Sevastopol

Sevastopol is the home of the Russian Navy Black Sea Fleet.

Since the dissolution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, leaders of the Russian Federation have made it absolutely clear to the leaders of the NATO alliance that the Sevastopol naval base will never be used by NATO, absent Russia itself joining the NATO alliance.^[1][2][3]

Crimean war[edit]

See also: Crimean War

The French and British decided to make use of their overwhelming sea forces and capture the Russian base at Sevastopol. The taking of Sevastopol would end any hope of Russian naval superiority in the Black Sea. They landed about 30 miles north of the base during 14–18 September 1894 and marched south along the coast, accompanied by the fleet. They met the Russians under Menshikov at the Alma River, and after three hours of fighting, the Russians retreated, having lost 9,000 men to France and Britain's 2000. In one of those inexplicable cases of failure of command, the Allies’ commanders either couldn't (the British Lord Raglan) or wouldn't (the French St. Arnaud) press home their advantage, and by the time they moved, Menshikov had removed his army from danger and commenced shoring up the defences of Sebastopol by sinking ships in the entrance to the Harbour.

The campaign bogged down into the siege of Sevastopol, which was to last until the Russians finally retreated from the base on 8 September 1855 after a French attack; and included two major battles where the Russians tried to break the siege: Balaclava (25 October 1854) – during which the “Charge of the Light Brigade”, immortalised in Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem, took place – and Inkerman (5 November 1854) in which numerically superior Russian forces; both from within Sevastopol, and a Russian field army; were repulsed; but not defeated due to the failure of the French and British commanders to act as one... a problem that reoccurred during the war.

Battle of Sevastapol[edit]

See also: World War II

Dissolution of the Soviet Union[edit]

The nominal successor to the Soviet Union was the Commonwealth of Independent States; Ukraine joined on Dec. 8, 1991. Serious tensions soon emerged with Russia as Moscow took possession of the Black Sea fleet anchored at Sevastopol, while some Russian politicians wanted the Donbas and the Crimea; the latter, being in Russian hands since 1783, had been placed under Ukrainian administration by Nikita Khrushchev, himself a Ukrainian, without a democratic referendum or the self-determination of the peoples involved in 1954.

Euromaidan coup[edit]

See also: Maidan coup

On November 21, 2013, the democratic government of the Ukrainian borderlands rejected a European Union association agreement in favor of maintaining relations with the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). The path to securing a NATO naval base in Sevastopol on the Black Sea was effectively cut off. NED/Soros-sponsored neo-fascist riots erupted.^[4]

NATO war in Ukraine[edit]

On July 31, 2022, the 326th celebration of Russia's Navy Day National Holiday, a drone attacked the headquarters of Russia's Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol.^[5]

On October 29, 2022, at 4:20 A.M. local time the Russian Fleet was attacked by nine unmanned aerial vehicles and seven UK Royal Navy autonomous maritime drones. The aerial drones were launched from commercial ships inside the humanitarian corridor for grain shipments. During the attack a U.S. Global Hawk drone flew in circles south of Crimea relaying data from and to the drones.

See also[edit]

• Near abroad

References[edit]