Agreed that the West should grow a pair and tell Russia to back off in the Black Sea and I doubt Russia would do shit about it if these ships were escorted by a warship. Having said that, I don't know how many Western ships are in the Black Sea, Turkey closed the straits so no military ship can enter. In which case, it would have to be Turkey to escort the ships.
Russia does not own the Black Sea and attacks on grain ships are an attack on the worlds food supply.
But does the West know how they could stop this shit or lessen it at least by not getting directly involved?
GIVING. UKRAINE. MORE. LONG. RANGE. MISSILES.
We literally just had Storm Shadow destroy a goddamn Submarine, a Russian ship and cause significant damage to Russia's largest drydock in the Black Sea. Sure, SS/SCALP/TAURUS/ATACMS won't be good for moving ships but at some point, a ship has to dock, for maintenance, for repairs, even for crew rotation and that is when the missiles can strike.
Moving ships can be taken out by drones or damaged by drones, then when they come in for repairs, you rain missiles down on them. We should help Ukraine build more of these naval drones as they're quite effective at overwhelming the enemy and slipping one past, all it takes is one direct hit to ruin a ship.
The more ships taken out, the less threat to the grain ships. The more drydocks destroyed, the further out Russia has to station their ships. The longer ranger missiles that Ukraine has, the bigger fear Russia has of entering certain waters. If you could destroy all of Russia's drydocks in the Black Sea then they'd have no choice but to eventually leave the Black Sea and perform maintenance elsewhere to damaged ships and if they did that, they wouldn't be allowed to re-enter by Turkey.
