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In 2022, Daniel Fiott wrote “Relative Dominance: Russian Naval Power in the Black Sea” for War on the Rocks, in which he argued that enhanced support to Ukrainian naval forces would be required to break Russia’s relative dominance in the Black Sea.  In response to a series of successful Ukrainian naval operations against Russia’s Black Sea fleet, we asked him to look back on his article.Read more below.Photo Credit: President of the Russian Federation via Wikimedia CommonsIn your article “Relative Dominance: Russian Naval Power in the Black Sea” written in November 2022, you argued that Russian naval forces maintained critical advantages over Ukraine in the Black Sea despite successful Ukrainian attacks. Is that still the case? Ukraine has, through a mixture of determination and ingenuity, been able to strike at Russia’s naval forces in the Black Sea. Since I wrote my War on the Rocks commentary, Ukraine has — according to some estimates — sunk or disabled up to a third of Russia’s fleet in the Black Sea. In particular, in my initial article I commented on how the West had to do more to assist Ukraine in taking the naval fight to Russia in the Black Sea. However, the Ukrainians have not waited for support and have combined the domestic production of Magura subsea drones and Neptune missiles to inflict serious blows against Russia’s Black Sea fleet. Accordingly, in recent weeks, Ukraine has struck at least four major Russian vessels including the Kostantin Olshansky, Yamal, Azov, and Ivan Khurs. Still, even with such attacks, Russia maintains its strategic naval presence as a way of launching missile attacks on Ukraine. A recent wave of missile attacks on Ukraine in late March 2024 on key infrastructure (energy storage and power generation) only highlights Moscow’s ability to launch Kalibr cruise missiles and Zircon hypersonic missiles, as well as maintain