Destruction of the Russian Black Sea Fleet is not out of reach: how Ukraine is changing the rules of the game at sea with drone attacks
On 5 August, a Russian oil tanker SIG was hit near the Kerch Strait. The day before that, the heart of the Russian fleet, the port of Novorossiysk, came under attack by Ukrainian defenders. Read the article to find out how Ukraine is changing the rules of the game in the Black Sea with its maritime drone attacks.
– We have declared, and this is the logic of warfare, that you cannot win by fighting only on your own territory. The enemy and its population must understand that there are no safe places on their territory,” says military expert Serhiy Grabskyi.
He noted that Ukraine is changing the nature of warfare at sea. This happened after Russia withdrew from the grain deal. The Kremlin has returned to blockading Ukrainian ports, trying to destroy Ukrainian grain exports, as it did in the first months of the war.
– So Ukraine faced two major challenges: to force Russia to return to the grain deal and to lift the blockade of Odesa ports, where the largest grain storage facilities are located and where railways from all over the country converge. And Ukraine has been consistently fulfilling the second task since April 2022,” says Andriy Ryzhenko, former Deputy Chief of Staff of the Ukrainian Navy.
“Now Ukraine has moved to a new stage – forcing the Russian fleet to go to sea as little as possible.
– Increasing geography forces the enemy to stretch its resources. The enemy spends more money and more resources. We are moving from local defence to such an active defence,” says Grabskyi.
Moreover, neither the tanker nor the landing craft were random targets.
– “Novorossiysk is home to Russia’s main oil export terminal on the Black Sea, the profits from which go to Putin’s war in Ukraine,” says energy expert Mikhail0 Honchar.
“This will, firstly, economically hit the profitability of oil exports. And secondly, the destruction of enemy tankers is a direct way to weaken both the Russian navy and the Russian ground forces.
Further, Ryzhenko says, Ukraine should gradually create a fleet not only of marine drones, but also of small boats that could carry missiles – they are more convenient to hit ships not in ports, but in the open sea.
At present, the minimum programme is to convince the aggressor that it should stop blockading ports and resume commercial shipping. Ukraine’s global goal is to destroy the Russian Black Sea Fleet. And it is not so unattainable, says military expert Mykhailo Samus.
– It is an illusion that it is huge. There are a few dozen ships. Of these, I would say that modern ships will not reach 2 dozen. Moreover, the prospects for fleet renewal are very, very limited. Because they do not have the capacity to build frigates even now. Moreover, they already have problems with the construction of corvettes. They can’t build 2,000 tonnes, because they don’t have the engines. They can neither manufacture nor build gas turbines,” he says.
