Ukraine

Here is another good example of how a Naval War always involves setting the conditions to build a Navy first. If the British could have sent a random yahoo in to burn the ships being assembled on the Great Lakes the question would not have been how to defend the ships better against people but rather where the failure to properly set the conditions to build a Navy happened.

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

Nevertheless, the Americans lacked any counter to the British armed vessels. The only American warship on Lake Erie, the brig Adams, was not ready for service at the start of the war, and when the American army of Brigadier General William Hull abandoned its invasion of Canada, Adams was pinned down in Detroit by the British batteries at Sandwich on the Canadian side of the Detroit River. The British Major-General Isaac Brock used his control of the lake to defeat Hull's army at the Siege of Detroit, by cutting the American supply lines and rapidly transferring himself and some reinforcements to Amherstburg from where they launched a successful landing on the American side of the Detroit River.

The British took Adams when Detroit was surrendered, renaming her Detroit. Together with the brig Caledonia, which had been commandeered from the Canadian North West Company, she was boarded and captured near Fort Erie on 9 October, by American sailors and soldiers led by Lieutenant Jesse Elliott. Detroit ran aground on an island in the middle of the Niagara River and was set on fire to prevent her being recaptured. Caledonia was taken to the navy yard at Black Rock and commissioned into the United States Navy.[4] Also present at Black Rock were the schooners Somers and Ohio and the sloop-rigged Trippe, which had all been purchased by the United States Navy and were being converted into gunboats.[5] While the British held Fort Erie and the nearby batteries which dominated the Niagara River, all these vessels were pinned down and unable to leave Black Rock.

This is the most analagous point for russia here in the Battle Of Lake Erie, they have had their ability to concentrate and deploy Naval power utterly shattered and what remains of their Navy is atomized into protected strongholds unable to manuever.

In January 1813, William Jones (who had replaced Hamilton as the United States Secretary of the Navy) ordered the construction of two brig-rigged corvettes at Presque Isle, and transferred shipwright Noah Brown there from Sackets Harbor on Lake Ontario to take charge of construction. Other than their rig and crude construction (such as using wooden pegs instead of nails because of shortages of the latter), the two brigs were close copies of the contemporary USS Hornet. The heaviest armament for the ships came from foundries on Chesapeake Bay, and were moved to Presque Isle only with great difficulty. (The Americans were fortunate in that some of their largest cannon had been dispatched shortly before raiding parties under Rear-Admiral George Cockburn destroyed a foundry at Frenchtown on the eastern seaboard.)[9] [Note, the British ALMOST destroyed the necessary conditions for the US to build a Navy, but the raid came too late.]. However, the Americans could get other materials and fittings from Pittsburgh, which was expanding as a manufacturing center, and smaller guns were borrowed from the Army.

^ The above step is where russia is stuck. If the US could not protect their shipyards that could release a Naval force onto the Great Lakes, the problem would not have been a lack of protection from human attack by the ships themselves, it would have been in a failure to adequately set the conditions to build a Navy.

To put it another way, my entire point is that russia is admitting they are stuck at this step by putting Cope Cages on their warships while they still awkwardly have left over ships from when they could more credibly claim they posessed a true Navy and so they are still stuck pretending they do.