Supplying Russia through the Dardanelles

Russia's limited wartime industry made Allied supplies important to keeping its army in the war. Much of its infrastructure was concentrated in the south, while the Archangel route to Moscow and St Petersburg was poorly developed. The later interwar five-year plans illustrate how much industrial expansion still lay ahead. Britain and France could not send supplies through Germany, and forcing the Danish straits would enter neutral territory and risk a major battle, despite Fisher's interest in that approach. A Black Sea route through the Dardanelles therefore offered a way to supply southern Russia. In this strategic argument, opening that route was a sensible objective even though the Gallipoli campaign failed.