A Ukrainian commander has said that Russia only has one “loser” missile ship left in the Black Sea after a series of successful attacks.
“Most of the combat units, if you take the carriers of cruise missiles, have actually all been relocated, except for one loser who has not yet launched a single missile,” Captain Dmytro Pletenchuk told Ukrainian TV.
He said that the lone ship remaining in Crimea is Russia’s Cyclone warship, a Karakurt-class corvette.
Pletenchuk noted that the Black Sea Fleet was once considered Russia’s main force in Crimea but had almost entirely been chased away and relocated.
Pravda Gerashchenko
Ukraine has been successfully using missiles and drones to strike ships at Sevastopol, Russia’s major Black Sea port in Crimea.
A senior UK Royal Navy officer said last month that 25% of Russia’s vessels in the Black Sea had been sunk or damaged.
Last weekend, Ukraine carried out its latest attacks on the Russian fleet at Sevastopol, bombarding it with missiles that struck four ships.
Ukraine’s navy said it struck two of Russia’s large landing ships, the Yamal and the Azov, as well as the spy ship Ivan Khurs and the Konstantin Olshansky large landing ship.
The latter ship was seized from Ukraine in 2014 when Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula.
The UK’s defense minister said on March 25, after the latest Ukrainian attack, that the Black Sea Fleet was “functionally inactive.”
In a further intelligence update on March 31, the UK defense ministry said that four Russian barges had been identified in recent imagery as being positioned at the entrance to the Black Sea Fleet facility at Novorossiysk.
The department noted this was an effort to boost the defenses of the port against attacks from Ukrainian Uncrewed Surface Vessels (USVs), which are remotely operated vessels that are packed with explosives and used to strike Russian ships.
The UK department said that some of the Black Sea’s most valuable assets had taken refuge Novorossiysk port in the eastern Black Sea after the regular attacks on their traditional homeport of Sevastopol.
Russia’s Adm. Viktor Sokolov, the former Commander of the Black Sea Fleet, was reported to have been fired after a string of successful Ukrainian attacks.
The UK defense department noted that his successor, Vice Adm. Sergei Pinchuk, has likely taken preventive measures to improve the survival chances of Russian vessels.
