Black Sea Fleet (Чорноморський флот; Chornomorskyi flot). In the past, the Black Sea Fleet was a name of the Ukrainian section of the navy under the Russian tsarist and Soviet regimes. Traditionally Ukrainians were recruited to the fleet (in 1917 it was 80 percent Ukrainian), but from 1965 Ukrainians were a minority in it. The Black Sea Fleet began to be organized in the 1780s by Prince Grigorii Potemkin, and it played an important role in the Russo-Turkish War of 1787–91. The Sea of Azov, Dnipro River (later Liman), and Danube River flotillas came under the Black Sea Fleet. The Sea of Azov flotilla consisted mostly of Don Cossacks, while the Dnipro River flotilla and Danube River flotilla consisted mostly of Zaporozhian Cossacks. As a result of the Crimean War and the Treaty of Paris of 1856, Russia was deprived of the right to maintain a navy on the Black Sea. However, the Black Sea Fleet was reestablished in 1871, after the restrictive clauses of the Treaty of Paris were denounced by Russia.

On the eve of the First World War the Black Sea Fleet had eight battleships (in three brigades), one brigade of cruisers, one brigade of hydrocruisers, one division of destroyers, one division of submarines, and a number of ships for special functions. The fleet was manned by 36,667 officers and sailors (68,286 in 1914 after mobilization). Sevastopol was the fleet’s main base. After the February Revolution of 1917 the Ukrainian independence movement spread to the Black Sea Fleet. Ukrainian military councils were organized on various ships and supported the Central Rada. After the proclamation of the Third Universal of the Central Rada, a department of naval affairs was established in the General Secretariat of the Ukrainian National Republic; it was headed by Dmytro Antonovych, who was assisted by Mykhailo Bilynsky and Oleksander Kovalenko. In January 1918 the department became a ministry. In December 1917 the Ukrainian Military-Naval Council and the Ukrainian Naval General Staff, headed by Captain Yu. Pokrovsky, were formed in Kyiv. Since the Crimea did not belong to the Ukrainian National Republic at the time the main base of the Black Sea Fleet lay outside the jurisdiction of the Central Rada. The Central Rada did not claim all of the Black Sea Fleet, but only the section that declared itself to be Ukrainian—the cruiser Pamiat Merkuriia and the destroyer Zavidnyi. At the time there was complete chaos on the ships of the fleet: Ukrainian, tsarist, red, and even black anarchist flags were raised on different ships depending on the prevailing sentiment of the crews. Antonovych ordered the crews of Pamiat Merkuriia and Zavidnyi to sail for Odesa and Mykolaiv, that is, into Ukrainian waters. Pamiat Merkuriia participated in the battles for Odesa between the UNR Army and the Bolshevik forces in January 1918.

After the Ukrainian forces marched into the Crimea, Mykhailo Bilynsky organized the raising of the Ukrainian flag on all the ships of the Black Sea Fleet on 29 April 1918. But on the next day the Germans took control of Sevastopol and declared the whole fleet to be their war booty. A part of the fleet left for Novorossiisk and raised the Russian tsarist flag, but a part returned to Sevastopol, as the Germans demanded, where its crews were interned. Other ships, led by a second dreadnought, were sunk by Bolshevik crews on Vladimir Lenin’s orders. Only on 11 November 1918 did the Germans cede the Black Sea Fleet to the Hetman government.

In mid-December 1918 the Entente intervened militarily in southern Ukraine, and France interned the Black Sea Fleet at its naval base in Bizerte (Tunisia). Eventually some of the fleet’s ships were included in the French navy, and others were sold for scrap.

The Soviet government completed its restoration of the Black Sea Fleet by 1928. In 1935 the naval forces of the Black Sea and Sea of Azov were renamed the Black Sea Fleet of the USSR. In spite of the great losses that this fleet suffered in the first days of the German-Soviet war (see Second World War) at the hands of the German air force, the Black Sea Fleet played an important role in the conflict. It defended coastal cities, supported evacuation and marine landings, and performed other duties.

After the Second World War the Black Sea Fleet increased in size according to plan. The fleet’s main task was to display the USSR’s naval power in the Mediterranean Sea, where the United States 6th Fleet was stationed. In the early 1980s the Black Sea Fleet consisted of 29 submarines, 79 warships (cruisers and destroyers), 35 large and 50 small mine carriers, 5 amphibious ships for landing marines, over 200 non-combat ships for various functions, 30 reconnaissance ships, 110 warplanes and 110 transport planes, and one brigade of marines. The helicopter carrier Leningrad belonged to the Black Sea Fleet, as did the Caspian flotilla. The Black Sea Fleet was commanded from 1974 by Vice Admiral N. Khovrin.

Almost immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the 1991 Ukraine’s Declaration of Independence, the Black Sea Fleet became a major source of friction between the Russian Federation and Ukraine. The Russian Federation regarded the fleet as a joint asset that would operate under the banner of the Commonwealth of Independent States. Ukraine viewed it as a national asset and claimed the entire fleet for itself. The Russian Federation then retaliated with its own claim of ownership. Heated assertions from both sides followed until they agreed in August 1992 to divide the fleet. Protracted negotiations ensued amidst impassioned public opinion. An agreement in principle was reached by early 1994 to split the fleet’s assets approximately 80–20, with the larger portion going to the Russian Federation. The deal recognized that each country was entitled to an equal part of the fleet, but allowed for the Russian Federation to ‘purchase’ its extra 30 per cent share from Ukraine through a debt-forgiveness plan.

Basing rights proved a more difficult matter to resolve, with the Russian Federation demanding exclusive use of Sevastopol as the home base of the Russian part of the fleet. Ukraine responded immediately by relocating most of its navy to other Crimean ports so as not to invite conflict while steadfastly refusing RF’ claims for de facto control of Sevastopol. A final agreement on the Black Sea Fleet was reached only in May 1997. It confirmed the earlier arrangement for the division of the fleet’s assets and allowed the Russian Federation to lease the main ports of Sevastopol for 20 years.

In 2003 Russian Defense Minister S. Ivanov announced plans to build a new naval base in Novorossiisk, adding at the same time that the Russian Federation had no intention of relocating its Black Sea Fleet headquarters out of Sevastopol. This was largely reiterated by the Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Navy, V. Kureevdov, in 2005, albeit the plans now consisted of two bases in the Novorosiisk area. Early in 2005 the government of Viktor Yushchenko announced that it would honor the existing agreement with the Russian Federation regarding the Black Sea Fleet.

Owing to the fleet’s decrepit condition, the disagreement between Ukraine and the Russian Federation over its ownership, division, and basing had been largely symbolic. At the same time, RF’s foothold in the Crimea provided it an opportunity to use the fleet partly as a cover to influence, subvert, and undermine Ukrainian politics and statehood. In view of this, in 2009 President of Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko ordered the removal of the agents of the Russian Federation’s domestic intelligence service, the FSB, attached to the Black Sea Fleet from Ukraine. The Russian government protested claiming that Yushchenko was interfering in its domestic military affairs. Yushchenko had earlier (May 2008) made plans for the Russian Black Sea Fleet to leave Sevastopol by 2017.

Immediately after his election, in April 2010 President Viktor Yanukovych’s government reached a new agreement with the Russian Federation regarding the Black Sea Fleet. In exchange for a 25-year extension to its presence in Sevastopol (to 2042), Ukraine would receive from the Russian Federation a discount of $100 per thousand cubic meters (tcm) on imports of Russian natural gas, effectively a saving of $40 billion over ten years. But the discount was relative to a higher price; it did not help shelter domestic households from a 50 percent price increase in August imposed by the International Monetary Fund.

In the wake of 2014’s Euromaidan Revolution, when the Russian Federation surreptitiously invaded and then openly annexed the Crimea, these questions of the fleet’s reassignment, basing, and compensation became moot. Most of Ukraine’s navy, based in the Crimea, was lost to the Russian Federation, while its only capable warship, the Soviet-era frigate Hetman Sahaidachnyi, was evacuated to the port of Mykolaiv, and scuttled in 2022 to prevent it falling into Russian hands. From 2014, therefore, the Black Sea Fleet was an exclusively Russian fleet; it underwent significant modernization with the addition of three frigates, six submarines, and four missile corvettes, as well as lesser craft such as patrol boats, minesweepers, and an intelligence ship together with support vessels. Apart from patrolling the Black Sea and shadowing NATO ships venturing thereon, the fleet was also responsible for the surveillance of the Eastern Mediterranean from a leased base in Tartus, Syria.

The Russian Federation’s dominance on the Black Sea by means of the Black Sea Fleet appeared guaranteed at the outset of its full-scale Russo-Ukrainian war on 24 February 2022, threatening to choke off Ukraine’s seaborne trade. The same day the guided missile cruiser Moskva, flagship of the Black Sea Fleet, shelled and overtook the small Ukrainian border guard garrison on Zmiinyi Island at the mouth of the Danube River. Unopposed, the Black Sea Fleet began a campaign of missile attacks on Ukrainian cities, blockades of its ports, and provision of support for military aircraft bombing the mainland.

On 28 February Turkey invoked the Montreux Convention closing the Straits to warships, thereby curtailing the Russian Federation’s ability to replenish and reinforce the Black Sea Fleet, as well as its base in Syria. In April 2022 the Ukrainian forces struck the fleet’s flagship Moskva with shore-based missiles and sunk it. In October 2022 naval drones entered Sevastopol harbor damaging its successor, the frigate Admiral Makarov, along with a minesweeper. In March 2023 they managed a devastating strike on Black Sea Fleet’s headquarters in Sevastopol. Without a proper navy but using only naval drones, intelligence, and missiles, the Armed Forces of Ukraine by 2025 had put out of action one-third of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, forcing the rest to relocate from the Crimea to Novorossiisk on the Russian coast. Ukraine’s defence against the Black Sea Fleet made possible the opening of a grain shipment corridor in the western part of the Black Sea vital for Ukraine’s survival.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Istoriia ukraïns'koho viis’ka. 2nd edn (Winnipeg 1953)
Chernomorskii flot: Istoricheskii ocherk (Moscow 1967)
Zakharov, S. Istoriia voenno-morskogo iskusstva (Moscow 1969)
Basistyi, N. More i bereg (Moscow 1970)
Jones, D.R. (ed). The Military-Naval Encyclopedia of Russia and the Soviet Union, 50 vols (Gulf Breeze, Fla 1978–)
———. Soviet Armed Forces Review Annual, 4 (1980)
Zotkin, N. et al. Krasnoznamennyi Chernomorskii flot, 3d ed (Moscow 1987)
Makareev, M. Chernomorskii flot v biografiiakh komanduiushchikh, 1783–2000, 2 vols (Sevastopol 2000)
Nilsson, R. ‘Russian Policy Concerning the Black Sea Fleet and its Being Based in Ukraine, 2008–2010: Three Interpretations,’ Europe-Asia Studies, 65, no. 6 (August 2012)
Delanoë, I. ‘Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in the “Special Military Operation” in Ukraine,’ FPRI (Foreign Policy Research Institute), 7 February 2024
Williams, B. G. ‘How the Ukrainians—With No Navy—Defeated Russia’s Black Sea Fleet,’ The Conversation, 19 July 2024
Shuster, S. ‘The Drone Wars: How Ukraine Beat Russia in the Battle of the Black Sea,’ Time, 26 August 2024
Fornusek, M.; York, C. ‘As Ukraine, Russia Agree to Ceasefire at Sea, Moscow’s Battered Black Sea Fleet is Set to Get a Reprieve,’ Kyiv Independent, 26 March 2025

Bohdan Harasymiw, Lev Shankovsky

[This article was updated in 2025.]