The Black Sea connects with the Sea of Azov, surrounded almost entirely by Russia, at the Kerch Strait, the scene of a confrontation between Russia and Ukraine in 2003.
A Russian newspaper at the time explained what was at stake in the dispute:
"The Kerch Strait at the center of Russia's dispute with Ukraine controls access to the Azov Sea, which is reputed to have largely untapped hydrocarbon reserves.
"Ownership rights to potential oil and gas resources have not been decided between the two countries, despite years of negotiations to delimit the seabed.
"Although unlikely to be a second Caspian, geologists believe the Azov
Sea is likely part of the same seam of hydrocarbon deposits that stretches from southern Ukraine and Russia through the Black Sea to the Caspian and beyond."
(Moscow Times, October 24, 2003)
The US's Stratfor augmented the above with this brief analysis:
"The Kerch Strait is a 25-mile-long channel that is no wider than 9 miles, linking the critically important Black Sea to the Sea of Azov off of Russia's Northern Caucasus border. It has served as a key location for some strategic battles in the past from the Crimean wars to a Nazi-Soviet naval clash. To Russia, the Kerch Strait is a continuation of the Northern Caucasus into Ukraine's Crimea regions, which is one of the country's most pro-Russian regions and home to Russia's Black Sea Fleet located at Sevastopol."
(November 10, 2008)
More concisely and even more to the point, a few weeks ago this quote appeared in a Ukrainian press wire report:
"Ukraine's Euro-Atlantic aspirations require that it solves all its problems, including border disputes. They need a border [in the Kerch Strait] for just one reason: to be able to join NATO as soon as possible."
(Interfax-Ukraine, January 31, 2009)
Bulgaria and Romania
The US has signed Strategic Partnership Charters with both Georgia and Ukraine over the past two months and the two nations are the centerpieces for Washington's takeover of the Black Sea and indeed the former Soviet Union as a whole.
They are the main fulcra for the US-created GUAM (Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Moldova) bloc originally set up in 1997 as the main transit route for 21st century Eurasian energy wars and for undermining and undoing the post-Soviet Commonwealth of Independent States. They are also the foundation stones of the European Union's Eastern Partnership.
But to date the main emphasis of the Pentagon's campaign to conquer the Black Sea region, and arguably the major focal point for its international shift to the east and the south, is with Bulgaria and Romania.
Both nations were formally brought into NATO at the 2004 Istanbul summit of the Alliance and since became the last - perhaps in both senses of the word, most recent and final - members of the European Union.
Earlier, Bulgaria and Romania both denied Russia use of their airspace to transport supplies to troops they had moved into Kosovo in June of 1999.
Russia was acting within its rights under the terms of UN Resolution 1244 to protect ethnic minority communities in the Serbian province, but clearly Bulgaria and Romania were following US and NATO orders in blocking the flights.
Whether, if Russia had persisted in its intent, the two nations would have grounded the Russian aircraft or even shot them down is a matter of conjecture, though perhaps not much.
Later Romania allowed the US to use its Mikhail Kogalniceanu Air Base in 2002 for the buildup to the following March's invasion of Iraq.
In December of 2005 US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice traveled to the Romanian capital to sign an accord to use - take control of - four military bases, the aforementioned Mihail Kogalniceanu Air Base and training and firing grounds in Babadag, Cincu and Smardan.
The US's explanation at the time was that it was to employ the four bases for training, including joint and multilateral exercises, provision of supplies and transit for the downrange wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
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