Mysterious operation: Russia conducts strange operations near the Cyclone crash site
What ships and vessels are still being kept in Sevastopol by the occupiers and why
OSINT analyst MT_Anderson posted a satellite image of the temporarily occupied Sevastopol as of the morning of May 31, 2024, which shows two interesting things.
First, the Russian military conducted a mysterious rescue operation for at least a week at the site of the alleged sinking of the Cyclone missile corvette of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, Project 22800 (which was hit on the night of May 19, 2024). And secondly, at that time, the occupiers had possibly the smallest number of ships in the waters of the temporarily occupied Sevastopol, starting in February 2022.
Let’s start with the first aspect. As can be seen from the above image, a Russian hydrographic boat of Project 23370 with special equipment for launching divers is constantly working at the site of the alleged sinking of the Cyclone corvette. But the nuance is that taking a certain number of divers on board is the maximum that the dimensions of this hydrographic boat allow.
Therefore, the question immediately arises as to what exactly Russian divers could be doing there – simply assessing the nature of the damage to the Cyclone at the bottom of the waters of the temporarily occupied Sevastopol, or searching for items or elements of weapons that should be raised from the ship, or even assessing the Cyclone itself for suitability for lifting.
It is also interesting to note that next to the search and rescue site at the sinking of the Cyclone, there is also a rescue vessel of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, the EPRON, launched in 1959 and designed to rescue the crews of sunken submarines or to raise particularly important weapons or other important items from the seabed.
It is quite telling that these images do not show the search and rescue vessel Kommuna, which was hit in April 2024. And also that the “launch” satellite image from MT_Anderson in this publication shows only three large surface ships from the Russian Black Sea Fleet: the Soviet-designed 1135 Pytlyvyi patrol ship, and the large landing ships Yamal and Nikolai Filchenkov.
It is difficult to estimate what specific tasks these “pennants” of the Russian Black Sea Fleet can perform in the waters of the temporarily occupied Sevastopol, apart from “flag demonstration”.
