Sarah Paine

One overseas base, Tartus, Syria.

Talk about a garden spot.

And I guess if you want to go bomb civilians, that would be a location for you.

But now that Bashar al-Assad has moved to Moscow, it's unclear how that works.

But in any case, it's a useless base because in wartime, no one gets through the Dardanelles.

That place can be shut down with mines.

And the Ukrainians have shown that you don't even need a navy to stop a navy in narrow seas.

It should be a real wake-up call to anyone on a narrow sea that just by using drones and shore ordnance and planes and things that you can wreck navies.

And in fact, the Russian naval base used to be at Sevastopol on Crimea.

Putin's had to move it to Novorossiysk.

Great.

So he can't do too much there.

Have fun with that one.

So there are many fewer possibilities for him nowadays.

His second favorite liquid playground is the Baltic.

Kaliningrad is sovereign Russian territory.

So back in the day, I guess, if they wanted to blockade the Baltic states, they could try it.

But after the latest iteration of the Ukraine war, Sweden and Finland have ditched neutrality.

They're part of NATO.

Baltic states are also NATO.