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A 'warm water port' is narrowly defined as an 'ice free port', where the water does not freeze (rendering it unusable in the winter).
According to some Western analysts, a "warm water port" was a long term aim of Russian foreign policy. This did not strictly mean a port where the water did not freeze, as such Russian ports already exist in the Black Sea and the Russian Far East. Rather, it referred to the idea that Russia's ports, both in the west and the east, had inadequate access to the open ocean. The Russian dream of a warm water port was a motivation in Russia's "great game" in Afghanistan, against the influence of British India, in the nineteenth century, and was also a motivation in the much later Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The dream of a Russian warm water port is still supported by some nationalist and expansionist parties in Russia today; Vladimir Zhirinovsky famously indicated his desire to annex Pakistan west of the Indus.
Stalin's insistence at the 1945 Yalta conference that the Soviet Union incorporate East Prussia in order to gain the port of Königsberg might also have sprung from a similar motivation.

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See also

★ Sea ice

★ Icebreaker