https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Sea_Route

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_Passage

The Komet sank only seven ships, but it spent over 500 days at sea and logged over 100,000 nautical miles, completing its voyage by sailing around the world back to Germany.

In the greater scheme of things, the Komet did little other than reminding people that the northern passage should be accounted for when making plans, but the ship’s voyage was made out of awesome even if they were the bad guys. The Wikipedia page only gives a skeletal outline of its accomplishments.

That is a very limited view of potential Russian responses.

A blockade is a Declaration of War, and Russia has Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles. If Russia wanted to be nice, they could respond to foolish NATO aggression by dropping a dummy warhead (kinetic energy only) on top of the Houses of Parliament. Tomorrow, if the blockade has not been lifted, it will be the real thing.

Your premise seems to be that Russia would behave in military matters like the US — tie itself down with impossible Rules of Engagement and then suffer for years. That is likely to prove to be a bad premise.

I am suggesting that in any confrontation with Russia, Russia’s first action would be to cut off exports to Europe, condemning Europe to freezing in the dark and stimulating popular uprisings in NATO countries against their own governments. If the confrontation went beyond trade into the military sphere, Europe would be destroyed.

Don’t waste time imagining that Russia would fight a war with one hand tied behind its back. Europe’s days at the center of world history are over. Live with it!

In a situation where NATO was at war with Russia, I highly doubt that a blockade of Russia would be the cause of Russian exports being denied to NATO countries. Blockade or not, those exports stop, and the NATO countries would need to find alternatives.

I guess I’m not entirely sure what you’re trying to say. Are you suggesting that in a war with Russia, as long as we don’t blockade them, that they’d continue exporting to hostile nations?

I’d hazard that the Bosporus would, indeed, be a spot where we COULD interdict Russian trade, but I would argue not an optimal location.

A blockade at the Bosporus would still be within the strike distance capabilities of the Russian Black Sea fleet, as well as fighters and bombers scrambled from Crimea/Sochi areas. So, in essence, it wouldn’t be an uncontested blockade. It could theoretically be contested with air, surface, and submarine assets.

I’ve always been a fan of the more distant blockade efforts, since the only reasonable way that Russia could contest them would be through submarine warfare, which I submit would be easier to handle if surface and air threats weren’t an issue.

Thank you. I stand corrected.

Russia is the world’s largest grain exporter — but mainly to Turkey, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. Europe supplies its own grain, thanks in part to fertilizers based on Russian gas.

https://www.rbth.com/business/332948-russia-leading-wheat-exporter

The general point about the fantasy of blockading Russia by sea remains. If Turkey blocks the Bosporus, Turkey would lose its essential grain imports from Russia — and would incur instant enmity from key fellow Islamists, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. It is a good guess that Turkey would not agree with NATO to block the Bosporus.

Countries are economically much more inter-dependent today than they were in the 1930s, in the run-up to WWII. First consequence of any NATO war with Russia would be to disrupt those supply chains in ways that would probably surprise us all — causing immense domestic unrest in all the NATO countries.

In the real world, blockading Russia would cause very significant, immediate pain to NATO countries. We should keep that in mind while fantasizing about military action.

I agree with respect to oil, but food? Not really. The EU is a net exporter of food (both in trade with Russia, and with the world).

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/images/a/a1/EU_trade_with_Russia_by_product_group%2C_2010_and_2020.png

Russia exports by sea a little commodity called oil — without which Europe stumbles to a stop. Remember the EU is one of the world’s largest oil importers. And Russia exports by sea another commodity called grain — without which Europe gets very hungry.

Starting a war with Russia would require massive government interventions in Western economies on a scale which would make the Covid Lock Downs seem trivial — forced car-pooling, food rationing, even greater restrictions on liberty. Does anyone really believe that Western governments still have enough respect and trust from their respective populations to do that without triggering internal rebellions?

We only have to interdict the Bosporus and the Danish straights to cut Russia off from most sea trade. Both of these can be cut off by land powers that are already friendly to us and hostile to Russia.

Arctic is becoming more and more suitable for sea-travel and tonnage of goods shipped through it is rising every year. While melting eternal frost in Siberia is making some infrastructural problems, overall Russia is and will be even more in a future, a huge beneficiary of the climate change.