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Ukrainian strikes on Russian targets in the Black Sea are laying the groundwork for a larger counteroffensive in the area, according to a new assessment, as Kyiv's land counteroffensive enters its third month.
Ukraine's forces are using naval drones to "set conditions for future decisive operations" in the Black Sea region, the U.S. think tank, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), said in an updated analysis on Saturday. Ukraine is "now striking much deeper into Russian rear areas and incorporating maritime targets," the think tank added.
As Ukraine focuses land-based attacks on eastern and southern Ukraine, it has also used naval drones to attack targets in the Crimean peninsula, which sits in the Black Sea. Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 but Ukraine has vowed to reclaim it.
"It seems that Ukrainian forces are now expanding their efforts to include naval targets," the ISW said.
Crimea is home to Russia's Black Sea fleet, and in the past week, Russia has said Ukraine had launched a series of naval drone attacks in the Black Sea. Moscow's forces have placed defenses designed to stop Ukrainian unmanned surface vehicles or semi-submersible drones around its Crimean ports, including boom defenses, analysts told Newsweek. Ukraine has also used airborne drones to target Russian infrastructure and military facilities in Crimea.
Ukraine said its naval drones struck a Russian warship in Novorossiysk on Friday, one of the Russian navy's Black Sea bases that is farther from Ukraine than Sevastopol, in southern Crimea.
Moscow denied that the landing ship, the Olenegorsky Gornyak, had been damaged. However, Andriy Yusov, a spokesperson for Ukraine's security service, said the ship was not able to perform combat missions, and the British Defense Ministry said it had "almost certainly suffered serious damage."
"Most probably, all major internal mechanisms are very badly damaged," Andriy Ryzhenko, a retired Ukrainian naval captain and now a strategic expert at the defense and logistics consultant company Sonata, told Newsweek on Friday.
Images and footage circulating on social media appear to show the amphibious assault vessel listing as it is towed away by rescue ships.
Following the attack, authorities said they were bolstering defenses along Russia's coastline, including at the popular Black Sea vacation spot of Sochi.
On Saturday, Russia's Federal Agency for Sea and Inland Water Transport said Ukrainian waterborne drones had struck a Russian oil tanker, the SIG, close to the Kerch Strait Bridge.
Ukraine has often looked to target the Kerch Bridge, which is a key route connecting mainland Russia to Crimea. In mid-July, Ukraine targeted the bridge with naval drones, and experts told Newsweek at the time that Russia was ill-prepared to fend off the threat posed by Ukrainian unmanned, water-borne vehicles around the 12-mile-long bridge.
No one was injured among the SIG's 11-person crew, Russia's maritime transport agency added, saying "a hole had been made in the engine room near the waterline on the starboard side" in the attack at around 11.20 p.m. local time on Friday.
"The ship is afloat," the agency added.
In a post to social media on Saturday, Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council, said that with each mission, Ukrainian drones in the sea and air "become more accurate, operators more experienced, combat coordination more effective, and manufacturers get the opportunity to improve tactical and technical characteristics."
"August was particularly successful for Ukrainian hunters," he added. "The next step is to expand the scale."
Newsweek has reached out to the Russian and Ukrainian defense ministries for comment via email.
About the writer
Ellie Cook is a Newsweek security and defense reporter based in London, U.K. Her work focuses largely on the Russia-Ukraine ... Read more