Crimea Ship Attack Exposes Black Sea 'Trap' for Russian Fleet

Ukraine's latest successful strike against the Russian Black Sea Fleet speaks to the "trap" Moscow's warships find themselves in, one Ukrainian parliamentary adviser has said, as the Kremlin counts the cost of a cruise missile attack on the Crimean port of Feodosia.

Dozens of Russian servicemembers are missing or wounded after the Ropucha-class Novocherkassk large landing ship was hit and seemingly destroyed by Ukrainian cruise missiles while at anchor in the early hours of Tuesday. Moscow has admitted damage to the ship.

Andriy Ryzhenko, a retired Ukrainian naval captain and now a strategic expert at the defense and logistics consultant company Sonata, told Newsweek he believes "most of the crew were also killed."

The vessel was about 370 feet long and designed for amphibious landings, with a crew of up to 87 people. Ropucha-class vessels also play an important military transport role for the Russian armed forces, and the Novocherkassk was reportedly carrying munitions—possibly Iranian-made Shahed kamikaze drones—when hit, amplifying the subsequent explosion.

"They were in the process of unloading the ship," Ivan Stupak, a former officer in the Security Service of Ukraine and now an adviser to the Ukrainian parliament's national security, defense and intelligence committee, told Newsweek of the strike.

"The missile arrived at the same exact time and destroyed a lot of the ship's crew, and other people who were around the ship. The number of casualties could rise."

The Black Sea Fleet, which cannot be reinforced by vessels from other Russian fleets since Turkey closed the Bosporus and Dardanelles Straits to military shipping from February 2022, is now caught in a "trap," Stupak said.

Newsweek is unable to verify the number of casualties or the cargo of the ship and has contacted the Russian Defense Ministry by email to request comment.

Pro-war Russian milbloggers lamented the latest maritime setback. "The enemy is systematically knocking out our large landing craft (which, in addition to performing current logistics tasks, are also a reserve in case of damage to the Crimean bridge)," said a post on the Romanov Light channel, which has almost 135,000 subscribers.

"After the majority of the large landing craft are disabled, the enemy can launch another attack on the Crimean bridge, as well as systematize attacks on the crossings in the north of Crimea. After this, the enemy will publicly announce the 'blockade of Crimea,' which will create an argument for increasing the supply of long-range weapons."

Stupak said any hope of a full blockade of the occupied peninsula is a "fairytale" given Ukraine has no conventional navy. It instead relies on long-range missiles and naval drones to attack Russian ships.

"The only one way is to use long-range missiles," Stupak said of shutting down Russian movements in and out of Crimea.

Still, he added, the Black Sea has become a black hole of Russian naval resources. Since Turkey implemented the Montreux Convention, Stupak said, the "Black Sea became a puddle; it's a trap for the Russian fleet."

"At the beginning of the war, the number of Russian warships of different classes and different types—from small to big—was about 80 units. But now, the approximate number has been reduced to 50 units. So, almost 50 percent of Black Sea Fleet is destroyed or heavily damaged."

The mauled force, Stupak said, is now "trying to survive," shifting high-value vessels away from the under-fire Crimea ports and towards the safer waters of Novorossiysk and elsewhere.

Ryzhenko said Kyiv will continue to hone its "combined arms" strategy of "missiles, maritime and air drones penetrating and destroying the most valuable Russian targets in the Crimean peninsula."

"In confined waters, use of any medium or bigger-sized vessel is very dangerous," he said. "It's easy to find, identify and destroy these big ships."

Update 12/27/23, 10:10 a.m. ET: This article has been updated with comment from Andriy Ryzhenko.