FEODOSIA, Ukraine – Air Force of Ukraine hit a major naval port on the Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula and claimed that a Russian naval landing ship docked there had been destroyed.
The Ukrainian military said in a post on Telegram on December 26 that tactical aviation units fired cruise missiles at the port of Feodosia on the eastern side of the Black Sea peninsula at around 3 a.m. local time, hitting the ship Novocherkassk.
Explosions reverberated throughout the city, waking residents, setting off car alarms and shattering storefronts and windows of buildings some distance from the port.
The commander of the Ukrainian Air Force, Lieutenant General Mykola Oleshchuk, said in a Post on Telegram that “Russia’s naval fleet is getting smaller” and suggested that Ukrainian jets were involved, but gave no further details.
“We saw how powerful the explosion and detonation were,” said Col. Yuriy Ihnat, an Air Force spokesman. said RFE/RL's Ukrainian service. “It is extremely difficult for a ship to survive something like this.”
Ukraine says it destroyed a Russian naval ship in occupied Crimea
The Russian Defense Ministry confirmed that the Novocherkassk had been damaged by a Ukrainian missile, but gave no further information. The Kremlin said Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu informed President Vladimir Putin of the attack, a possible indication of the severity of the attack.
“An enemy attack was carried out in the Feodosia area. The harbor area is cordoned off. At that moment, the explosions stopped and the fire was contained,” Sergei Aksyonov, the Russian-backed governor of the Crimean region, said in a post on Telegram.
He said one person was killed and two others were injured in the attack. He did not provide any further information.
Unconfirmed photos and videos showed fireballs rising into the night sky, accompanied by an enormous shock wave. Photos taken by a correspondent for Crimea Realities, a regional bureau of RFE/RL's Ukrainian service, showed broken windows on several buildings along the city's waterfront.
If confirmed, the Novocherkassk's destruction would be the latest embarrassing blow to Russia's Black Sea Fleet, which has been forced to scale back some of its operations in and around Crimea after a series of missile and naval drone attacks.
Russia's Growing List of Naval Losses
It would also be the second time the ship was damaged in a Ukrainian attack. In March 2022, about a month after the full-scale Russian invasion began, Ukrainian troops attacked the port of Berdyansk in the Sea of Azov, sinking another landing ship, the Saratov, and damaging the Novocherkassk.
In September, Ukraine used British-supplied cruise missiles to hit another Russian landing ship and a submarine that was being repaired at a dry-dock facility near Sevastopol, a major port on the western side of the peninsula. Both ships were believed to be heavily damaged, as was the dry dock.
SEE ALSO: Russia's Navy has a dry dock problem. Again.
This and another missile attack on a naval headquarters on the Black Sea forced the Russian fleet to withdraw many of its ships to a more distant port.
The Russian Black Sea Navy's flagship, the Moskva, sank in April 2022 after being hit by a Ukrainian anti-ship missile, killing an unknown number of sailors. The loss of the ship was a major victory for Ukraine, which lost control of much of its Black Sea coast in the wake of the Russian invasion.
Elsewhere, the Russian military claimed to have captured the eastern town of Maryinka, potentially opening a new corridor for the advance into the Donetsk region. Shoigu was shown in a televised session on December 25 telling Putin about the alleged capture of the city.
Kiev initially denied the claim, but on December 26, the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian military, General Valeriy Zaluzhniy, said that Kiev's forces had withdrawn from Maryinka and new defensive lines had been prepared outside the city, which is largely destroyed and abandoned but strategic meaning is.
Maryinka is located almost 30 kilometers southwest of the city of Donetsk, which is controlled by Russian forces
With reports from the Ukrainian service of RFE/RL and Portal. NOTE: The main image for this article has been changed. The earlier photo showed a Ukrainian attack on Crimea earlier this year.