REMIT researchers from the Romanian Babeş-Bolyai University have published a new article in the Studia Europea journal. The authors argue that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has transformed maritime warfare and has provided valuable lessons about how a smaller, less conventionally strong navy can still prevail when confronted with a larger answer stronger aggressor, lessons that can travel to other conflict areas across the globe.
Author Raluca Moldovan explains:
“Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has transformed the Black Sea from a regional security concern into a consequential maritime theatre of contemporary war. At the beginning of the conflict, Russia possessed overwhelming conventional naval superiority: the Black Sea Fleet, military infrastructure in occupied Crimea, missile capabilities, and the ability to threaten Ukrainian ports appeared to give Moscow significant coercive leverage. Yet Ukraine, despite lacking a conventional fleet, has used unmanned surfacevessels, aerial drones, shore-based missiles, ISR networks, special operations, and rapid adaptation to impose costs on Russian naval assets and constrain their freedom of manoeuvre. The result has not been classical sea control, but a more diffuse and disruptive form of maritime denial. This article argues that the Black Sea should be understood not only as a regional battlefield, but as a theory-building case for drone-enabled maritime denial in semi-enclosed seas. Its strategic significance lies in the interaction between technology and geography. The Black Sea is geographically bounded but strategically open: it connects energy routes, grain exports, Danube riverine access, offshore infrastructure, coastal military facilities, and the maritime approaches of NATO members and partners. It is also a theatre in which Russian military power faces a dense cluster of vulnerabilities, including ports, shipping routes, energy nodes, logistics corridors, coastal infrastructure, and politically sensitive borders.
The puzzle addressed by this article is therefore straightforward but analytically significant: how did a state without a comparable conventional navy manage to contest the operational utility of Russia’s superior maritimepower? The answer cannot be reduced to drones alone. Ukraine’s campaign has been effective because unmanned systems have been embedded in a wider architecture of surveillance, targeting, missiles, coastal defence, communications, software, intelligence sharing, and organizational learning.”
The article is published open access.
Abstract:
This article examines how drone warfare in the Black Sea has reshaped the logic of maritime denial in semi-enclosed and constrained seas, and what lessons NATO should draw from Ukraine’s experience. It argues that Ukraine’s use of unmanned surface vessels, aerial drones, missiles, ISR, and adaptive targeting networks has not produced classical sea control, but has generated a form of distributed maritime denial that constrains Russia’s freedom of manoeuvre and raises the cost of naval power projection. Using a strategic studies framework, the article links drone warfare to deterrence by denial, cost imposition, and military innovation, while treating hybrid warfare as a secondary contextual lens. The Black Sea is presented as a theory-building case whose lessons are most directly relevant to NATO’s eastern and southeastern flanks, especially the Baltic and Black Sea regions, but only selectively transferable to wider constrained theatres such as the South China Sea.
Full citation:
Moldovan, R., Naumescu, V. “Distributed Maritime Denial: Drone Warfare in the Black Sea and NATO Adaptation in Semi-enclosed Seas”, in Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai. Studia Europaea vol. LXXI, no. 1/2026, pp. 121-161, DOI: 10.24193/subbeuropaea.2026.1.07