Russia’s naval posture in the Mediterranean has ‘significantly decreased’: NATO official

MILAN — For the first time in a decade, no major Russian military vessels plied the waters of the Mediterranean for several weeks earlier this year, according to a NATO official, which could signal that Moscow’s maritime forces are stretched.

NATO has tracked a “significant decrease in Russian naval presence” in the strategic body of water, so much so that until early September, “there was a two-month gap with no Russian naval presence in the Mediterranean,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “The last time we saw a lack of any Russian presence there, specifically grey hulls or naval military vessels, was in 2016.”

The military official and two analysts told Breaking Defense that the reasons for the absence are myriad, ranging from the loss of access to a key Mediterranean base to the demands of protecting so-called “shadow fleet” vessels elsewhere.

Last year, Syria’s incoming government terminated Russia’s lease on the strategic port of Tartus, which directly weakened Moscow’s naval access to a nearby replenishment base. (A deal struck in August allows military facilities at Tartus and the coastal Hmeimem air base to be used as “joint training” centers for Russian and Syrian forces, according to The Associated Press.)

The NATO official also said the Russian Navy does not currently have a capable fleet of oilers or support vessels needed to sustain a substantial number of deployed forces over the long term.

“An example of this is that the Russian Navy has been positioning frigates in the English Channel continuously and in order to keep those supplied, they have been relying on an Amur-class repair ship designed to deliver parts or fix things on the ship — not as a replenishment one,” the official said. “So they have been forced to do hull-to-hull transfers, which are really dangerous.”

The alliance has also seen a “trend” of Kremlin military warships “escorting merchant vessels through the Baltic Sea and other areas around the Euro-Atlantic region, including the North and Mediterranean Seas,” the official added.

“These escorting activities take up valuable days at sea for the Russian Navy, and it places strain on their ability to generate naval forces for other missions,” the representative told Breaking Defense.

Basil Germond, a professor of international security at Lancaster University and a visiting fellow at the Royal Navy Strategic Studies Centre, agreed that Russia’s limited surface-combatant capacity appears to have been “increasingly being re-prioritized” to guard strategically important merchant vessels, including shadow fleet ones. He found that this reduces the number of warships readily available for a sustained Mediterranean presence.

Germond also pointed to restrictions imposed by Turkey on the transit of belligerent naval vessels through the Turkish Straits. That, he said, “prevents Russia from using the Black Sea Fleet to rotate vessels routinely into the Mediterranean,” and that the extended passage around Europe increases logistical demands. 

Another expert, Federico Borsari, a fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis, concurred with the pattern NATO identified. However, he pointed out that the overall state of the Russian Navy “is one of progressive decline” in terms of capabilities and operational availability, due in part to attrition from the war in Ukraine. Operational availability issues, specifically, are “almost exclusively to the Black Sea Fleet,” while the other fleets remain “almost untouched by the war.”

And as Russian vessels returned to the Mediterranean last month, Germond said it would be unwise for NATO to think Moscow was abandoning the critical sea routes there.

“In the longer-term, [however] Russia retains both the strategic interest and the residual capability to send warships into the Mediterranean — the current situation is neither a permanent shift nor a temporary anomaly; it is an outcome of the strategic and operational reality facing the Russian Navy,” he said.