From its emergence onwards, the Black Sea as a regional system was shaped mainly through the internalisation of the international system, be it multipolar, bipolar or post-bipolar/unipolar. However, due to the regional build-up of the conttradictions inherent to post-bipolarity which outpaced the post-bipolar system's own evolution, this process was reversed. With the Georgian and Ukrainian crises of 2008 and 2014, the regional context was externalised and had its own transformative impact on

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... e post-bipolar international system. Ironically, the externalisation was followed by the peripheralisation of the region from the West's perspective when the West had entered into a phase of return to collective defence and consolidation in its relations with Russia. This started a new, accelerated build-up of stresses in the Black Sea region, creating the circumstances of a new externalisation, that of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.