by Stefan Meister

Geopolitical Shifts in the Black Sea Region

Russia’s war against Ukraine has increased the importance of the Black Sea. It is high time for the EU to develop an ambitious and comprehensive strategy.

The greater region around the Black and Caspian Seas has up until now played a limited role as a corridor for trade, transport, and energy routes between Asia and Europe. However, with Russia's war against Ukraine and the blockade of Ukrainian ports in the Black Sea, this region is gaining geopolitical and geoeconomic importance. Russia had already shifted the security balance in the Black Sea in its favor by annexing Crimea in 2014 and taking control of the Sea of Azov. The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 turned the Black Sea into a flashpoint. It will preoccupy European politics for years to come.

The process of detaching Germany and other European Union member states from Russian natural gas and oil, as well as Western sanctions against Moscow, has increased the importance of the “middle corridor,” linking up Eastern Europe and China via the Caucasus and Central Asia. The southern route via Turkey is also gaining in importance for Russia as a way to circumvent Western sanctions. At the same time, Moscow is weakened by its war against Ukraine and is increasingly unable to control and shape conflicts in the South Caucasus, such as the one between Armenia and Azerbaijan. All this means a return of geopolitics and geoeconomics and demands a new and upgraded security strategy by the EU and NATO.

Geostrategic Relevance

Limiting the geopolitical debate to the Black Sea alone obscures the relevance of this region in regard to a much broader strategic approach. Russia and Turkey are playing a central role in the shifting of geopolitical coordinates. Thus, from the Russian perspective, the Black Sea is a springboard for the projection of power and influence in the Mediterranean, the Middle East, North Africa, and southern Europe. The Black Sea gives access to key regions where there are important security challenges (Syria, Iran, Iraq, Libya) and significant energy resources (the Middle East, the Caspian Sea, and North Africa). Turkey is NATO’s most important Black Sea actor. Ankara sees itself as a bridge for trade between Asia and Europe. One of Turkey’s main goals is to become an energy hub from the Caspian region as well as from the Middle East to Europe. With the war in Ukraine, Turkey has become a key mediator between Ukraine and Russia.

From the EU’s perspective, the Black Sea has so far been primarily an area for trade, economic development, and the transit of raw materials. The focus of EU policy has been the Black Sea Synergy, which was launched as a regional cooperation platform with the accession of Bulgaria and Romania to the EU in 2007. However, this bottom-up approach was never sufficient to actually become truly relevant in the wider geopolitical context. The EU member states’ lack of ambition to play a more relevant role in the region only added to the problem. With the Russian war of aggression, the central challenges in the Black Sea region have gained even more of a security aspect.

Securing transit routes as well as developing alternative sources and routes of natural gas due to Europe’s disentanglement from Russian gas have made Azerbaijan and the Caspian Sea once again a focal point for European policy. After the failure of the Nabucco pipeline in 2013 and of the deep-sea port in Anaklia, Georgia, the EU and its member states must ask themselves why they continue to support infrastructure and reforms in the region without developing a strategic approach to tie and integrate it more closely to the EU.

Strategic Challenges

Russia’s war against Ukraine and its attempt to cut it off completely from its ports and transit possibilities in the Black Sea are making it more necessary for the EU and NATO as Europe’s crucial security partner to play a greater role in the Black Sea. Turkey is key in this regard, as demonstrated most recently by the grain export agreement negotiated by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. At the same time, Moscow is courting Ankara with energy projects and offers of economic cooperation. In Moscow's view, Turkey should become a key country for circumventing Western sanctions.

And it is already clear that Turkey is benefiting from the Western sanctions. Its exports to Russia increased by 86 percent in October, to a value of $1.15 billion. Imports more than doubled to $5.03 billion. Also, Turkey secured an estimated $10 billion investment by Russia in a nuclear power plant. It gets 50 percent of its gas from Russia; oil imports have grown 60 percent this year, at cut prices.

Russia is pursuing two key approaches that apply to the post-Soviet space and, by extension, to the Black Sea region: denial and coercion. First, post-Soviet states are denied access to Western institutions. Above all, the United States, NATO, and the EU are not supposed to be able to set the agenda in the areas of influence claimed by Russia. Second, states in the region are to be forced to accept Russia's dominance. Regarding Russia’s interventions in Georgia (2008) and Ukraine (2014), this approach has seen some success, but is reaching its limits with Moscow’s current war against Ukraine. Ukraine no longer accepts being part of a Russian area of influence, and the West is supporting it with weapons and sanctions to prevent Russia from subjugating and incorporating Ukraine by brute force. With regard to the goal of controlling the transit of energy from this region, this Russian policy has been less successful: Azerbaijan exports oil and gas to the EU via Georgia and Turkey.

Moscow has become more flexible with regard to strategic partnerships and regional cooperation in the Caspian region. In the 1990s, Azerbaijan was still committed to becoming integrated into transatlantic structures. After the Russian-Georgian war in 2008, however, it backed off and pursued the neutrality that Moscow demanded. This means that Baku seeks good relations with both Russia and the West without having to choose between the two. NATO and EU inaction in the Russian-Georgian war has made it clear to Azerbaijani leaders that the West will not provide security guarantees to countries in the region. As a result, Azerbaijan does not seek membership of NATO (or the EU), and Moscow, in return, allows Baku to engage in economic and limited security cooperation with third countries such as Turkey and Israel. Even Russian gas seems to be flowing to Europe via the Azerbaijani pipeline system. Ankara has become Baku’s most important partner and was instrumental in Azerbaijan's success in the second Nagorno-Karabakh war in 2020 in terms of military supplies as well as intelligence.

At the same time, Russia has recognized Azerbaijan’s growing security weight and included the country in trilateral arrangements with Iran and Turkey. Furthermore, Azerbaijan has become an important link in the north-south corridor connecting Russia and Iran, and thus, on a larger scale, the Arctic with the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean, respectively. In mid-September 2022, Azerbaijan, Iran, and Russia concluded a memorandum of understanding for a north-south transit corridor to develop infrastructure and transport capacity on this route.

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