CIMSEC – In 2016, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğa called the Black Sea a “Russian Lake” and encouraged NATO to do more to counter Russia’s efforts to exert control over it. Never was that control shown to be more complete than last August, when the Russian Federation Navy stopped and boarded Palau-flagged freighter Şükrü Okan in the southwest portion of the Black Sea, about as far from the Russian coast as you can get, delaying its journey and menacing its crew at gunpoint before determining that it was not carrying contraband and allowing it to proceed. This incident may be seen as the canary in the coalmine indicating imminent suffocation of freedom of navigation in the Black Sea.