The Russian Ministry of Defense accused the United Kingdom of helping Ukraine carry out the largest attack on the Black Sea Fleet base in the early hours of Saturday (29) and organizing the explosions that destroyed 3 of the 4 branches of the system. of the Nord Stream pipelines.
Claiming to be a target of terrorism, Moscow said it would suspend a Ukrainian grain export deal that uses the Black Sea as a corridor to transport products vital to Kiev’s economic survival. Its fleet ensured the passage of civilian ships previously blocked in its ports, under a deal brokered by Turkey in July.
It is the first time that Moscow has accused a member country of NATO, the western military alliance, of having actively participated in an attack on its infrastructure. So far, the allegations concerned the massive shipments of arms from the US and Europe to Kyiv and the exchange of intelligence information.
According to the Ministry of Defense in London, the charges are “false claims of epic proportions” designed to distract from Russia’s military difficulties in Ukraine, which it invaded in February.
The blasts in the Nord Stream, whose twin systems run more than 1,200 km under the Baltic Sea and link Russia and Germany in the most iconic project of Europe’s dependence on Moscow’s natural gas, took place a month ago.
They are the work of an antiRussian government, President Vladimir Putin said Thursday (27) at a meeting with international analysts near Moscow. But he didn’t name any names. Already reduced shipments of Russian gas to Europe, via a branch in Ukraine and the Turkish system, are key to the pressure the Kremlin is exerting to retaliate against Western sanctions on its economy.
Earlier, NATO pointed the finger at the Russians and warned Putin that it would not tolerate attacks on its energy infrastructure. This is a sore point, since nuclear weapons doctrines on both sides envisage their use in the event of an existential threat to the state.
The attack, which took place this Saturday at 4:20 a.m. (10:20 p.m. on Friday in Brasília) in Sevastopol, is the boldest since the explosion that struck the Crimean Bridge earlier this month, symbol of the Putinsponsored annexation in 2014 .
The Black Sea Fleet is a weakened force that has withdrawn its most valuable ships to the Sea of Azov, which is a larger, more protected arm of the body of water. But its base has been Russian since the Romanov Empire, established in 1783.
Even when Ukraine seceded from the Soviet Union in 1991, an agreement was reached that the Russians would pay to keep the armed forces there, in the Russianspeaking region of Crimea. In 2014 the formalities were dropped.
For example, the explosions that damaged the minesweeper Ivan Golubets and a containment net in Yuzhnaia Bay are highly symbolic of a demoralized fleet that lost its flagship, the heavy cruiser Moskva, in an attack off the Ukrainian coast in April.
According to military spokesman Igor Konachenkov, nine flying drones and seven autonomous underwater models that act as GPScontrolled torpedoes were used. They damaged the network designed to prevent submarines from entering Sevastopol Bay, which houses several subsidiary bays nested within the great imperial city, such as B. Yuzhnaya.
There are no reports of injuries. Before this attack, the headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet had been attacked by drones several times without major consequences. But although war was physically close, it was not felt more clearly on the peninsula until an air force base was attacked in August and nearly half the fleet’s naval aviation component was destroyed.
The Crimean bridge explosion led to the change of commander of Russia’s operations in Ukraine and a wave of subsequent attacks on the neighbor’s energy infrastructure, which has already somehow reached 60% of the country’s electricity supply, with winter just around the corner.
Now Kyiv faces the danger that its economy will stall further if there is no solution to the grain problem. Ahead of the Russian announcement, UN SecretaryGeneral António Guterres had asked to extend the terms of the deal, which has helped lower the international price of the commodity with exports of 8 million tons of products so far.