Ships of the Russian Federation in the Black Sea can no longer safely use their main base in temporarily occupied Sevastopol, having mostly moved to Novorossiysk. In addition, the russian federation even announced the creation of a new permanent base in actually occupied Abkhazia.
Against this background, one may get the impression that all the ships of the Black Sea Fleet of the russian federation are trapped and are unlikely to be able to leave the water area, at least until Turkey opens the Bosphorus for the passage of warships, which can happen only after the end of the war.
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In fact, the russian federation has the opportunity not only to withdraw part of the ships from the Black Sea, but also to strengthen the grouping here. Of course, we are not talking about all ships, but only about a class of ships that are no more than small missile ships (in russian classification) or corvette. It was these ships in the russian federation that were created in view of the possibility of their inter-fleet crossing on rivers. In addition, this is possible due to the fact that some of these ships were built near Kazan at the Zelenodol Shipyard, located on the banks of the Volga.
We are talking about ships of project 21631 Buyan-M, project 22800 Karakurt, project 1239 Syvuch, patrol boats of project 22160 type Vasily Bykov, as well as all ships of a lower class, including Molnia-1 missile boats and others by ships with a draft of up to 4-4.5 meters (with some restrictions for large landing ships).
To transfer their ships, the russians can cross the Sea of Azov to the Don, then through the Don-Volga Canal to the Volga. In turn, the Volga River is already connected with the Baltic and White Seas by a system of canals
Given this, the russian federation has the opportunity to withdraw a fairly significant part of the fleet from the Black Sea through the rivers. However, without the possibility of passage through the Bosphorus, all submarines of the Varshavyanka project, the 11356R Admiral Grigoryovych type frigates, as well as patrol ships of the project 1135 Burevestnyk will remain in the Black Sea.
In addition, the russian federation, using the ability to transfer certain types of ships across rivers, has the opportunity to strengthen the Black Sea Fleet by transferring corvettes from the Baltic or Caspian seas. In particular, russia has the ability to transfer up to three Buyan-M corvettes from the Caspian Sea, as well as three more Buyan-M class corvettes as well as three Karakurt class corvettes from the Baltic Sea.
The enemy will have this opportunity until the Armed Forces of Ukraine will gaine access to the coast of the Sea of Azov, after which its entire water area will be under the fire control of coastal anti-ship systems, as well as even artillery - when the Armed Forces of Ukraine will gain access to the Taganrog Bay.
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