Russia’s Home Port in Occupied Crimea Is Under Fire

After months of difficult slogging on the southern front, Ukraine made a decisive strike overnight Tuesday on the Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula, home of what was just days ago the pride of the remnants of the Russian Black Sea Fleet. Now it is little more than a salvage operation—both in the waters around the dry dock, where an advanced diesel submarine and an amphibious ship got roughly handled, and for Russia’s shrinking international credibility.

The strike is important not just because it shrinks the size of Russia’s naval assets off the coast of southern Ukraine, under siege for about 500 days and with little chance to export its grains and other goods. Moscow had long warned that serious strikes on the Crimean Peninsula, the first part of Ukraine that it illegally occupied in 2014, would trigger broader retaliation, even nuclear strikes. But no. Ukraine, a country lacking in naval ships, already sank one Russian capital ship. Now it has sunk a sub.

“If you’re on a Russian naval ship, you’re not safe anywhere in the Black Sea, but you’re particularly not safe in a fixed location—in port or at anchor—where reasonable targeting information can be relayed to drones that can come out and get you,” said Mark Montgomery, a retired U.S. Navy rear admiral who is now at the Foundation for Defense for Democracies.

After using drones to disable air defense radar around Russia’s key naval base of Sevastopol in Crimea, Ukraine fired a salvo of missiles, reportedly British long-range Storm Shadows, into one of Russia’s largest dry docks early Wednesday morning, obliterating—according to satellite photos of the aftermath—a Kilo-class diesel submarine and mauling an amphibious landing ship. They also wrecked the docks, in one of the largest strikes on Sevastopol since the Kremlin launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year.

Wednesday’s strike puts growing pressure on Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, which has been ground down by Ukraine’s MacGyver-like tactics, using U.S.-made Harpoon anti-ship missiles fired from truck beds and Ukrainian-made Neptune missiles, like the ones that put the Russian cruiser Moskva on the seafloor in April 2022, to keep itself supplied. Even though Ukraine has just a handful of small surface ships, maritime control is a different game now: There are fewer places for Russia to find safe harbor from Ukraine’s long-range missiles and drones, let alone refit its ships and men.

“Now they can’t rest and reconstitute in port,” Montgomery said.

Though the Kremlin is insisting that both ships damaged in Wednesday morning’s strike can be patched up relatively quickly, the attack, which left 24 people injured, raises new questions about the viability of Russia’s operations in Sevastopol, experts said. And that calls into question Russia’s entire control of the Black Sea.

The news comes as the Ukrainian counteroffensive on land runs into resistance. Russia has begun to harden a third line of defense in the Zaporizhzhia region, Ukrainian officials said on Wednesday, including anti-tank obstacles and roadblocks south of Robotyne that Ukrainian forces liberated in August.

Kyiv can likely keep up the pressure on Crimea for a while, if not for too long. While the Russian-occupied peninsula is fair game for military targeting in the eyes of Western officials, Ukraine has a limited number of the British-made Storm Shadow cruise missiles and French-made SCALP equivalents. Ukraine’s efforts to repeatedly hammer the Russian bridge across the Kerch Strait, to the east of Crimea, causing collapses of parts of the span in October 2022 and in July, show the vulnerability of the peninsula as a major resupply hub for Russian forces.

But if the Ukrainian offensive continues to pick up steam moving south, it could cause headaches for Kremlin military planners, who may have to move elements of command and control out of missile range. They may have to pull back even farther: The Biden administration is reportedly close to a decision over whether to send the long-range U.S. Army Tactical Missile System to Ukraine that could hit Russian targets up to 200 miles away.

It’s also a sign that Ukraine is getting naval capability from nontraditional sources, experts said, such as Western commando training for riverine operations and drones. They’re not the lightweights that the Russians might still think they are, said Jim Townsend, a former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for Europe and NATO. “These guys are very clever. They’re fighting all over the place.”

Ukrainian officials also said on Monday that they had retaken several oil platforms in the Black Sea known as the Boyko Towers, taking away Russia’s ability to use them as floating bases.

But the increasing pace of strikes in Crimea could also force Russia to move more air defense assets onto the peninsula at a time when it can ill afford to take those batteries out of other occupied areas of Ukraine.

“If you’re a Russian, or if you live there in Crimea, you’re going to start feeling pretty vulnerable,” Townsend said. “It’s a psychological blow for sure.”