wastingvaluelesstime t1_iucbmvb wrote on October 30, 2022 at 6:30 AM

Reply to comment by TarkovRatKing in Russia backs out of Black Sea Grain Initiative, supposedly in response to Sevastopol explosions by Ok-Pomegranate-7056

Why not just have romania do the escorting by itself, bolstered by a lot of aircraft

TarkovRatKing t1_iudrta5 wrote on October 30, 2022 at 3:49 PM

They do not have the navy for that. Too few ships.

Escort duty requires a lot of ships to screen the protected ships.

Each ship will need a destroyer in range to defend it from missiles. There are a lot of cargo ships and romania does not have the numbers to protect all. Even the US navy would struggle to assign ships for that escort duty against an enemy like Russia, in the Black sea.

wastingvaluelesstime t1_iudv7aa wrote on October 30, 2022 at 4:13 PM

Ships could also proceed in the 12-mile territorial limit of romania and bulgaria, then reflag under romanian, bulgarian, the turkish flags. Any attack once out of ukrainian waters would be an article 5 violation.

Also apparently there are hundreds of ships. Does russia have hundreds of submarines and backfire bombers ready to be destroyed in the act of sinking a 10k ton romanian flagged ancient grain hauler?

I's suspect that aside from bluster, mines, drones, and sabotage would be the biggest threats

And finally, this all rests on https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreux_Convention_Regarding_the_Regime_of_the_Straits

It was challenged by the russians in the past and is one reason Turkey is in NATO. With Russia violating all rules of conduct recently, maybe it's time to replace this with the following rules:

all military traffic forbidden - for russia
all military traffic allowed - for NATO and other black sea states

Especially when combined with eventually evicting russia from syrian naval facilities, it would really improve security in the entire region.

TarkovRatKing t1_iudvir6 wrote on October 30, 2022 at 4:15 PM

Well, they would surely feel more tempted of there is no naval cover. One thing is sinking a cargo ship. Other way more serious is targeting a ship that is close to a NATO war vessel and forcing it to defend.