Russia
spans 10 time zones, yet neither it nor the former USSR has a warm water port –
one that can stay open during the winter.
During the Soviet era, the Black Sea fleet was pretty much the flagship
fleet.
The Black Sea is bordered on the south by Turkey, on the
west by Bulgaria and Romania, on the north by Ukraine, and on the east by
Georgia and Russia.
When the USSR collapsed, the Russians were afraid that
Ukraine would take ownership of the Soviet fleet there. It wasn’t totally finished by then, but the
Russians pulled anchor on an aircraft carrier (the “Kuznetsov”) they were
building not far from Odessa, Ukraine, and hauled ass through the Turkish
Straits and into the Mediterranean.
Since it was “out in the open” like that, everybody was sending up
planes to buzz it. We even heard that an
Italian Harrier tried to land on it and the Russians had to come out and shoot
at it to get him to back off. That was,
in fact, my last mission flight for the Navy, and the only time I got
airsick. (When you fly low like that, it
gets really hot and bumpy.)
A quick look at the geography gives you a clue about many of
Russia’s policy positions – its opposition to Turkey being a member of NATO;
its opposition to Ukraine aligning with the EU.
Take a look, also, at that peninsula in the middle of the northern coast. That’s the Crimean Peninsula and it used to
be part of Ukraine.
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