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In what looks to be Kyiv’s most aggressive attack on the port since the start of the war, two Russian warships were damaged as Ukraine launched a significant assault on a Russian ship repair base in Crimea early on Wednesday morning, according to officials.
The Sergo Ordzhonikidze shipyard in Sevastopol, which Russia uses as a maintenance station for its Black Sea Fleet, was assaulted by Ukrainian forces, according to the Russian Defense Ministry, with 10 cruise missiles and three unmanned boats.
The patrol ship Vasily Bykov reportedly destroyed all of the boats in addition to shooting down seven of the missiles, according to the ministry.
However, Russian officials acknowledged that the attack had harmed 24 people in addition to damaging two Russian warships.
The significant strike was verified by Mikhail Razvozhaev, the governor of Sevastopol, the main city on the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea that Moscow’s forces illegally occupied in 2014. Videos and pictures supposedly taken there and shared by Razvozhaev show a huge smoke cloud and a raging fire.
Later, Razvozhaev said he was at the scene “on the southern grounds of Sevmorzavod… According to preliminary information, the attack resulted in 24 injuries, with 4 of those being in moderate condition.”
According to Russian state agency TASS, eight homes were also destroyed as a result of the attack. According to the report, rescue efforts were briefly put on hold while emergency personnel responded to the scene out of concern for a follow-up attack.
A diesel-electric submarine named “Rostov-on-Don” and a sizable landing ship named “Minsk,” both of which caught fire, were hit, according to an unauthorized Russian military blogger. In a dry dock, both ships were getting repairs. The account could not be independently verified by CNN.
Without naming the ships, Russia’s Defense Ministry stated that the two damaged ships “will be fully restored and will continue their combat service as part of their fleets.”
Another well-known military blogger in Russia said that the Ukrainian Air Force attacked the Sevastopol shipyard by firing 10 Storm Shadow cruise missiles at the building. The Storm Shadow is a cruise missile with stealth characteristics that was jointly developed by the United Kingdom and France. It has the longest range of any weapon in Kyiv’s arsenal.
The missiles, according to the blogger Rybar, were fired from Su-24M aircraft over the Black Sea. However, Rybar said that “unfortunately, three Storm Shadow missiles reached their target: the landing ship Minsk and the submarine Rostov-on-Don, which was in dry dock, received varying degrees of damage.” Rybar claimed that air defenses, including a Pantsir-S1, had brought down seven missiles.
A relatively contemporary Kilo-class submarine that can carry Kalibr cruise missiles is the Rostov-on-Don. The amount of damage done to any vessel could not be independently verified by CNN.
Rybar said that cruise missile attacks against Crimea have resumed after a lengthy break. Raids will likely continue in the upcoming days (and not just in Sevastopol), with a very high probability.
Andriy Yermak, the head of the Ukrainian President’s Office, reportedly remarked about the attack on Sevastopol overnight: “We need to deprive the Russian army of logistics in addition to pressure from sanctions and denying the Russian military-industrial complex the ability to produce weapons. Without it, they will not be able to hold our territory.”
Ruining the Russians’ logistics is the key to winning on the battlefield, according to Yermak.
Lieutenant General Mykola Oleshchuk, the head of Ukraine’s air force, said on Wednesday: “While the invaders are still recuperating from the nighttime bombardment in Sevastopol, I would like to praise the Ukrainian Air Force pilots for their outstanding combat action! To continue…
To “return” the battle to Russia’s “symbolic centers and military bases,” as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky put it, Ukrainian forces have recently started making attacks deep into Russian-controlled territory.
Early in August, Ukrainian sea drones targeted Novorossiysk, a significant Russian military facility, causing damage that caused a Russian cruiser to list in the Black Sea. Additionally, Ukraine launched a sea drone attack on the Kerch Bridge in July, its second successful assault on the bridge since the war started. The bridge connects the seized peninsula to mainland Russia.
The most recent assault occurred just a few days after a passage from Walter Isaacson’s upcoming biography of Elon Musk alleged that the founder of SpaceX instructed his engineers not to activate the Starlink satellite network near the Crimean shoreline last year, preventing a Ukrainian sneak attack on the Russian naval fleet.
Later, Musk said that Starlink, the company that has been providing internet access to Ukraine since the Russian invasion, was never operational over Crimea and that Kyiv had made an “emergency request” of him to switch on service, but he had declined concern for “conflict escalation.” The book’s description of the incident was also explained by Isaacson, who stated on X, formerly Twitter, that “the Ukrainians THOUGHT coverage was enabled to Crimea, but it was not.”
Source- CNN
