I'm John Batchel with my colleague, Katerina Zulotov. She's in Moscow for geopolitical futures,

writing about Russia's ports. We've talked about the Baltic Sea and Petersburg, and once the capital

of the Tsarist empire. Now the second city in Russia, Moscow being the first, but the NATO forces

gather in the Baltic and a recent incident suggestive of the fact that Russia is accused of any

irregularities in the Baltic, watched very carefully by the forces of NATO around it.

We move now to another port that's suddenly at issue, and that's Tartus, on the eastern Mediterranean

coast at Syria. It's unclear whether it's been lost or whether there will be compromises made

or whether there will be anises made or whether there will be

an arrangement in some fashion between the Kremlin and whatever stands in for a government

in Damascus. However, Katerina, I learned from you that the serious story is now completely

unknown. It's total fog of war. At the same time, the Black Sea we know,

but since the war started, I believe the Black Sea has become very difficult for Russia to operate in

with its warships because of the threat of land-based ground-ish ship missiles that have been fired and forcing the Black Sea fleet way

to the East, maybe even out of the Black Sea.

So is there still major shipping coming out of the Azov Black Sea area and is it safe?

Is it considered secure?

Well, we can't say that it's considered secure

because there are a lot of drone attacks.

And if we check the recent news,

we see that this coast,

the Black Sea coast,

is always under the attack of the drones.

...