Rocket attack on Sevastopol
Putin’s fleet receives the next serious blow
September 22nd, 2023 – 4:30 p.m. Reading time: 3 min.
Black smoke is coming from the headquarters of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol: the extent of the damage is still unclear. (Source: t-online)
Ukraine has systematically eliminated air defenses over Crimea. Now it has hit the headquarters of the Russian Black Sea Fleet.
It is the next serious blow to the Russian presence on the occupied Crimean peninsula. After a rocket hit on Friday morning, the headquarters of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in the port city of Sevastopol was still ablaze in the afternoon. The extent of the damage will only become clear in the coming days. It is also unclear whether Russian senior officers were hit. The attack on Sevastopol appears to have been part of a larger operation.
Parallel to the strike at the headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet, there were reports on social media of explosions in other parts of the occupied Ukrainian peninsula. Photos of clouds of smoke near the town of Poshtowe circulated. The opposition Telegram channel “Crimeanwind” said that there was a workshop for Russian army trucks at the site. The Russian government in Moscow only confirmed that there had been a Ukrainian missile attack on the naval headquarters in Sevastopol.
Strike with Western cruise missiles?
It is still unclear what type of weapon was used to carry out the attacks. According to unconfirmed reports, these could have been Storm Shadow or Scalp-EG cruise missiles that Great Britain and France had supplied to Ukraine. The Russian governor in Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov, claimed on Telegram that Russian anti-aircraft defense had shot down several cruise missiles in the area of the peninsula. He did not give an exact number; the information cannot currently be independently verified.
This video, shared on Twitter, purports to show the headquarters in Sevastopol shortly after the attack:
Crimean anti-aircraft defenses were literally blinded
The building is located in the center of Sevastopol and was previously hit in an attack on July 31, 2022. A kamikaze drone was used, which caused minor damage and injured six people. The most recent attack is likely to have been significantly more devastating and appears to be part of a Ukrainian attack strategy. There have been several successful strikes against the Russian air defenses on the peninsula in recent weeks.
At the end of August, Ukrainian forces first destroyed an important radar system and then an S-400 anti-aircraft system. A week and a half ago, Kiev managed to recapture two oil rigs that Russia had occupied in 2015 and used to monitor the Black Sea. After the loss of the oil rigs, the Russian Black Sea Fleet and Crimean air defense appear to have become virtually blind.
That’s why Crimea is so important
So, on September 13, the Ukrainian army scored another serious blow: the landing ship “Minsk” and the submarine “Rostov-on-Don” were seriously damaged or even destroyed in an attack on a dry dock of the Black Sea Fleet in the port of Sevastopol. The dock is also likely to be unusable for months. After the attack, Moscow was forced to withdraw its submarines from Sevastopol and relocate them to the Black Sea port of Novorossisk. Western-built cruise missiles are also said to have been used in this attack.
The Ukrainian Air Force can fire Storm Shadow and Scalp-EG from the air from its Soviet-built fighter jets. The projectiles have a range of around 250 kilometers. It is conceivable that Ukraine systematically disabled the anti-aircraft defenses over Crimea in order to bring the aircraft carrying cruise missiles close enough to the targets on the peninsula.
From the Ukrainian perspective, the liberation of Crimea is crucial. From the peninsula, Russia controls the northwestern Black Sea, threatening transport ships carrying Ukrainian grain and firing cruise missiles from ships and submarines at Ukrainian cities. The Russian occupation troops in the south of Ukraine are also supplied via Crimea, which has been connected to the Russian mainland via the Kerch Bridge since May 2018. The illegally constructed structure has already been the target of Ukrainian attacks on several occasions.
