With Russian troops massing on Ukraine’s borders, the Black Sea is looking choppy. While that may seem to have little significance for us, in an age of globalised supply chains, international security commitments and Britain’s ‘tilt to the Indo-Pacific,’ that matters more than we might think. However, there is also an opportunity for the UK.
In a report for the Council on Geostrategy that was published this week, I, James Rogers and Alexander Lanoszka, suggest that the Black Sea region is at risk of becoming an anarchic environment where insecurity reigns amid Russian domination.
This matters. Rather than being seen as some distant periphery, at best a ‘flank’ of Europe, the Black Sea region ought to be recognised as a central ‘gateway’ between Europe and Eurasia and between the Euro-Atlantic and the Indo-Pacific regions.
Britain is already involved in a range of military assistance programmes, having already trained more than 21,000 Ukrainian personnel
This is where the UK and its interests come in.
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