'We're here to stop Russia taking the Black Sea'

Captain Oleksandr put his hand on the throttle and nudged it forward. His patrol boat roared into action and zipped through the waves. Behind him was the Ukrainian port of Odesa. In front - beyond a grey expanse of water, and 180km away - was occupied Crimea.

- By Luke Harding ODESA

"We're here to stop the Russians from taking the Black Sea," Oleksandr said.

In 2014 Ukraine lost three-quarters of its modest naval assets when Vladimir Putin seized the Crimean peninsula. Then, in 2022, Russia sank most of what was left. Its own fleet, by contrast, seemed invincible.

It included a mighty flagship carrier, the Moskva, two modern frigates, several smaller warships and multiple missile boats and landing vessels, as well as four submarines carrying deadly Kalibr missiles.

The Moskva entered into legend when it told the Ukrainian garrison on Snake Island in the Black Sea to surrender, on day one of Putin's invasion. The radio operator responded: "Russian warship, go fuck yourself." The Russians stormed the island and took the Ukrainian soldiers guarding it prisoner. Since then, though, Moscow has suffered a series of maritime setbacks.

First, Ukraine sank the Moskva using a Neptune cruise missile. Then it reclaimed Snake Island. After that, Kyiv's homemade explosives carrying sea drones sent at least five other Russian boats to the bottom of the sea.

In 2023 and 2024 Moscow's Black Sea fleet relocated. Surviving ships left their base in the Crimean harbour of Sevastopol and sailed east, to the Russian port of Novorossiysk.

The fleet's departure allowed commercial shipping to resume fully from three coastal cities: Odesa, Chornomorsk and Pivdennyi (formerly Yuzhnyi). The future of the Black Sea is likely to form part of any peace deal with Russia. Last week, after his unhappy meeting with Donald Trump and JD Vance in the Oval Office, Volodymyr Zelenskyy proposed a truce.