Russia’s Black Sea Fleet Suffered ‘Bad Month’—Kyiv

Russia’s Black Sea Fleet suffered a “bad month,” Kyiv has said, after Ukrainian forces attacked a string of Russian vessels based around the Russian-controlled Crimean peninsula.

“The [R]ussian Black Sea Fleet continues to suffer,” Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said in a post to social media.

In early March, Ukraine used home-grown Magura V5 naval drones to target the Sergei Kotov patrol ship close to the Kerch Strait in eastern Crimea. The attacks damaged the vessel’s stern, right and left sides before the ship sank, Ukraine said.

Later in the month, Kyiv’s air force said its forces had struck three of Russia’s landing ships, as well as the Ivan Khurs reconnaissance ship, in the Black Sea port of Sevastopol, where Russia partially bases its Black Sea Fleet. Ukraine said the four vessels were hit, but did not say they had been destroyed.

“Great job by the Ukrainian warriors,” Kyiv said in the social media post. The Russian Defense Ministry has been approached for comment via email.

For more than two years, Ukraine has zeroed in on Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, targeting —often successfully—high value vessels sailing or docked around Crimea. Moscow has controlled the territory, which it annexed from Ukraine, for a decade, and has used it to coordinate and launch attacks on the mainland. Kyiv has committed to reclaiming Crimea.

Ukraine has used a mixture of drones, including its innovative naval drones, Western-supplied missiles and domestically-produced anti-ship missiles to take out what Ukrainian officials have estimated to be around a third of the Black Sea Fleet.

Russia, in contrast to the grinding success it has had against Ukraine’s defenses on land, has appeared ill-equipped to deal with the threats posed to its Black Sea assets by Ukraine’s tactics. Russia’s Defense Minister, Sergei Shoigu, announced in March that the Black Sea Fleet will receive large-caliber machine-guns for use against incoming drones, adding personnel will undergo “day and night” training against uncrewed vehicles.

Decoys are now in use at Black Sea bases, and Russia has attempted to disguise its vessels with paint and confusing silhouettes, the U.K. Defense Ministry has said.

Kyiv’s operations have forced Russia to relocate many of its assets in Crimea to Novorossiysk, a base further east in the Black Sea in Russia’s Krasnodar region.

“Due to an increased risk of Ukrainian strikes in their traditional homeport of Sevastopol, Novorossiysk port now serves a crucial role in sheltering the Black Sea fleet’s most valuable assets,” the British Defense Ministry observed in late March.

The ministry has also said Russia is now using barges to shield the fleet at Novorossiysk against drone assaults.

Reports have suggested Moscow is laying the groundwork for a Black Sea base in the breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia, even further from Ukraine’s littoral waters.

But Russia is still dominant across much of the Black Sea, even if it is restrained in the northwestern corner closest to Ukraine because of attacks by Kyiv’s forces, retired Ukrainian Navy Captain Andrii Ryzhenko told Newsweek in early March.