7 landing ships – all that remained of the Russian Black Sea Fleet after the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ accurate attacks
The Armed Forces of Ukraine’s Stratcom reported that on the night of March 24, 2024, the Ukrainian Defense Forces launched a missile strike against the Russian occupiers in Crimea, which destroyed two large landing ships of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, the Azov and Yamal, a communications center and other “several facilities” in the temporarily occupied Sevastopol.
So far, only eyewitness videos of the night strike are available in the public domain, showing several powerful explosions after the missiles hit, which were probably the destroyed VDKs. When satellite images are made publicly available, it will be possible to more accurately assess the scale of losses and destruction suffered by the Russian occupiers today. But now we can record the following.
As a result of today’s missile strike, the Russian invaders have only 7 landing ships left in the Black Sea, including those that were transferred from the Baltic and Northern Fleets on the eve of the invasion in February 2022:
- 1 ship of the project 11711: “Petr Morgunov” (Northern Fleet of the Russian Federation)
- 2 ships of the project 1171 “Tapir”: “Nikolay Filchenkov and Orsk (both of the Russian Black Sea Fleet)
- 4 Project 775 ships: Korolev and Kaliningrad (both Baltic Fleet), Georgy Pobedonosets and Olenegorskiy Gornyak (both Northern Fleet)
Another interesting aspect of this is that the Russian Black Sea Fleet itself now formally has only two amphibious assault ships, which belong to the 1171 Tapyr project and are in fact the oldest in the Black Sea Fleet. The previously damaged landing ship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, Project 775 “Minsk” and a similar project “Olenegorskiy Gornyak” from the Northern Fleet are still in the process of being damaged.
Satellite images will be able to show more precisely which other “several facilities” of the Black Sea Fleet in the temporarily occupied Sevastopol were hit. Before that, social media reported that after the drone strike, fuel tanks were burning near the village of Hvardiyske.
It is worth paying attention to the detail of the destroyed communications center of the Russian Black Sea Fleet. To begin with, let us specify that this is the main communication hub of the Black Sea Fleet, and the OSIN-Technical researcher noted that at least three missiles hit this facility.
In this case, we can say that the failure of the main communication hub could cause, at least temporarily, significant problems with the management of the entire Black Sea Fleet as a strategic-level unit.
Because here we are talking about both “horizontal” (i.e., ships and other components) and “vertical” control: as a result of the change in the chain of command, the Black Sea Fleet is now subordinated not to the headquarters of the Southern Military District of the Russian Armed Forces in Rostov, but to Moscow through the “mediation” of the Commander-in-Chief of the Black Sea Fleet. That is, to the Kremlin almost directly.
