Coming Attractions: a NATO Black Sea Fleet

[Ian Thomas]

Uh oh. As we all know, the Black Sea guards Russia's southern flank and the Kremlin sees NATO expansion eastwards as an existential threat to the Russian State. Now there's a push to turn "Russia's Lake" into a NATO (aka USN 🇺🇸) bastion 🤦‍♂️. 
If I were a European, I'd be thinking either 1/ emigration 🧳 or 2/ backyard bomb-shelter. ☢️

Sweeping the minefield: The case for a NATO Black Sea Fleet. Middle East Institute. Retrieved March 22, 2024, from
www.mei.edu/publications/sweeping-minefield-case-nato-black-sea-fleet

The formal inclusion of Turkey as a member of Bulgaria and Romania’s joint minesweeping task force could be the first step toward eventually establishing an official NATO presence in the Black Sea.

Turkey has historically opposed any extended stay in the Black Sea by NATO warships from outside the region on the grounds that this would violate the Montreux Convention.

Other than political will, there is nothing stopping NATO members and non-NATO littoral states from negotiating a structure of the standing group that would fit the Montreux Convention’s parameters for the ships’ tonnage, type, and deployment time,  though an amendment or renegotiation for a new treaty might become necessary ...

The war is unlikely to end anytime soon, and Turkey will likely continue its policy of not entirely alienating Vladimir Putin’s Russia. But it is clearly in the security interests of all of the Black Sea’s littoral states ... to formulate a cooperative framework for mitigating the threat posed by naval mines in these waters. The time has come for NATO to reconsider a standing Alliance fleet in the Black Sea.

[dennisw]

There was an ancient prophecy that said when you see the Russians in Constantinople (Istanbul) put on your best clothes because the Messiah is about to arrive, pushing Russia into a corner is just likely to stir the Russians into wanting this to control the entrance to the Black Sea.

[johannes]

Nobody is afraid of minesweepers. Even the Germans and the Japanesevhad were allowed to have minesweeping fleets after their surrender in 1945.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Mine_Sweeping_Administration

We know what happened when Turkey - a NATO-member - and their Azeri cousins tried war, conquest and ethnic cleansing on the Caucasus front, in Karabach. I'm no fan of Turkish nationalists - my girlfriend is Brazilian, and the grey wolves are the biggest white suprematist racket in town - but I have to admit that the chutzpah of disguising your blockading force as "climate activists" (of all things) made me chuckle
Putin send a factfinding mission, all 12 of them. Putin could have stopped it - just send Dugin to his fellow necromancer Harun Yahya. I guess Yahya, with his following of plastic barbi dolls, knows enough about the private life of some AKP Backbenchers to have Erdo by the balls (quite literally), so Dugin and Yajya could have stopped the Karabach war. They didn't. If Russia did not even use blackmail to secure its southern flank, why should they go nuclear?

[johannes]

Nobody is afraid of minesweepers. Even the Germans and the Japanese were allowed to have minesweeping fleets after their surrender in 1945.

Note the date

[johannes]

Nobody is afraid of minesweepers. Even the Germans and the Japanese were allowed to have minesweeping fleets after their surrender in 1945.

Note the date

[Ian Thomas]

I don't suppose dazzle camouflage would be much help when Godzilla's closing in for the kill ..