Geopolitics: Russia’s Novorossiysk Comes Under Attack

4 min readAug 8, 2023

On Friday, 05/08/2023, the Ukrainians used a naval drone (a motorboat loaded with a crap ton of explosives) to hit a Russian vessel in the port of Novorossiysk.

These naval drones have been successful so far; look at the Kerch Strait Bridge. The Kerch Bridge, also known as the Crimean Bridge, was built by Russia after it invaded and de-facto annexed the peninsula of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.

The 12-mile bridge, which includes a separate roadway and railway, spans the Kerch Strait and connects Crimea with mainland Russia the Bridge was attacked in July 2023.

However, a naval drone hitting Novorossiysk would signal a considerable range increase OR that a third party is involved.

So how does this play into commercial shipping? On Saturday, the Ukrainians hit a Russian tanker with one of these drones. And if that marks the beginning of a trend, this will be a big problem for many people.

As the Black Sea becomes a no-go zone, Russia’s global position will suffer because everything they do depends on free movement; if that goes up in smoke, everything does.

The restraint we’ve seen from both sides has practically disappeared overnight, and there will be colossal whiplash effects.

The oil industry, in particular, will face significant disruptions; most of that falling on China and the rest of East Asia. As of April 2023, 80% of the Russian oil exports went to India and China, representing the trend documented by IEA monthly reports.

A lot still needs to happen, but the Russians could be losing their strategic position in the water, their ability to penetrate global economies, and their ability to project power across the wider world, not to mention a complete reordering of international energy.

Impact of the Black Sea Being a No-go Zone

Impacts from the Ukraine War in regards to grain supply from Ukraine which feed over 400 million people, and oil exports from Russia account for 13% of global petroleum, with these no longer being accessible for worldwide food and energy markets in the next 12 months, will lead could to a rapid increase in fuel costs and the price of grain.

Ukrainian grain primarily goes to North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, and China. Russian fuel mainly goes to China and Russia, with the European Union nations outside the European Union, like the United Kingdom, their energy from the United States.

In the next two years, there is potential for coup d’état happening in places like Niger, becoming an epidemic throughout the African continent due to the rise of food costs and insecurity created by the Ukraine War.

This happens in less developed nations because their societies and economies are not yet sophisticated enough to tackle rebellions and coup d’état within the military and government structures.

The reason why countries in the Global North which are developed nations, don’t have this issue due to legitimacy comes from multiple sources such as Parliament, English common law or respect of the nation’s laws, a tradition of democracy, and other traditions built up over centuries or a set of codified or uncodified statutes and conventions.

For instance, South Korea and Japan copied the American constitution when governing their nations and used Roman law developed in the old Roman Empire.

These nations copied and pasted their constitution and legal system from the Western world from Western philosophy, Western legal traditions, and Western economic theories because they were tested and proven effective.

The Japanese Constitution, also known as the MacArthur Constitution, the Post-war Constitution the Peace Constitution, was drafted under U.S. General Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, during the Allied occupation of Japan after World War II.

As for Africa, this is generalizing; they don’t have the institutions to withstand the kinds of international conflicts that lead to economic shop, which the West knows how to deal with due to institutional memory, which they lack.