The Russian landing ship “Novocherkassk” is, since its entry into service in 1987, one of the crown jewels of the Russian Black Sea Fleet. While she was in the port of Feodosia, on the Crimean peninsula, she was hit by an attack carried out at dawn by Ukrainian forces this Monday, December 26. Ukraine claims that it has destroyed it, but Russia says that it has repulsed the attack and that in the battle there is only one dead and two wounded.
A huge explosion and a fireball were captured by images of the port area published on social networks by Russian media.
The head of the Ukrainian air forces, Lieutenant General Mikola Oleschuk, took responsibility for the attack in a message on Telegram.
Oleschuk claimed that Novocherkassk had been destroyed. “The fleet in Russia is getting smaller and smaller!” he ‘shouted’ in his message. “This time, the large landing ship ‘Novocherkassk’ follows the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet of the Russian Federation, the ‘Moskvá’, which was sunk in April 2022,” he added.
A first attempted attack against Novocherkassk already occurred on March 24, 2022, when it was in the port of Berdiansk, in the Zaporizhia region. “Today the occupiers’ ship has been finished off,” the Ukrainian Defense Forces also celebrated on Telegram.
However, the Russian version is different. The Russian Defense Ministry reported that the “Novocherkassk” had suffered damage during the repulsion of a Ukrainian attack on Feodosia, a city of about 66,000 inhabitants located in the southeast of Crimea.
According to the Russian side, the Ukrainian attack was carried out “with the use of guided missiles from aviation.” During the battle, “air defense systems destroyed two Ukrainian Sukhoi Su-24 fighter jets” that launched the missiles, the Russian Defense Ministry added.
The landing ship “Novocherkassk” belonging to Project 775 (called Ropucha class by NATO) was built at the Gdansk Shipyard (Poland) for the Soviet Union Navy.
It began service in 1987. It has a multiple launch rocket system and a crew of 87 people, although it can transport 225 soldiers.
Sergei Aksionov, head of Crimea, the peninsula that Russia annexed in 2014, reported that the Ukrainian attack on Feodosia occurred at 04:16 in the morning (two hours less in Barcelona).
As a result of the attack, the top Russian political official in that region later stated, one person died and two others were injured. According to him, six buildings were damaged, mostly broken windows, but the transportation infrastructure is functioning normally.