Russia is likely facing a multitude of issues after Ukrainian forces attacked a Black Sea Fleet communications hub in the city of Sevastopol in annexed Crimea, according to Kyiv.
Ukraine’s military said on Sunday that it struck the communications hub and unspecified infrastructure facilities, damaging Russia’s Yamal and Azov Ropucha-class landing ships. The Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense has claimed that the Yamal was critically damaged in the attack.
Speaking on Ukrainian television, Captain Dmytro Pletenchuk, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s navy, said the strikes have caused communication problems on the Black Sea Peninsula, which was annexed by Moscow in 2014.
“In fact, the situation for them may be even worse because a naval base is a structure that ensures the activities of the fleet as a whole,” said Pletenchuk, according to Ukrainska Pravda. “Therefore, it may be not only communications; it may also be supply, maintenance, repair, and many other issues that are handled directly by the naval base.”
MIKHAIL METZEL/POOL/AFP/Getty Images
Pletenchuk added: “So we will update this information again later, but as of now, we can say that yes, the operation was successful, the strike was serious and the damage is significant.”
Newsweek has contacted Russia’s defense ministry for comment by email.
Satellite images from October showed that Russia’s Black Sea Fleet was fleeing from Sevastopol to Novorossiysk in Krasnodor Krai in southern Russia as Ukraine targeted Moscow’s vessels. Ships were also heading to the Russian naval port in Feodosia further east on the annexed Crimean Peninsula, which Kyiv has vowed to reclaim.
The Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a U.S.-based think tank, said in its latest analysis of the conflict in Ukraine on Sunday that it has previously assessed that Ukrainian strikes against Black Sea Fleet assets “caused the fleet to move some ships away from its main base in Sevastopol and hampered its ability to operate in the western part of the Black Sea.”
The think tank said Ukrainian officials have recently reported that other Black Sea bases are “structurally inferior” to the Sevastopol base, and that Putin’s forces “must still perform some tasks, such as reloading Kalibr missile systems on ships and submarines, in Sevastopol as other bases lack the capacity to handle such missiles.”
“The latest Ukrainian strikes targeting BSF ships, regardless of the extent of the damage caused, will likely continue to deter Russian forces from redeploying ships to Sevastopol and the western Black Sea and complicate the BSF’s ability to maximize its combat capabilities,” the ISW assessed.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.