Ukraine says Russia moved most warships out of Crimea

The Ukrainian Navy says Russia has moved most of its warships away from the Crimean peninsula due to repeated attacks, with only one missile ship remaining among the few remaining.

“If we consider cruise missile carriers, most of the Russian combat units have been relocated, except for one that has never fired a shot,” Captain Dmytro Pletenchuk, a Ukrainian navy spokesman, said last weekend, referring to the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Crimea.

Pletenchuk said that the only Russian missile ship still anchored on the peninsula is Cyclone, a Karakurt-class warship that will be commissioned into the Russian navy in July 2023. The Karakurt-class ship has a displacement of 800 tons and is capable of firing Kalibr cruise missiles with a range of 2,500 km and a warhead weighing more than 400 kg.

Mr Pletenchuk said the Black Sea Fleet, once considered Russia's main force in Crimea, had now been almost completely "driven out". "Of course, there are still some ships there, but the most valuable assets have been removed," the Ukrainian navy spokesman said.

The Russian Defense Ministry has not commented on the information.

The frigate Cyclone in the port of Kerch in July 2020. Photo: Crimean authorities — The frigate Cyclone in the port of Kerch in July 2020. Photo: *Crimean authorities*

Ukraine has recently launched a series of attacks using long-range cruise missiles and suicide drones against the Black Sea Fleet in the Crimean peninsula. Kiev launched a large number of missiles at Crimea on March 24 and claimed to have hit four Russian warships, including three landing ships Yamal, Azov Konstantin Olshansky and reconnaissance ship Ivan Khurs.

Open-source intelligence accounts say Ukraine used Storm Shadows cruise missiles in the attack, while some Russian military bloggers claim the enemy carried out a coordinated attack, combining Neptune anti-ship missiles, ADM-160 MALD decoys, and long-range suicide unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).

British Defense Secretary Grant Shapps said on March 25 that Ukraine's attacks had caused "huge losses" to the Black Sea Fleet and that the force was now "no longer operational." A senior defense official in London said in February that about a quarter of Moscow's warships in the Black Sea had been sunk or damaged.

A March 31 intelligence report from the British Ministry of Defense said many high-value warships of the Black Sea Fleet had been moved from their home port of Sevastopol to the city of Novorossiysk, Krasnodar region, southern Russia, after being repeatedly targeted.

The agency cited satellite images showing that Russia is placing four barges in front of the entrance to the port of Novorossiysk, apparently as a measure to block enemy suicide boat attacks.

Russian warships from the port of Novorossiysk can still launch cruise missiles at targets in Ukraine, but the travel distance will be longer, giving the enemy more time to respond.

The US-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said moving the warship to Novorossiysk would affect the fleet's operational capacity in the western Black Sea.

In March, Russia dismissed Russian Navy Commander Nikolai Yevmenov and replaced him with Admiral Alexander Moiseev, who had led the Northern Fleet, a move believed to be related to the massive losses of the Black Sea Fleet.