As European leaders and the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky gather in Washington to persuade President Donald Trump not to abandon Ukraine and to secure Western security guarantees for Kyiv, one thing is certain: Vladimir Putin will not abandon his quest to dominate the Black Sea.

In a sprawling naval exercise, “July Storm,” the Russian navy practiced the very tactics Ukraine used against its Black Sea fleet. Kyiv’s asymmetrical campaign deploying naval drone and missile strikes destroyed or disabled one third of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, broke the blockade of Ukrainian ports, forced most of the Russia fleet to decamp to southern Russia, and allowed Ukraine’s commercial shipping, mostly grain exports, to recover to near pre-war levels.

Kremlin took notes. In the July naval drill

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