As of: February 6, 2024, 5:05 a.m
By: Karsten Hinzmann
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Mobile rocket launchers: The Ukrainian heartland is under massive threat from Crimea;
That is why the Black Sea Fleet is the focus of Ukrainian defense efforts.
With success.
(Archive photo) © IMAGO / Cover Images
Without its own ships, Ukraine is doing well on the Black Sea;
Russia's fleet is gradually giving up its sails.
Crimea remains contested.
Sevastopol - Dmytro Pletenchuk seems to have counted - the Ukrainian Navy spokesman did not talk to the media about the approximate size, but was precise: "Meanwhile, 25 different units have been destroyed and 15 are currently being repaired," he said.
Pletenchuk spoke of Russia's Black Sea Fleet, which suffered greatly during the Ukraine War;
although Pletenchuk's numbers initially remain allegations.
The sinking of the Moskva in April 2022 was the beginning of the end - an end that could come sooner than Vladimir Putin could have dreamed.
The guided missile cruiser was the flagship of Russia's Black Sea Fleet.
Their commander is now also believed to be dead. Admiral Viktor Sokolov is said to have died in his headquarters in Sevastopol last September due to a Ukrainian missile strike.
According to British intelligence, this also hits the Russian Black Sea Fleet to the core and paralyzes its defense capability - at least that's what
Business Insider
writes .
Putin's fantasy: The Black Sea Fleet claims control over the Black Sea
The smallest of the four Russian fleets has now taken a big hit: With their attacks against the Russian navy, the defenders from Ukraine not only want to destroy material and weaken the operational capability of the Black Sea Fleet, but also to overthrow the system of Russian President Vladimir Putin: Crimea was already occupied by Russia in 2014 and forms the bridgehead for Putin's fantasies of integrating Ukraine into the Russian Federation - and also for his plans to once again emerge internationally as a naval power.
The Russian Black Sea Fleet has the following ships
1 guided missile cruiser “Moskva” (sunk)
2 anti-submarine frigates
7 missile boats
2 hover catamarans
3 modern frigates
6 modern patrol ships (two sunk)
1 modern missile corvette
4 small missile corvettes
6 anti-submarine boats
6 submarines diesel-electric (one damaged)
3 modern coastal minesweepers
5 ocean-going minesweepers
1 ocean-going minehunter
7 landing ships (one damaged)
Auxiliary ships, microboats and reserve units, platforms -
Source: marineforum.online
The Black Sea Fleet claims control over the Black Sea, which is almost half a million square kilometers in size.
For centuries, Russia has pursued an interest in ice-free access to the vital sea routes around Europe that is as warm as possible all year round in the Black Sea.
Such access should underpin Russia's claim as a naval power, writes frigate captain Göran Swistek for the think tank
Stiftung Wissenschaft undpolitik
.
According to German author and sea captain Axel Stephenson, the Russian Navy would actually need twice as much material in the Black Sea to meet this requirement.
Up to 35 of these ships in this fleet posed a "real threat" to Ukraine, Pletenchuk said, as they provided Russia with long-range strike capability and enabled Russian operations around the annexed Crimean peninsula and in southern Ukraine.
At the end of last year, the first information emerged that the Black Sea Fleet would be strengthened with smaller missile ships, as
marineforum.online
reported, because Turkey is closing the Black Sea to ships of the warring parties.
Therefore, only smaller boats built locally or transported on inland waterways can enter the Black Sea Fleet - such as the small rocket ships being built near Kazan on the Volga.
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Putin's reality: His high-value units must be out of the firing line
At the latest after Ukraine's second attack on Sevastopol using drones, Russia pulled the high-value units - the frigates Admiral Essen and the Makarov, three submarines and five landing ships - out of the line of fire and mostly relocated them to Novorossiysk, according to
marineforum.online
.
Satellite images show increasingly deserted port areas in the Crimean metropolis.
Furthermore, Russia apparently repurposes material:
marineforum.online
reports images in which a Tor-M2KM short-range tactical anti-aircraft missile system was strapped to the flight deck of a Russian Vasily Bykov-class corvette.
Russia wants to keep open the possibility of landing Russian forces from sea and continue to use the Black Sea as an operating and launching area for Russian cruise missiles.
The gate system used weighs around 15 tons and is operated by two men. It consists of a module including a radar and fire unit and can be operated independently of the ship's power supply and operations center.
marineforum.online:
“What was striking in the pictures was that the module was in the dark olive tone of the land forces and was not adapted to the maritime environment.”
Russia is apparently improvising, and the losses are clearly having an effect.
At the end of December, British Defense Secretary Grant Shapps claimed that Russia had lost 20 percent of its Black Sea fleet in the past four months.
It is known that Ukraine has at least seriously damaged a Russian submarine at its shipyard in Sevastopol, as well as several Russian landing ships such as the Minsk, the Saratov and the Olenegorsky Gornyak.
Earlier this month, Ukraine said its military intelligence had destroyed a missile-armed Russian corvette, the Ivanovets, with a series of naval drones.
Ukraine is strictly pursuing this path.
Putin's threat: Ukraine is planning a campaign with autonomous submarines
They are called Fury, Orca or Kronos and are supposed to revolutionize underwater warfare.
After the successful use of the Magura 5 drone, Ukraine is planning a campaign of autonomous submarines against Vladimir Putin's Black Sea fleet and wants to drive Russia out of Crimea.
There is now a stealth submarine made by Ukrainian engineers.
And the aircraft manufacturer Boeing has now delivered five unmanned submarines to the US Navy;
they could also be interesting for Ukraine;
However, they are increasingly relying on their own construction in order to emancipate themselves from their previous supporters.
But Ukraine is also arming itself on water: In addition to the delivery of tanks and missiles, British Defense Secretary Grant Shapps announced in December that two Royal Navy minehunters would be handed over to the Ukrainian Navy, although the ships would be due to limited access to the Black Sea At the end of the war they could not enter Ukrainian ports - Turkey also refused to allow them to enter the Black Sea.
As the newspaper
The Telegraph
writes, Great Britain could even go further - due to its own staff shortages.
Afterwards, the British Royal Navy is so short of sailors that it reportedly has to decommission two Type 23 frigates, i.e. the Duke class, in order to man its new class of frigates.
This would reduce the size of the Duke class from eleven to nine ships;
According to information from defense and government sources, the frigates HMS Argyll and HMS Westminster, which were commissioned in 1991 and 1994 respectively, are at issue.
Neither the Royal Navy nor the British Ministry of Defense have yet responded to the claims.
But Ukraine wants to achieve more in the future than just defend itself.
She wants to take the war back to its country of origin, Vice Admiral Oleksiy Neischpapa recently said on
Sky News:
Since Russia is adapting, Ukraine must also refine its strategy.
“A modern war is a war of technologies, and whoever wins in the technological sense wins,” concluded Neischpapa: “We would like to have the opportunity to dissuade Russia from ever setting its sights on Ukraine again. in this case also to the sea.”
(Karsten Hinzmann)