From Sochi to Sevastopol

from Google Maps



"What Did Sochi Get for $51 Billion? Highways, Railroads and a Lot of White Elephants," scoffed Alec Luhn in The Nation last month. Don't forget the new airport, Alec. And the new port.

Further up the coast is the "Hero City" and major port of Novorossiisk. Also being developed.

 

An hour away on the M25, northeastwards, is Anapa:

 

Between Novorossiisk and Anapa is where the proposed South Stream gas pipeline will dive into the Black Sea, on its way over to Bulgaria. Here is one map of its route, which takes in part of Turkish territory:

 

(Source, if you need to look more closely)

Here is another, rather more roughly drawn, which apparently doesn't need Turkish permission:

 

(Source)

About half of Russia's gas exports to Europe go through the Ukraine (and even the South Stream crosses a bit of the extreme eastern part of Ukraine, but a little territorial snipping - a land purchase, maybe? - could put that right).

(Source)

 

So it is very useful to have a route that avoids Ukraine and Belarus; and some of the contracts were signed last Friday. Even then, it would be most inconvenient if the Ukraine accidentally did anything off the shore of Crimea that disrupted the new supply route, but fortunately it looks as if that danger has been foreseen and forestalled.

A spur of the South Stream is planned to run through Greece, which was the subject of some little local difficulty a while back. EU legislation forbids Gazprom from buying Greek gas pipelines, so step forward a Russian cat's paw outfit called Sintez to do the job instead, according to the OilPrice website last year.

 

What with sparkly new port facilities at Sochi and Novorossiisk, not to mention the docks at the M25-serviced Port Kavkaz on that spit of land opposite Port Crimea (see below), there will be lots of logistical support for the future increase in Black Sea Russian naval and shipping activity.

 

 

Why, a bridge only some 3 miles long - like, say, the Pensacola Bay Bridge opened as long ago as 1960 - might cross the gap so easily:

 

 

Poor, dumb President Putin! He simply can't see how he has wasted all that money developing Russian assets on the Black Sea.

Nor, to be frank, can I.

Watch for (a) destabilising tendencies in Greece and (b) a gradual rise in the commercial fortunes of Thessaloniki. And - who knows? - a revival of nostalgic sentiment among the descendants of Pontic Greeks (many of whom now speak Russian) in northern Turkey, Georgia and the Ukraine.

Currently, the Bosphorus Strait is 35 metres deep at its shallowest northern part.

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