Eighteen months after the sinking of the cruiser Moskva, Ukraine seems to have achieved a new coup: the decommissioning of a strategic ship of the Russian fleet, a Kilo-class submarine, probably the Rostov-on-Don… In the Black Sea this is the case first time that a submarine has been hit, emphasizes Vincent Groizeleau, editor-in-chief of Mer et Marine: “This time it is a missile, a priori a cruise missile, and what is actually quite unusual is that they hit the main.” Naval repair area of the Sevastopol base, where two buildings were in dry dock. A Russian Kilo-type submarine and a Ropucha-type tank landing craft. And in fact the worst loss was that of the submarine. We don’t know what condition it is in today, but if we rely on the condition of the boat next to it, which we could clearly see in photos and which is completely destroyed, there is a big chance that the submarine is too destroyed will be very badly damaged or even irreparable. And this is serious for the Russians because suddenly they lose 20% of their submarine capacity in the Black Sea because they only have five submarines in that area.”
Storm Shadow missiles used for attack
The type of missile used to attack Sevastopol remains unknown, although the press across the Channel mentions the use of long-range Storm Shadow missiles recently supplied by the British and French. The Russian Black Sea Fleet, which is regularly harassed by Ukrainian naval drones, is now also within range of these massive cruise missiles, without having the ability to evade or regenerate, emphasizes Vincent Groizeleau: “Since the beginning of the war, the Turkish straits have been closed, like the Montreux Convention requires it. If there is war in the Black Sea, the straits are closed and warships are no longer allowed to pass. So this means that the Russians can only count on what they had there at the end of February 2022. And so we see that these capacities are reduced through losses over the months. There was the loss of the cruiser Moskva, several landing craft and now there is perhaps one less submarine. And at the same time, there are many Russian ships that have been damaged by drone strikes, by missile strikes that need to be repaired, and so as the months go by we see this meager Black Sea Fleet, which had about twenty significant buildings at the beginning of the war, being reduced. Hence the importance of all this ship repair capacity in the ports, especially in Sevastopol, but also in Novorossiysk. The dry docks and floating docks allow for the maintenance of these boats and the repair of damaged boats. And there the Ukrainians not only dealt a serious blow by destroying or at least severely damaging warships, but at the same time neutralized important repair capacities that cannot be used in the coming months to repair other units that need it.
A sign of the importance of this attack: the normally discreet Ukrainian army claimed responsibility for the attack without providing any information about the extent of the damage.
What networks teach us
The attack that took place on Sevastopol in the middle of the night on September 13, 2023 reveals Ukrainian strategy. It’s about targeting strategic goals that are located “in depth”, i.e. far away from the front lines. The idea is to disorganize the Russian army by attacking high-value targets in regions that the Russian command probably considered safe: in this case, Sevastopol, the home port of the Black Sea Fleet.
Kiev not only targeted the military port, but also attacked the Sevmorzavod construction site. At the time of the attack, it contained at least one large Ropucha-class landing ship and a conventionally powered Kilo 636.3 class submarine, a modernized version of this electrically powered submersible. Very quickly, videos posted on social networks indicated that the shipyard was on fire. Indeed, a check on the Fire Information for Resource Management System FIRMS website maintained by NASA revealed that a major fire had broken out that night in the Sevastopol port industrial zone.
The red squares indicate a significant fire visible from space in the Sevastopol sector. © Screenshot/Company NASA
Shortly afterwards, the Russian Defense Ministry confirmed: “Yesterday evening the Ukrainian armed forces carried out an attack with ten cruise missiles on a shipyard in Sevastopol (…). Two ships under repair were damaged,” the ministry added, while “the anti-aircraft defense shot down seven cruise missiles,” the same source said. Earlier on Wednesday, the Russian governor of Sevastopol, Mikhail Razvojaïev, said on Telegram that “a fire broke out at the target shipyard.” “As a result of the attack, according to initial information, a total of 24 people were injured,” added Mr. Razvojaïev, quoted by AFP in Moscow.
The adaptation of Storm Shadow Scalp missiles to Ukrainian Su-24 aircraft has now been extensively documented in the networks. © Video screenshot/RFI
This attack was certainly carried out by missiles fired from a safe distance (stand off), as we can assume that the target was heavily defended and no Ukrainian ship has the ability to fire on land. When the Ukrainians got used to covering their tracks by using Western missiles and old Soviet-made missiles that they still had in stock in the same attacks, all eyes quickly turned to the storm shadow provided by the Europeans (Britain and France). . They can be fired from a distance of more than 300 kilometers and have been adapted to the Ukrainian Sukhoi-24 fighter-bombers, which date back to the Soviet era. The Ukrainian anti-ship missile P-360 Neptune could have proven useful for this operation, but it is fundamentally fired from coastal batteries …
The satellite image released by the British Ministry of Defense shows the extent of the damage. © Screenshot UK Mod
In reality, the landing ship and the target submarine were in dry dock at an industrial site at the time of the raid, so it is appropriate to consider them as land targets, even if they are boats… The European Assault Missile – Shadow /Scalp is perfect for this type of objective. It combines power (with a load of several hundred kilos) and precision. The fact that the British Ministry of Defense published a detailed thread about the attack on its own X account from September 15, 2023 seems to support the theory of an attack with cruise missiles of this type supplied by Great Britain. Early 2023.
The British defense even went so far as to publish a BDA (Battle Damage Assessment), certainly simplified, but an inventory of the attack, almost as if it were the work of their own air force! We can read, among other things: “Open evidence suggests that the Minsk was almost certainly functionally destroyed, while the Rostov likely suffered catastrophic damage.” London, which is heavily committed to supporting the Ukrainian army, announced that the Minsk ship could not return to sea and that the Rostov-on-Don submarine had suffered significant damage.
Strategic goals
When we focus on the goals, a quick online search allows us to understand their meaning. The Minsk is a so-called “landing ship” of the Ropucha class from 1973. On paper, she is one of the oldest in the series of ships of this type. They are very useful for the Russian Navy, which had five in service within the Black Sea Fleet. At the beginning of the Russian intervention in Syria, these amphibious cargo ships increased the number of connections between Tartus and Sevastopol, transporting troops, weapons and logistical equipment.
With a displacement of around 4,000 tons, they can easily pass through the straits and are designed for landing on the coast. Problem: They’re running out of power and their design is outdated. Faced with the aging of its amphibious fleet, Russia sought in the 2010s to acquire several Mistral-class command projection ships (BPCs), which it planned to buy from France before Paris drew a line under the treaty in 2015. In the end the Russian Navy had to make do with these Ropucha. Today there are one fewer, and these boats have not been manufactured for almost 40 years.
Image shared on social media in the hours after the Ukrainian attack showing the damage to the Minsk building. © Video screenshot
Kilo damaged
The other target of the attack was therefore a modernized Kilo-class submarine. A submersible that is considered modern and very quiet, although with limited autonomy since it is electrically powered. In December 2015, the Russian Navy announced the use of this submarine against Daesh positions in Syria. The same submarine, the B-237 Rostov-on-Don of Project 636.3, then fired four Kalibr cruise missiles from the Mediterranean at Islamic State bases. A rare capability in the Russian Navy and especially in the Black Sea Fleet, which only had five submarines of this type. Photos published on social networks show significant damage to the front part of the submersible that was damaged in Sevastopol.
One of the most complex sections to work on and the one that housed torpedo tubes and missiles. Britain’s Ministry of Defense estimates that repairing the Rostov-on-Don “will take years and cost hundreds of millions of dollars,” but more importantly, there is a risk that the damage to the shipyard will jeopardize maintenance work on other buildings at the same site. Type, a further reduction in the capabilities of the Black Sea Fleet, which is already under pressure.