A Companion Paper to the Black Sea Fleet Series by Robin Ashby. Reseach support by Claude.ai
The Sea of Azov is the smallest of the seas that touch European Russia, and for a decade now the one most completely under one flag. It has one door. Understanding who holds the key tells you most of what you need to know.
I. The Lock
The Kerch Strait is four kilometres wide at its narrowest point, and every vessel bound for Mariupol, Berdyansk, Taganrog or Rostov-on-Don passes beneath the Crimean Bridge or does not pass at all.1 Russia has controlled both shores since the 2014 annexation of Crimea, and built the bridge, completed in 2018 at a cost of $3.7 billion, in defiance of a 2003 treaty intended to leave the strait and the sea itself as shared 'historical internal waters' of Russia and Ukraine.2
Dropping the pilot