In the shadow of the ongoing war in Ukraine, Moscow is quietly moving to consolidate control over a different kind of strategic front—not a trench line, but the seabed. Since the occupation of southern Ukraine and the illegal annexation of additional territory along the Azov coast in 2022, the Russian Federation has increasingly signalled its intention to develop natural gas extraction operations in the Sea of Azov, a shallow inland sea whose shores are now dominated almost entirely by Russia.Th