea
By 
Some thoughts on developments in the Black Sea…
Russia’s inability to displace the Kyiv government or capture Odessa meant that Ukraine would continue to try to export grain, giving the country a commercial lifeline despite severe economic pressure. However, Moscow has evidently come to the conclusion that Ukraine benefits inordinately from the deal, that the commerce in grain has reduced pressure on Ukraine’s backers, and that Russia cannot take advantage of its own commercial opportunities because of difficulties with Western shipping and insurance firms.
Right now Russia is hitting grain and grain infrastructure because the political and technical problems of hitting grain ships are daunting. Firing anti-ship missiles into busy maritime traffic corridors is exceptional dangerous, because anti-ship missiles aren’t very smart and are as liable to hit a Romanian coast guard vessel as a freighter bound for Ukraine. Targeted airstrikes are better, assuming that Russian pilots can distinguish between ships, but operating the western Black Sea puts Russian fighters under serious threat of interception by their Ukrainian counterparts, who would be operating from much closer bases and would likely have the advantage of ground-based missile and radar support. Surface ships are right out for the same reason. Submarines could do the job, but as with long-range missile strikes even the Russians seem to consider the optics of sinking civilian grain freighters at sea to be pretty sketchy from and international opinion point of view. So… the Russians are opting to blow up as much as they can at dockside, although a strategy of trading missiles for grain does not, in the long run, appear to me to be a winning move.
In other news another Ropucha got blowed up. Russian naval power in the Black Sea is done for a generation, at best.