Putin’s Black Sea Obsession — The Warm-Water War Beneath the Land GrabBy Luis Gonzalez for
The Last WireI picture Sevastopol as a snarling, iron-toothed beast chained to the Black Sea—stone piers slick with diesel and salt, harbor waters trembling with secrets older than anyone alive. The wind carries the tang of rust and gunmetal, and somewhere behind the fortress walls, tanks growl like caged predators, restless and hungry. But the real war doesn’t rattle on asphalt—it prowls beneath the waves, cold and patient, waiting for a misstep. This is where Vladimir Putin’s obsession claws to life, a hunger for warm water that has shaped Russian strategy for centuries, and where every missile, every grain shipment, every political maneuver in Ukraine bends to the rhythm of the sea.
Russia’s geography is a pitiless taskmaster. Ice chokes the north, the Baltic freezes, and most of its ports vanish into winter like ghosts. For centuries, Tsars and Soviet generals chased the same fever dream:
a warm-water naval base that never sleeps, never freezes, and always obeys Moscow. That dream has a name: Sevastopol, carved from stone by Catherine the Great, bloodied and fortified by Suvorov, the heartbeat of the
Black Sea Fleet. After 1991, it slipped from Moscow’s grip, leased but never fully owned, a jewel dangling just out of reach. That ambiguity was poison to a man like Putin.
By 2014, ambiguity was intolerable...
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