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Ukraine’s military says it has destroyed a large Russian landing ship at a port in Crimea, marking another significant blow to Russia’s Black Sea fleet.
The Ukrainian air force said on Tuesday that it had struck the Novocherkassk in the port of Feodosia, located on the eastern side of the peninsula. The 112-metre long Ropucha-class vessel was hit with cruise missiles at about 2.30am local time, it added.
Unverified social media footage reposted by Lieutenant General Mykola Oleschuk, commander of Ukraine’s air force, showed a fireball over the naval facility. Air force spokesperson Yuriy Ignat attributed the large explosion to “the detonation of ammunition, since a large amphibious ship is used to transport equipment, weapons and personnel”.
Russia’s defence ministry confirmed the Novocherkassk had been damaged in a Ukrainian guided-missile attack, according to state news agency Interfax.
Sergei Aksyonov, the Kremlin-appointed governor of Crimea which was annexed by Moscow in 2014, said one person had died and several buildings were damaged.
Ukraine’s strikes against Russia’s Black Sea fleet using British and French supplied Storm Shadow and Scalp cruise missiles, which have a range in excess of 250km, and Ukrainian-made aerial and naval drones, have been a rare bright spot in a year of military disappointments for Kyiv.
Despite Ukraine not having a significant navy, the campaign has periodically forced Russian commanders to redeploy ships away from its main naval base at Sevastopol out of missile range.
Together with better coastal and air defence capabilities, the strategy has enabled Ukraine to break Russia’s blockade of commercial ships in the Black Sea by pushing the Russian navy away from the port of Odesa and the coast. This has, in effect, re-established a viable shipping route for Kyiv’s exports, although it is not fully secure.
Other previous wins for Ukraine include a strike using several cruise missiles in September that penetrated Russia’s air defences and destroyed the headquarters of the Black Sea fleet in Sevastopol. Kyiv claimed to have killed 34 Russian personnel, including top naval commanders, in the attack but Moscow denied there were any fatalities.
Also in September, Ukraine said it had destroyed a sophisticated Russian S-400 air defence system covering the whole of the peninsula and damaged a landing ship and submarine in separate strikes.
Ukraine scored its biggest naval success of the war in April last year when it sunk the Moskva, Russia’s Black Sea fleet flagship, using a domestically-developed Neptune anti-ship missile.
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