Russian invaders are painstakingly salvaging the wreckage of the large landing ship Novocherkassk from the ocean floor, piece by piece, after it was destroyed by Ukrainian forces over a month ago.
Photos from eyewitnesses shared on the Telegram channel Crimean Wind on Feb. 3 depict the operation.
The strike on the Novocherkassk, which was docked in the Feodosia port, occurred on Dec. 26, 2023. The Ukrainian Air Force confirmed the hit, although the specific type of cruise missiles used was not disclosed.
The Russian Defense Ministry also acknowledged the attack on the Novocherkassk. Russian sources claimed that the ship “was damaged” during the repulse of the attack by the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
Photos from the scene showed that little more than burnt scrap metal remained of the ship.
The Novocherkask is a ship of the Russia Black Sea Fleet, designed for amphibious landings and the transfer of troops and cargo across. It is capable of transporting 480 tons of cargo, including various types of armored vehicles and tanks.
The Ukrainian Armed Forces had previously damaged the Novocherkassk in March 2022, when they destroyed another ship in the port of occupied Berdyansk, the BDK Saratov.
Two months later, and with something approaching freedom of navigation for commercial shipping restored in the western Black Sea, it is possible to point to this as a fairly major success story in an otherwise attritional conflict.
Ukraine has mixed up its tactics well. ‘Normal’ anti-ship missiles, cruise missiles, special forces and maritime drones have all been used to keep the Russian Navy guessing.
There have been notable successes along the way with perhaps the most totemic being the sinking of the Black Sea flagship Moskva on 14 April 2022. Putting up a drone to track and distract Moskva worked so well, the position of the ship’s fire control radars as she sank suggests the Russians may not have seen the actual missiles coming at all.
October 2022 saw the first multiple unmanned attack with both air and sea drones surging into Sevastopol and damaging the Admiral Makarov.
In September this year, Sevastopol was hit again. Ukrainian special forces took out Russian S400 air defence radars, allowing UK-supplied Storm Shadow missiles to hit and damage a Kilo-class submarine, an amphibious craft and the dry docks in which they were berthed. Shortly after, the headquarters to which the leadership had retreated was hit, killing 33.
This forced many Russian vessels to leave Sevastopol and relocate to Novorossiysk in pre-2014 Russia. A ship is a web of networked logistics that reaches far inland. You can’t just leave all this behind without disruption. What I can only imagine were embarrassing discussions were then held about building an entirely new base in Georgia. British Armed Forces Minister James Heappey described it ‘the functional defeat of the Black Sea Fleet’.
Attacks continued using French supplied SCALP missiles (SCALP and Storm Shadow are the same weapon under different names – a lightly updated version of the 1980s French APACHE runway-buster fitted with a British bunker-buster warhead). Early last month, a SCALP strike damaged one of Russia’s newest Kalibr cruise missile firing corvettes, the Askold, and also the infrastructure in which she was being built.
Having been forced back, Russia is now having to expend significant resources in providing layered defence to stop the waves of attacks. On 10 November this failed when two more ships were sunk in Chornomorske, Crimea, this time by Magura V5 drone boats. The Russians saw them coming and fired plenty of rounds at them, they just missed.
The use of uncrewed vessels is not new. Fire ships were used as far back as AD 208 and regularly ever since, though fire ships are normally crewed until the final part of their journey. More recently Iran has built thousands of fast attack craft, some of which are autonomous. I deployed to the Gulf in command of a frigate that had an automated 30mm cannon fitted specifically to help defeat this threat. So, while its ideas have not been entirely new, Ukraine has moved this way of fighting along, combining better and better equipment with what is clearly an excellent intelligence picture.
There are four ways to defeat this sort of attack that Russian military planners will now be wrestling with.
The first, and always the best, is before it leaves the wall. If you can find the base and destroy that, then the problems of defeating the system at sea are rendered moot.
Second, as you do with missile systems, try to operate outside their maximum range. This isn’t simple for the Russians: the Magura V5 to name just one threat has an operating range of 200 nautical miles, which covers two thirds of the Black Sea.
Once you know you are under attack, the third is speed and manoeuvre – or running away to put it more simply. The Magura can do about 35 knots, so it’s faster than most warships, but in anything above a sea state three (waves taller than 1.25m) this speed advantage will disappear. The other advantage of manoeuvre is that if the vessel follows you as you do it, then you have now established intent and the gloves can come off.
Fourth is the obvious one – hard kill, that is shooting it with weapons. The issue here is one of numbers – how many of these things need to be coming at you before your systems are overwhelmed? This is where lasers, or other directed energy weapons, come into their own for those lucky enough to have them.
Fifth is soft kill – the ability to confuse or distract targeting systems, as with chaff and flares, or by jamming communications and/or sensors electronically. With offensive drone technology developing faster than defensive ways to destroy them, this is an area of focus for everyone right now, not just the Russians.
The trouble, as the Black Sea Fleet is finding, is that the minute you are tied up alongside, you lose nearly all of these advantages. You are now immobile and will only have a few of your weapons available – possibly none of them. These layers of defence now need to be provided by someone else, at significant cost.
The net result of the ‘pushing back’ of the Black Sea Fleet to the east is that the water between the Ukrainian port of Odesa and Snake Island is now fairly safe for merchant shipping. South of Snake Island, ships can remain in the territorial waters of Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey – all Nato members. This means that cargoes can be shipped between Odesa and the Bosporus strait, giving access to all the world’s oceans and markets.
Russia seized Snake Island early in the invasion, but has since been driven out. This satellite image shows smoke rising after a Ukrainian drone strike on Russian positions early in 2022 – Planet Labs
Ever since the summer, when Putin withdrew from a previous agreement that Ukrainian grain could be shipped out without interference, the Black Sea Fleet has been trying to blockade Ukraine. It has failed.
Latest figures suggest that over 200 ships have now used the western corridor, carrying in excess of 7 million tons of cargo from Ukraine, much of it grain for countries desperately in need of it. Overall figures are still some way down on what they should be but this is a brighter picture than many had predicted. It often seems that the outside world can’t see why it should care about Ukraine’s battle for existence, but we should all be glad that grain prices are being kept down, and starvation for many kept at bay, thanks to the Ukrainians’ efforts.
Whilst Putin’s attempt to weaponise food is failing, this is not to say that it has failed totally. His ships and aircraft may have been beaten back but there are still fishing vessels and submarines that can lay mines. In October, a Turkish-flagged oil tanker struck a mine 11 nautical miles north of Sulina in Romania. There is also the ever-present Kalibr missile whose range is greater than the width of the Black Sea. That threat will never entirely go away, but it’s not clear how many Kalibrs Russia has left and in order to use them against a ship the Russians need to have a good idea of that ship’s location, course and speed.
A ship needs to be quite nearby to locate another ship. A well-equipped long range maritime patrol aircraft doesn’t, but it’s known that Russia cannot spare any of its capable Tupolev Tu-142 Bear-Fs or Bear-Js for the Black Sea just now. The big planes would seem likely to be fully tied up in the constant, silent struggle in northern waters in which Russia and the Nato navies try to get their deterrent submarines to sea and back again without them being tracked by the opposition. The Black Sea Fleet has only antique 1950s-vintage Beriev flying boats, which aren’t likely to be providing a decent intelligence picture of the dangerous northwestern Black Sea waters, probably covered by US-supplied Patriot batteries.
Choke points are in vogue with people wanting to disrupt free trade just now. The Bab el Mandeb at the bottom of the Red Sea is alive with Houthi missiles, drones and pirates and it’s only a matter of time before the Iranians attempt something in the Strait of Hormuz again: though the presence of a US carrier group in the Gulf is probably putting them off a bit. Ongoing Chinese bullying in the South China Sea and around Taiwan adds to this picture and means that even the massive US Navy is stretched thin at the moment.
The flow of international trade should never be considered something that is ‘over there’ and the ability to move goods around the world underpins our free market economy. The Ukrainians are showing us, yet again, how important freedom of the seas is.
This is why we need and have navies. However, they are not a free gift and treasuries the world over are going to have to stump up more cash to ensure that their fleets are maintained at the right standard, with the right blend of equipment and with full and motivated ship’s companies. It is too easy for malign actors to disrupt global trade otherwise.
Ukraine has shown what can be achieved with innovation and derring-do. Russia has shown what happens if you don’t innovate, don’t stay on top of your game and allow morale to plummet. The Russians’ declared intent to conduct an amphibious landing and capture Odesa must now seem a distant memory.
As Ukraine prepares for another long struggle against the most dangerous Russian commander – General Winter – at least the war on the maritime front is going their way.
The Ukrainian drone assault on Sevastopol, the home port of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, may have damaged one of the fleet’s two best frigates—potentially the flagship—but it definitely didn’t sink either of the vessels.
Commercial satellite imagery from Tuesday confirms that both of the Admiral Grigorovich-class frigates are afloat and pierside at the port in Russian-occupied Crimea. If there’s damage to either of the 409-foot, missile-armed frigates—currently the most powerful ships in the roughly 30-strong Black Sea Fleet—it’s not visible from above.
If the frigates both escaped damage, it probably was a matter of luck. The video feed from one of the apparently-explosives-laden unmanned surface vessels—in essence, a remote-controlled speedboat—shows the USV speeding to within a few feet of one of the frigates before the feed goes dead.
Russian media confirmed damage to one support vessel in the Saturday strike, which apparently involved drone aircraft in addition to the robotic boats.
If Admiral Makarov indeed avoided damage, it would be the second time the frigate—which took on the Black Sea Fleet’s flag following the April sinking of the missile-cruiser Moskva by Ukrainian missiles—defied expectations. Back in May, there were persistent rumors the Ukrainians had hit Admiral Makarov with an anti-ship missile. Those rumors turned out to be untrue.
There are three likely outcomes from the Saturday drone assault. That the USV struck the frigate and inflicted damage that’s not yet visible in public imagery. That the USV struck the frigate and failed to inflict any damage. Or that the USV somehow failed to strike the frigate despite coming very, very close.
An unnamed U.S. Defense Department official for their part was coy. “We do assess that there were explosions there [in Sevastopol] but I’m not going to have a damage assessment,” they said on Monday.
Analysts expect additional information soon. The Tuesday imagery hints at possible damage to one of the frigates. It’s customary in the Russian navy to moor undamaged ships perpendicularly to a pier—a practice called “Mediterranean mooring.” One of the frigates that’s visible in the satellite imagery is Med-moored.
The other is tied up parallel to the pier. And there’s a large crane alongside. The parallel mooring and crane could be evidence that the vessel suffered damage and is undergoing repairs. Of course, it’s also possible the ship is intact and the crane simply is shifting supplies.
Replenishing a large warship might take a couple of days, at most. If, a week from now, the frigate still is parallel to the pier with a crane nearby, that would be a strong signal that the vessel suffered damage.
The Ukrainian armed forces shouldn’t despair. Merely infiltrating Sevastopol and even nearly striking the Black Sea Fleet’s most important warship represents a major victory for the Ukrainians.
Months ago they proved they can sink even the most powerful Russian warship if the ship strays into the western Black Sea, where Ukraine’s anti-ship missiles can reach.
Now they’ve proved they can threaten Russian warships inside the perimeter of the ships’ own home port. The Russian Black Sea Fleet isn’t safe anywhere near Ukraine.
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The Ukrainian navy for months has been hunting the Russian navy frigate Admiral Makarov. It seems the Ukrainians finally got a shot at the 409-foot, missile-armed vessel in her home port of Sevastopol, in Russian-occupied Crimea.
The Ukrainian government on Saturday released dramatic videos apparently depicting a successful nighttime strike on Makarov or her sister ship Admiral Essen by at least one unmanned surface vessel.
The speedboat-size USV, possibly packing hundreds of pounds of explosives, dodged Russian helicopters and small boats and drove directly at the frigate, approaching to within a few feet before the video feed went dead.
There aren’t yet any photos or videos circulating online that can confirm whether the frigate suffered any damage. In the best case, her crew blew up the drone boat before the drone boat blew up them. In the worst case, Makarov or Essen suffered the kind of waterline damage that quickly can sink a ship. To say nothing of any fires that might have resulted from the blast.
The daring robotic raid is history repeating itself. Makarov became the flagship of the depleted Russian Black Sea Fleet in April after Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles and shore-based missile crews worked together to sink the previous flagship, the 612-foot cruiser Moskva.
Even if Makarov remains afloat—and that’s a distinct possibility—the Ukrainians still can count the nighttime strike as a win. There are reports of other Black Sea Fleet ships suffering damage in the raid. And to avoid future USV attacks, the Russians either will have to devote significantly more resources to protecting Sevastopol, or pull the Black Sea Fleet’s three dozen or so surviving vessels from Crimea.
The Ukrainian navy has been shockingly successful, considering it no longer has any big ships. In the early hours of the initial Russian bombardment on Feb. 23, the crew of Hetman Sahaidachny, the Ukrainian navy’s flagship and only large surface combatant, scuttled the frigate at its moorings in Odesa, Ukraine’s strategic port on the western Black Sea.
For the first two months of Russia’s wider war on Ukraine, the Russians dominated the Black Sea. Sailing and flying with impunity, they captured tiny Snake Island, 80 miles south of Odesa, and—using the island plus some gas platforms they’d captured from Ukraine as bases for air-defenses and surveillance gear—enforced a blockade of Odesa that effectively cut off Ukraine’s vital grain exports.
The Black Sea Fleet was poised to attempt an amphibious landing around Odesa. Capturing the port would complete Russia’s conquest of Ukraine’s Black Sea coast and cut off the country from the sea, permanently strangling its economy.
Russian forces meanwhile captured or scattered the rest of the Ukrainian navy’s ships, including one landing ship and a clutch of armored patrol boats. When the Ukrainians struck back, they did so with land-based missiles, UAVs and USVs.
The tide began to turn on March 23, when a Ukrainian Tochka ballistic missile hit the Black Sea Fleet landing ship Saratov while she was pierside in the occupied port of Berdyansk. The explosion sank Saratov, damaged at least one other landing ship and underscored the danger Russian ships might face in a direct assault on Odesa.
Then, on April 13, a Ukrainian navy anti-ship battery put two Neptune missiles into the side of the Russian cruiser Moskva, eventually sinking the 612-foot vessel.
In a single strike, the Ukrainians deprived the Black Sea Fleet of its main air-defense ship with her S-300 long-range surface-to-air missiles. Desperate to preserve their surviving large warships—in particular, the two Admiral Grigorovich-class frigates including Makarov—fleet commanders pulled back the bigger ships 80 miles from the Ukrainian coast.
That exposed the rest of the Black Sea Fleet—in particular, support ships that can’t effectively defend themselves—to attack by Ukraine’s missiles and drones. “Russia’s resupply vessels have minimum protection in the western Black Sea,” the U.K. Defense Ministry stated.
Ukraine meanwhile reinforced its Neptune battery with U.S.-made Harpoon missiles, compounding the risk to Russian ships in the western Black Sea. The missileers coordinated with drone operators flying Turkish-made TB-2 drones to hunt down and sink several of the Black Sea Fleet’s Raptor patrol boats and landing craft.
In early May there were rumors a Ukrainian missile had struck Makarov. That turned out to be untrue. But a Harpoon did hit and sink the support ship Vsevolod Bobrov while she made a supply run to Snake Island on May 12.
Ukrainian missiles also struck at least one of the gas platforms the Russians were using for observation. Ukrainian drones, fighters and artillery bombarded Snake Island, rendering the treeless rock uninhabitable.
The Russian garrison fled the island on May 31. A week later, Ukrainian commandos hoisted a Ukrainian flag. Snake Island’s liberation signaled to the Ukrainian merchant marine that the western Black Sea was safe for commerce.
Odesa was still under blockade—and would remain so until Turkey brokered an end to the port blockage in late July—but ships now could get grain out of Ukraine via canals connecting small river ports near the Romanian border to the western Black Sea.
The river route might regain its previous significance in the wake of last night’s Sevastopol raid. The Kremlin announced it was ending its agreement with Kyiv to allow big grain ships to sail from Odesa.
The Russians aren’t acting from a position of strength. Unable to replace the Black Sea Fleet’s losses as long as Turkey controls the Bosphorous Strait joining the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, Russian commanders have focused on protecting what remains of the fleet. Ships hug the Crimean coast, staying inside the range of land-based aircraft and S-400 surface-to-air missiles.
But the Ukrainian drone boats struck the Black Sea Fleet well inside that protective umbrella. Between the ballistic and anti-ship missiles and airborne and seaborne drones, the Ukrainian armed forces have plenty of ways of sinking Russian ships.
The Black Sea Fleet isn’t safe in the western Black Sea. It isn’t safe in Sevastopol. The only place it might be safe is the only place where it’s totally irrelevant to the wider war: in ports in Russia proper, tied up pierside and closely guarded around the clock.
Perspective of USV approaching Russian Navy frigate Admiral Makarov on morning of October 29.
Video capture from Ukrainian military video
On the morning of October 29, warships of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet based at Sevastopol found themselves assailed by sixteen kamikaze robots. By Russia’s own account, extensive cannon and missile air defenses on land and Russian warships shot down nine Ukrainian drones.
Russia initially claimed it had defeated the attack without damage, much as it had denied the successful strike on its flagship missile cruiser Moskva right up until after it sank. Never mind the smoke seen rising from Sevastopol’s harbor.
But Ukrainian sources then released black and white video feed footage recorded by kamikaze boats that clearly managed to smash into Russian ships: the Black Sea’s new flagship, the multi-role frigate Admiral Makarov, and the minesweeper Ivan Golubets.
Indeed, internal Russian reports indicate both were damaged, with the Makarov’s radar knocked out and the Ivan’s hull holed.
The Makarov may have been singled out for launching Kalibr land-attack cruise missiles to bombard Ukrainian cities, though the Black Sea Fleet still has many other ships that can mount Kalibr missiles. You can read more about Admiral Makarov’s history dodging prior Ukrainian attacks, as well as its current condition in a forthcoming Forbes article by my colleague David Axe.
The Ivan Golubets is a Project 266M Aqumarine-type minesweeper displacing 873 tons, with a crew of 68. Equipped with multiple mine-sweeping trawls, it also has defensive armament including anti-submarine rockets, portable Strela anti-air missiles, and two each 30-millimeter gatling cannons, 25-millimeter autocannons, and 12.7-millimeter heavy machine guns.
Between that and its multiple radar and sonar sensors, it theoretically should have had the means to detect and destroy the incoming small USVs. Russia officially admits minor damage to the vessel, while an anonymous Ukrainian official told the New York Times NYT it had sustained severe damage, possibly crippling it.
Ukrainian journalist Andriy Sapliyenko posted another video showing the perspective of additional USVs racing towards Russian warships. This recording uses a color camera, possibly implying Ukraine used more than one type of USV.
Unlike the black-and-white recording, the color-camera USVs have clearly been detected, with helicopters, ships and boats spraying machinegun and cannon fire at them. Given how the video is edited (ie. none are close enough to ram a ship), it seems likely Russian defensive fire managed to destroy these USVs. At one point, the USV either intentionally or inadvertently narrowly avoids colliding with a Russian boat.
Sapliyenko claims at least three Russian warships capable of carrying Kalibr missiles were hit by the attack, adding “There is a good chance that several ships are not just damaged, but sunk.”
The simultaneous air-and-sea attack is clearly a deliberate strategy intended to over-saturate and distract the theoretically extensive multi-layered defenses around these warships. Thus, while the air attack and most of the USVs may have been destroyed before they could hit anything, they almost certainly created the conditions allowing at least two USVs to evade notice and strike Russian ships.
It’s unclear for now how serious the damage from the attack is, and a repeat of the Moskva’s dramatic sinking seems unlikely given the proximity of nearby repair facilities. However, the attack will undoubtedly disrupt Russian surface naval operations, which were already heavily geographically curtailed following the sinking of the Moskva by Ukrainian land-based missiles.
Russia has retaliated by suspending its participation in a Turkey-brokered initiative with Ukraine guaranteeing safe passage through the Black Sea for Ukrainian grain ships, a move again threatening global starvation. This deal would otherwise have expired November 19. Moscow justified its withdrawal by claiming the attack on its warships violated an arrangement for safe passage of civilian grain shipping. The Kremlin was already threatening to withdraw, however, due to complaints over sanctions-related difficulties it had selling grain abroad.
ISTANBUL, TURKEY – OCTOBER 14: Ships, including those carrying grain from Ukraine and awaiting … [+] inspections are seen anchored off the Istanbul coastline on October 14, 2022 in Istanbul, Turkey. Under the terms of the Black Sea Grain Initiative, which paved the way for Ukraine to safely ship grain from three key ports, vessels must be inspected by a team of officials from Turkey, Ukraine, Russia and the United Nations the lengthy inspection process has caused a shipping traffic jam, with some ships waiting days at anchor off the Istanbul coast for inspection teams. The Joint Coordination Center (JCC) has increased the number of inspection teams to try to speed up the process and clear the backlog. (Photo by Chris McGrath/Getty Images)
Getty Images
Re-imposing a Russian blockade on Ukrainian grain shipping could be difficult without deploying ships far beyond Sevastopol and thereby exposing them to attack. However, Russia could turn to submarines, naval attack aircraft, or long-range Bastion-P land-based anti-ship missiles to harry grain shipments departing from Odessa.
Russia has blamed British “specialists” for the attack, as well as for sabotage of the Nordstream I undersea pipeline generally believed to have been perpetrated by Russia itself. The UK is known to have transferred drone submarine minehunters (launched in turn from uncrewed drone boats) for demining activities near the mouth of the Danube, but not offensive kamikazes as far as is known.
In a bid to preserve dignity, Moscow often claims its shocking military setbacks in its invasion of Ukraine are the result of covert NATO forces in Ukraine. However, there’s also no denying that NATO surveillance assets operating outside of Ukraine have provided intelligence which has been hugely beneficial for planning Ukrainian strikes.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s government hasn’t claimed responsibility for the attack, though Ukrainian journalist Yuri Butusov reports the attack was jointly executed by Ukraine’s military and the SBU intelligence agency. Ukrainian hackers also posted a taunting message on Russian military websites this morning implying an attack would take place.
Ukraine’s Mysterious Maritime Robots
Back in September a curious robotic boat was found run aground near to the shoreline of Sevastopol, the main base of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. After photographing the mysterious boat, the Russian Navy towed it back into the water and blew it up—a disposal method certainly reinforcing theories that this USV had been built in Ukraine to mount kamikaze attacks on Russia’s Navy.
One analysis calculated the boat may have had a radar cross section of just .6 square meters—smaller than that of a submarine periscope, though still detectable from miles away if actively searching.
Theoretically, the crashed USV should have warned Russia’s Navy of the possible threat of kamikaze attacks from Ukraine’s purely coastal Navy. After all, the Black Sea Fleet has numerous small boats, and even a unit of trained killer dolphins, specifically designed to guard against sabotage attacks from NATO naval special operations forces, including frogmen and small watercraft. Clearly that foreknowledge did not result in sufficient countermeasures.
It was also then unclear whether Ukraine had many more of the heretofore unknown robot USVs beyond the one lost in September, or whether that represented an unsuccessful, one-off ploy. Maintaining long-distance radio control links with drone surface vehicles is much more difficult than with aerial drones, and the crash of the USV in Sevastopol might suggest the Ukrainian design was technically immature.
However, the coordinated attack on October 29 implies Ukraine produced at a minimum eight of the USVs—and leaves a question mark on how many more it may have in reserve, or can quickly produce.
Uncertainty as to whether Ukraine can repeat such a strike will complicate Russian naval planning going forward, even as maintaining maritime supply lines to Crimea rises in importance due to the crippling of the railroad bridge connecting mainland Russia to Crimea over the Kerch Strait earlier in October.
Ukraine’s at least partially successful USV assault also marks an unprecedented breakthrough for uncrewed surface vessels. During World War II, harbor attacks were undertaken by frogmen, commandos in launches and mini-submarines. These high-risk/high-reward ops sometimes resulted in massive damage to target ships, but also often ended with the capture or death of the commandoes—even when successful! Japan furthermore employed kamikaze torpedoes and motor boats at the end of World War II.
Uncrewed USVs now emerge as a viable method to launch such attacks without exposing human crew to likely death or capture. Admittedly, Ukraine’s kamikaze USVs in some ways seem comparable to a torpedo—but they likely traversed much greater distances from their launch point to target and can be employed more flexibly.
Once again, Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has led to the innovation and combat-testing of a robotic weapons formerly confined to theoretical wargames and exercises.
