Sevastopol naval base

Russian ships in Sevastopol 2008

The Sevastopol naval base in Sevastopol , Crimea , is a base for the Russian Navy and, in particular, the Black Sea Fleet .

history

Aerial view of the port August 1918

The port was built from 1772 to 1783 after the acquisition of Crimea in the 5th Russo-Turkish War (1768–1774). The first eleven ships reached the bay on May 13, 1783.

During the Crimean War (1853-1856) all large ships were sunk in the entrance to the bay in 1854 to prevent enemy ships from entering the bay. The city defended itself against the Allied siege army for 349 days .

On May 1, 1918 , German troops occupied Sevastopol in spite of the Brest Peace Treaty . After further negotiations, the most important ships of the Black Sea Fleet were sunk by their crews in the Tsemes Bay off Novorossiysk .

In the Second World War , the Soviet Black Sea Fleet was able to repel the first air attack by the German Air Force. After 250 days of siege , Sevastopol fell to the Germans on July 4, 1942.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991, the now Russian navy's claim to use the naval base was initially lost (since Crimea had belonged to the Ukrainian SSR since 1954 and thus fell to the new national state of Ukraine ). From then on Russia paid an annual rent to Ukraine for the use of the base. Since the annexation of Crimea in 2014, the port in the “southern bay” of Sevastopol ( Russian Южная бухта ) has been under Russian control again.