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Ukraine’s military said it destroyed a large Russian landing ship in another severe blow to Russia’s navy in the Black Sea.
The Cesar Kunikov, a Ropucha-class landing vessel 113m in length with a crew of 90, was struck off Alupka on the south coast of Crimea, which has been occupied by Russian forces since 2014, the Ukrainian navy said in a statement.
Local social media channels said residents had heard explosions and seen a ship on fire off the coast.
Ukraine’s military intelligence released a video that it said showed the Cesar Kunikov being attacked by naval drones. It said the ship was hit with Magura V5 sea attack drones, a Ukrainian-built weapon, and had been holed on the left side and had begun to sink.
Russia’s military said it had shot down a number of Ukrainian aerial drones over the Black Sea overnight on Tuesday, but it made no mention of maritime drones.
The destruction of the Cesar Kunikov is the latest in a series of Ukrainian drone and missile strikes against Russian ships and naval facilities that have helped break Moscow’s blockade of the Black Sea. The Russian navy has been forced periodically to move its ships away from Crimean waters to protect them from attack.
Ukrainian exports have resumed largely unimpeded from Odesa and other southern ports, although port facilities have been hit by Russian attack drones.
Ukraine’s long-range strike campaign against Russian military assets in Crimea and the Black Sea has been a big success for Kyiv at a time when the grinding land war in the east and south of the country has reached a stalemate. The peninsula was a Russian military stronghold and launching zone for attacks on mainland Ukraine but is increasingly vulnerable to Ukrainian fire.
In September, Ukrainian forces struck the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea fleet in Sevastopol, Crimea, using cruise missiles supplied by Britain and France. That attack was made possible after Ukrainian forces eliminated one of Russia’s state of the art S-400 air defence systems protecting its forces in the peninsula.
In November, a Ukrainian strike badly damaged a Russian missile-carrying ship, the Askold. Russia has also lost a cruiser, a submarine and several smaller vessels.
The Cesar Kunikov was previously damaged while it was berthed in Russian-occupied Berdyansk in March 2022 in a Ukrainian missile strike that destroyed another Russian ship, the Saratov.
The Cesar Kunikov was named after a Soviet naval infantry officer who was killed in battle in the second world war, on February 14 1943.
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