Sao Paulo
Russia announced on Wednesday that it had destroyed what it incorrectly described as “Ukraine’s last warship” in a precision missile attack. There was no confirmation or denial from Kiev, but reports from observers on both sides lend credibility to the claim.
The ship hit was the Yuri Olefirenko amphibious assault ship, a Soviet model in service since 1970, which in some ways reflected the turbulent relations between Russia and Ukraine after the dissolution of the communist empire in 1991, which is today in the The invasion that has begun will culminate in Moscow in 2022.
According to the Russian Defense Ministry, the ship sank in the port of Odessa two days ago. It was even credited as one of the boats the Russians seized early in the war when they seized ports on Ukraine’s southeast coast in the Sea of Azov, an arm of the Black Sea. The report was contradicted when Olefirenko was seen on footage last June narrowly escaping a Russian artillery attack. In practice, however, the Ukrainian Navy had been crippled by the invasion.
According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, before the war it had five main battleships, including frigates, 12 coastal patrol ships and eight logistic ships. At the beginning of the year it had 13 on patrol, but lost larger models, such as a corvette, was replaced by smaller ones likely donated by NATO, the western military alliance, and continues with the eight logistics parked in ports.
Not that the situation in Russia is any better, as evidenced by perhaps the greatest military embarrassment Moscow suffered in the war, the April 2022 sinking of the Black Sea Fleet’s flagship cruiser Moskva.
However, the Moskva sank not because of a battle with other ships, but because of an attack by Neptune missiles launched from the Ukrainian coast. He, too, played no central role in the war, showing that Moscow has acted with a certain drag in the Black Sea, where it is said to have total dominance.
Smaller corvettes and, rarely, submarines are used to launch cruise missiles against Ukrainian targets. Russia’s exclusion zone around Crimea, the peninsula annexed in 2014 and home to the Russian fleet, has only been tested by occasional attacks by underwater drones, which Moscow says are being supplied by the British. Last week, Ukrainian media reported that the Russian spy ship Ivan Khurs had been sunk or damaged by naval drones, but the Black Sea Fleet released footage of the ship returning safely to the unit’s headquarters in Sevastopol.
Analysts believe the Kremlin is looking to salvage its assets, especially after the loss of the Moskva River, which does not imply Ukrainian naval superiority quite the contrary. At the same time, the defensive weakness of the Russian fleet is remarkable, as previous attacks on Russian ships and targets in Crimea have shown.
The story of Oleg Olefirenko follows that of the Ukrainian Navy. When the Soviet Union ended, Ukraine technically got Crimea, Russian territory ceded to Kiev in 1954 in a homage to his political cradle by thenleader Nikita Khrushchev.
However, an uprising of mostly Russian officers of the Black Sea Fleet ensued, involving neighboring Georgia, which also fell under the jurisdiction of the military unit. After much confusion, in 1995 the first terms for the division of the fleets were agreed, and two years later it was stipulated that the Russians could keep their base in Sevastopol until 2017.
In 2010, the proMoscow government returning to power in Kiev extended the deadline to 2042, angering the proWestern opposition. Four years later, Vladimir Putin made a fait accompli by taking Crimea and taking over most of the Ukrainian ships in the region, which he later brought back.
Therefore, even before the current war, Kiev’s naval resources were limited. The success against the Moskva and the recapture of the strategic island of Cobra, which the Russians occupied almost near the Romanian coast without any defensive conditions, overshadowed this fact.
Olefirenko was in no shape to play, especially given Odessa’s vulnerability to air raids. But amid the rise in violence in the conflict, waiting for Kiev’s counteroffensive and drone strikes even in Moscow, it became a win for Kremlin rhetoric.