Ukraine claimed yesterday that it had won a small victory against Russia after it damaged and sank an enemy ship in the Black Sea as it sailed near the coast of the annexed Crimean peninsula.
The Russian Ministry of Defense, for its part, announced that air defenses had destroyed nine Ukrainian drones overnight. According to the military statement, two were intercepted in Belgorod Oblast and one in Briansk, both bordering Ukraine, while the remaining six were shot down over the Black Sea. However, he said nothing about an attack on one of his ships in the Black Sea Fleet.
According to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, it was a ship called Caesar Kúnikov, which at the time of the attack was near the city of Alupka, in southern Crimea.
“The armed forces of Ukraine, together with the units of the military intelligence (GUR), have destroyed the large amphibious assault ship Caesar Kunikov of the Russian occupiers”, can be read in the note published by the State Major Ukrainian in social networks.
The operation against the Russian ship was carried out using maritime drones, the GUR said in another statement that also announced the destruction of the ship. “A Ukrainian Magura naval drone has destroyed the Caesar,” the message said.
He also released a video that, according to his version, shows a few unmanned boats approaching the attacked ship. The ship “suffered critical holes on the port side of the hull and began to sink”, he pointed out.
The Caesar Kúnikov is a large landing craft of Project 775, a class of ships built at the Gdansk shipyard (Poland) for the Navy of the Soviet Union between 1975 and 1991. Specifically, this ship was built in 1986 and is named after a Soviet officer who during World War II led the landing commando that recaptured a Soviet fortress at Cape Miskhako, near the city of Novorossisk. In NATO this type of ship is called “Roputxa class”.
Of this same class was the Novocherkassk, which Ukraine destroyed in December in an attack against the port of Feodosia, also in Crimea.
The Kremlin chose not to comment yesterday on the information released by the Ukrainian army and the spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, referred it to the Ministry of Defense. Russian military bloggers, for their part, did not deny that the ship had sunk, but assured that the entire crew survived.
On February 1, Ukraine claimed that several Magura V5 drones had attacked the Russian missile ship Ivanovets. According to Ukraine, both attacks were carried out by a special unit called Group 13, which specializes in unmanned naval warfare.
