Ukrainian naval drones attacked and destroyed another Russian Black Sea Fleet landing ship, Kyiv said on Wednesday, marking the latest significant loss for Moscow’s navy ahead of the second anniversary of the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion.
Ukrainian-designed Magura V5 naval drones attacked Russia’s Caesar Kunikov large landing ship near the southern Crimean city of Alupka, southeast of Russia’s naval base at Sevastopol, Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, the GUR, said in a statement posted to social media.
The uncrewed surface vehicles struck the left side of the vessel, described by Kyiv as “one of the newest Russian ships.” Unverified night-vision footage published by the GUR appears to show Ukrainian waterborne strike drones approaching the Russian landing ship.
Newsweek has reached out to the Russian Defense Ministry for comment via email.
NurPhoto/Corbis via Getty Images
Shortly after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Black Sea emerged as a key battleground. Ukraine has vowed to reclaim Crimea, which sits to the south of the mainland on the Black Sea, but has been controlled by the Kremlin’s forces since its annexation in 2014.
Ukraine has chipped away at Russia’s naval assets in the Black Sea, successfully carrying out dramatic strikes deemed deeply embarrassing to Moscow. Russia’s Black Sea operations have been “greatly complicated, if not paralyzed,” by the nearly two years of all-out war between Moscow and Kyiv, Ukraine’s navy said in early February.
Britain’s defense minister, Grant Shapps, said in late December that Russia had lost 20 percent of its Black Sea fleet in the previous four months.
The sinking of the Caesar Kunikov marks the third loss of a Ropucha-class landing ship for the Black Sea Fleet.
In September 2023, Kyiv targeted the Ropucha-class Minsk with cruise missiles. The U.K. government assessed the Minsk had “almost certainly been functionally destroyed.” Ukraine’s military said in late December 2023 that Kyiv had destroyed Russia’s Novocherkassk landing ship in the eastern Crimean port of Feodosia.
In early August 2023, Ukraine said its naval drones struck the Project 775 large landing ship, the Olenegorsky Gornyak, damaging the vessel.
Russia also lost its Tapir-class Saratov amphibious landing warship to Ukrainian missiles in the first weeks of the war.
Landing ships aren’t Ukraine’s only target in the Black Sea. Kyiv has destroyed a Russian Kilo-class submarine, and in the initial stages of the war, Russia’s Black Sea flagship, the Moskva, sank after what was believed to be a Ukrainian Neptune missile attack.
In February, Ukraine said its military intelligence agency had destroyed a Russian missile-armed corvette, the Ivanovets, with seaborne drones. The vessel sustained a “number of direct hits to the hull” before sinking, Kyiv said.
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