The Ukrainian army today dealt a severe blow to the Russian Black Sea fleet by hitting, in a missile attack, one of its large warships, the Novocherkassk, which would have been sunk, according to Kiev, in the annexed Crimean peninsula. .
"Congratulations to our Armed Forces for adding another ship to the Russian Black Sea submarine fleet. Its occupants will not find a happy and peaceful place in Ukraine," wrote Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukrainian president, on his Telegram channel.
The shrewd operation carried out by Ukrainian aviation was the response to Monday's capture by Russian troops of the Marinka bastion, the largest enemy victory in Donbas since last May.
The Novocherkassk, a 112 meter long landing ship, had already been hit shortly after the war began, although it was then only damaged in an attack that left three dead.
"This time, the large landing ship Novocherkassk follows the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet of the Russian Federation, the Moskva, which was sunk in April 2022," Ukrainian Air Force Commander Lieutenant General wrote on Telegram. Mikola Oleschuk.
He specified that the attack occurred around 2:30 a.m. local time, when tactical aviation "attacked the ship with cruise missiles" in the Feodosia region, in eastern Crimea. His spokesperson, Yuri Ignat, explained on Radio Libertad that the "big explosion" on the ship was due to the fact that it was carrying ammunition and other military equipment, although he did not specify whether they were Iranian Shahed drones.
"A photo appeared, only a skeleton remained of this ship, everything that was there was burned to the ground," he said. In the videos published on Telegram, you can hear a thunderous explosion and see how a fire breaks out in the Crimean port, while satellite images confirm that the ship was completely destroyed. The Secretary of Defense of the United Kingdom, Grant Shapps, highlighted on the social network X (formerly Twitter) that "in the last four months 20% of the Russian Black Sea fleet has been destroyed."
Unlike on other occasions, Moscow did not deny the attack, although it only acknowledged that the ship had suffered "damage", to which it added a death toll of one and two wounded.
The ship was damaged while "repelling an attack by the Ukrainian Armed Forces with guided missiles," the Russian Defense Ministry reported. According to the Kremlin, Russian President Vladimir Putin was informed "this morning (...) about the attack in Feodosia and the damage suffered by the Novocherkassk ship" by Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.
In turn, Defense highlighted that, during the "air battle, Russian air defense systems destroyed two enemy Su-24 tactical aircraft", a point that kyiv has denied.
Ukraine had already managed to destroy another large landing ship of the Black Sea Fleet, the Saratov, in the attack on March 24, 2022 against the port of Berdiansk (Sea of Azov), in which the Novocherkassk was damaged.
The last major blow to Russia's Black Sea fleet came last September, when kyiv also attacked the Crimean port of Sevastopol with cruise missiles, damaging another landing ship and a submarine that were under repair at a shipyard.
Precisely, kyiv's greatest achievement in 2023 has been to distance the Russian Navy from its coasts and force it to withdraw several of its ships from their permanent bases in Crimea due to its continuous attacks and sabotage with missiles and aerial and aquatic drones.
The bad news that Shoigu brought to Putin today differs from what he communicated to him on Monday, when he announced the capture of Marinka, which is located a few kilometers from the capital of the Donetsk region of the same name.
Moscow hopes that this great victory will pave the way to tighten the siege around Avdivka, a city in the same region that is the main objective of the current Russian offensive, which began in October.
To stop the 'general Russian winter', the Ukrainian Government today sent to the Verkhovna Rada (Legislative) a bill to improve mobilization conditions, after the military command proposed enlisting up to 500,000 additional soldiers and combating military evasion.
The text provides for lowering the recruitment age from 27 to 25 years; introduces basic military training for all citizens aged 18 to 25 for a maximum of three months and optional military service up to age 25 for those who have not completed training.
