Dmitriev

Dmitriev is the vice-admiral in command of the Russian Black Sea Fleet at Sevastopol, where he directs preparations for Operation Miaky during a crisis that may force the fleet to withdraw. His significance lies in the choice he presents to his staff: the operation is not merely a military plan, but, in his telling, the alternative to retreat, abandonment of duty, and what he calls General Boychenko’s treason. The available scenes show a commander trying to make that argument persuasive even as his subordinates voice doubts about what lies ahead.

Command at Sevastopol

On Wednesday, 4 November, at 1047 hours, Dmitriev is at the office of the commander of the Black Sea Fleet at Sevastopol Naval Base in the Crimean Military District. An officer reports that all is in readiness. Dmitriev looks up from papers on his desk and asks whether the crews have been briefed on what they are to do. The exchange places him at the center of a working command: he receives a readiness report, checks that instructions have reached the crews, and expects the operation to be carried out through people who must understand their assignment.

The subordinate’s response is not uncomplicated assent. He answers yes, but sounds almost bitter, and the conversation identifies the difficulty of assembling so many pilots who could be trusted. The detail makes preparation more than a matter of issuing orders. Dmitriev’s plan depends on finding pilots he considers reliable, and the effort to gather them has itself been difficult. The scene does not specify the pilots’ individual identities or the operational details of their task; it does establish that confidence in personnel is a practical problem on the eve of action.

Operation Miaky and the prospect of withdrawal

Dmitriev treats a Ukrainian advance as a serious contingency. In the conversation with his subordinate, he says that if the Ukrainians come, the fleet would at least be able to retire to Novorossiysk while the aircraft could simply fly out. The distinction between ships and aircraft gives the contingency a concrete shape: the ships have a named destination for withdrawal, while the aircraft have the option of leaving by air. It is a plan for preserving forces, not evidence that the withdrawal has occurred.

That possibility also sharpens Dmitriev’s insistence on proceeding with Operation Miaky. When aide Anton voices concern about the prospect of facing rebels, Ukrainians, Turks, and Americans at once, Dmitriev answers that the Americans will not go to war over the matter and that peaceful resolution will serve their interests. His confidence is a prediction about American policy, not a report that the danger has passed. The exchange sets his strategic assurance against Anton’s broader uncertainty about how any government will act.

Dmitriev then presents Operation Miaky in moral as well as military terms. He tells Anton that it is the one hope available and describes it as their salvation: not a mass retreat, not abandonment of their duty, and certainly not Boychenko’s treason. The repeated rejection of retreat and abandonment shows what the operation is meant to signify to Dmitriev. Its value, as he argues for it, rests not only on what it may accomplish but on what carrying it out would allow the fleet to claim about its own conduct. The evidence establishes this as his framing of the plan, rather than confirming the operation’s eventual success.

Authority and political uncertainty

Dmitriev’s decisions unfold within a wider contest over military authority and the limits of intervention. Elsewhere in the crisis, the placement of American forces under United Nations commanders is described as a long-debated question. The National Command Authority’s directive bars U.S. forces from involvement in fighting between the Red and Blue Russian factions, while permitting Marines to go ashore at Poti only under that restriction. These are not orders shown being given to Dmitriev; they establish the contested international setting around the Russian factional conflict and the cautious limits placed on outside forces.

That uncertainty becomes especially visible when an American commander announces that the United Nations has been granted operational authority over U.S. forces in the Crimean Peacekeeping Operational Zone, and that the forces will operate under United Nations command until the President says otherwise. The announcement belongs to a separate command chain, not Dmitriev’s. Read alongside his expectations about American conduct, however, it underscores the gap between his confident prediction that the Americans will seek peace and the unstable arrangements through which outside powers are operating. The book offers no direct encounter between Dmitriev and the American commander in these passages, so their connection is one of parallel decisions under political uncertainty, not a documented personal relationship.

Characterization and limits of the record

Dmitriev is characterized through the contrast between administrative control and persuasion. He checks readiness and asks whether crews have been briefed, but his exchanges also require him to address bitterness among those involved in preparing the plan and to answer Anton’s fear of a many-sided confrontation. His reassuring response does not erase that fear; instead, he counters it with a prediction about American interests and a claim that Operation Miaky is the remaining hope.

His language draws a sharp moral boundary around the available choices. Withdrawal is presented as mass retreat, and refusal to proceed as abandonment of duty; Boychenko’s opposing position is condemned as treason. Those are Dmitriev’s judgments in the scene, not neutral findings about Boychenko or proof that no alternative exists. The passages leave the operation’s outcome unresolved. What they establish is Dmitriev’s determination to make it appear both strategically necessary and morally defensible while the prospect of withdrawal, distrust within the ranks, and uncertainty about foreign intervention remain in view.