Russia's navy looks to be stretched thin after getting battered by Ukraine and losing a key port, Western officials say

Business Insider

3 days ago

TROMSØ, NORWAY — Russia's navy looks to be stretched thin by the Ukrainian attacks in the Black Sea and the loss of a key port in Syria, a top Dutch commander told Business Insider.
During an interview aboard the Royal Netherlands Navy frigate HNLMS De Ruyter last week, Commodore Arjen Warnaar said these recent setbacks have greatly affected the Russian Navy from the Mediterranean Sea to the Arctic region.
"I think they're stretched," said Warnaar, commander of Standing NATO Maritime Group 1 — one of the military alliance's immediate reaction forces — while its flagship vessel De Ruyter conducted operations in the Norwegian Sea.
Russia's navy has always been under a certain degree of strain due to limits in shipbuilding, maintenance, and modernization, redeployment challenges, and operational overstretch. Recent setbacks, however, have put further pressure on the fleet.
At the start of Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022, Ukraine lacked a naval force capable of meeting the threat. What little it had didn't last long. To prevent the Russians from capturing it, the Ukrainians scuttled their one major warship. Its other naval vessels were damaged, destroyed, or captured.
To project power in the Black Sea and fight back against Moscow, Kyiv launched an asymmetric military campaign involving domestically produced naval drones and missile strikes.
Ukrainian operations have damaged or destroyed dozens of Russian warships and naval vessels and forced Moscow to relocate much of the Black Sea Fleet from its Sevastopol headquarters in occupied Crimea to the port of Novorossiysk on the other side of the region.
Staggering Russian losses and forced retreats under relentless Ukrainian strikes have stretched a Russian fleet already hobbled by attrition, aging ships in need of repair, and a shipbuilding industry too strained to replace them.
Russia's naval setbacks worsened in late 2024 after Syrian rebel forces seized the capital, Damascus, and toppled the Assad regime, bringing a swift end to the country's yearslong civil war.
Russia provided military support to the Assad regime during the brutal conflict, and in exchange, it enjoyed a significant presence at Syria's Tartus naval facility on the Mediterranean Sea. However, the change in Damascus has jeopardized the future of Moscow's operations at the strategic port.
Warnaar said the fallout of these two setbacks has been significant for the Russian Navy.
"I think they've always been stretched," Warnaar said of Russia's naval forces, but the situation looks to be getting worse. "Once things start to happen — and, obviously, Ukraine is an example — they'll be even more stretched." He noted that NATO has the assets for any additional stretch required.
"Looking at what they're doing in the Mediterranean, losing a port there means losing logistical support — and that stretches the capabilities they have, which mainly come from this Northern Fleet," the commander said. The Northern Fleet is based in Russia's Murmansk region, along the Barents Sea.
A NATO official echoed Warnaar's assessment and said losing Tartus means Russia now needs to pull assets from other regions to support operations in the Mediterranean, putting greater stress on Moscow's ships and submarines and support systems to sustain the deployments.
And Russia's Black Sea losses have only added to its force generation challenges, said the NATO official, speaking with Business Insider on the condition of anonymity to discuss alliance observations concerning Russia's navy.
These issues are not unique to the Russian Navy. The official said many militaries face force generation issues. But Moscow's problems are compounded by its efforts to keep pace with NATO's vast, jointly organized maritime presence around the European continent.
These challenges are becoming increasingly important in the Arctic region, where climate change is opening up new shipping lanes, creating military and economic opportunities for NATO allies — and adversaries.
The growing significance of the High North region was underscored last month when Standing NATO Maritime Group 1 — led by the sleek Dutch warship De Ruyter — deployed to the frigid waters off the northern coast of Norway to conduct a range of operations.
British Cdr. Craig Raeburn, chief of staff of the maritime group, told Business Insider that NATO was "operating in this area because it's something we haven't done for a while." He said one of the many reasons the consortium of warships deployed to the Arctic is to keep an eye on Russian activity in the region and also "see how they react to us being here."
Moscow was relatively unmoved by the deployment. At one point, a lone Russian naval aircraft operated in close proximity to the maritime group, but none of its ships came out to monitor the NATO activity, Warnaar said. He attributed this to possible strain on the Russian Navy following a series of major exercises called July Storm.
Cdr. Arlo Abrahamson, spokesperson for NATO Allied Maritime Command, said the alliance's maritime presence across the Euro-Atlantic is intended to defend and protect allied interests.
"In projecting this maritime presence, with a robust security network of Allied navies, if an adversary wants to maintain a similar profile, it's going to place strain on their force generation capabilities," Abrahamson said in emailed remarks to Business Insider. Russia isn't able to match that without stress on the fleet.