Sao Paulo
Ukraine carried out on Wednesday (13) the largest missile attack since Russia’s invasion. Two ships were hit, shipyards were set on fire and at least 24 people were injured in the port of Sevastopol, the headquarters of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in annexed Crimea.
According to the Russian Defense Ministry, it was the first attack of its kind in the city, involving ten cruise missiles and three drones. The action took place around 3 a.m. (9 p.m. on Tuesday in Brasília), hours before the scheduled meeting between Vladimir Putin and North Korean dictator Kim Jongun.
Videos on social media showed a large explosion on the ground, antiaircraft attacks and subsequent fires.
According to the region’s appointed governor, Mikhail Razvoyayev, a “noncivilian facility” was still burning, a euphemism for the various docks, shipyards and military buildings of the Black Sea Fleet, which moved a large proportion of its ships to the Sea of Azov, further east and under Russian control after its flagship Moskva was sunk by two antiship missiles in April 2022.
Razvojaiev said that there was a fire in the area of the KilenBalka Strait, next to one of the niches of Sevastopol Bay, which had served as a refuge and shipyard for Russian warships since 1783. There is shipyard number 13, which specializes in repairs. The fleet’s main fuel depots are located on the other, less populated side of the bay.
The city has been the target of drone strikes in the past, but never of missiles, even on this scale. In October there was also a naval drone attack that damaged a Russian ship. The only known models available to the Ukrainians that have the range necessary to cover the approximately 300 km between Kievcontrolled territory and Sevastopol are the cruisers ScalpEG (France) and Storm Shadow (UK).
Deliveries of these weapons began this year and have been used in attacks on other parts of Crimea, such as the bridges connecting the north of the peninsula with Russianoccupied areas in Ukraine. They were adapted for takeoff by Soviet Su24 fighterbombers operating from Kiev.
Details are still sparse, but the attack on the city, the capital of the ethnic Russianmajority region that Putin annexed in 2014 in response to the overthrow of Ukraine’s proKremlin government, has great symbolism. Kiev has stepped up its actions against the peninsula, including the destruction of a Russian S400 antiaircraft battery two weeks ago, as it struggles to advance its so far inconclusive counteroffensive.
In addition, the bombing occurred under the influence of the meeting that began on Wednesday afternoon (around 1 a.m. in Brazil) between Putin and Kim. If everything goes as analysts predict, they could strike a deal with Pyongyang to supply Russia with heavy munitions for use in Ukraine in return for stateoftheart space and military technology.
In fact, the meeting is taking place at the Vostochny Cosmodrome in the Russian Far East, a base opened in 2016 that was meant to symbolize a new era in Russia’s long history of space exploration that began in the Soviet Union. Kim has failed to launch a spy satellite twice this year, making the picture even clearer.
Also before the meeting, the Kimled dictatorship launched two test ballistic missiles in the Sea of Japan.
In addition to the attack on Sevastopol, Russian social media showed a large fire and the sounds of explosions near the Ostankino Tower, a landmark in northern Moscow, not far from the center. However, there are still no details about what would have happened. The capital was attacked by drones, but almost all were shot down in outlying areas.
On the Ukrainian side, an attack by Russian drones on the port of Ismail on the Danube hit grain export structures and left at least one injured in the early hours of the morning.