What Does the Literature Tell Us About Ukraine’s Maritime Operations? A PRISMA-Guided Scoping Review

Securing Sea Lines of Communication (SLOCs) is essential for national survival and global stability during wartime. In the Black Sea’s semi‑enclosed and highly contested environment, maintaining operational access under persistent conflict poses significant challenges. This PRISMA‑guided scoping review, preregistered on the Open Science Framework (OSF), examines how Ukrainian maritime operations from 2022 to 2025 sought to protect these critical routes. A systematic search across ProQuest and EBSCO databases, supplemented by AI‑assisted discovery, targeted peer‑reviewed and gray literature published between February 2022 and October 2025. Screening followed the Rayyan protocol, identifying 224 studies, with 11 included in the final analysis. Findings indicate a shift from traditional sea control to asymmetric sea denial enabled by uncrewed systems, long‑range strike capabilities, and commercial off‑the‑shelf technologies. Coalition support, particularly NATO’s intelligence sharing and legal‑diplomatic measures, was central to sustaining limited maritime access and grain exports. Ukraine’s approach rests on three pillars: technological adaptation, coalition integration, and environmental leverage. Remaining gaps include deterrence strategies, defense–private sector coordination, economic costs, and practitioner insights constrained by operational security. Securing SLOCs in contested environments requires multidimensional strategies that integrate kinetic denial, lawfare, coalition frameworks, and societal resilience.