Ukrainian Missiles Are Blowing Up The Black Sea Fleet’s New Missile Corvettes Faster Than Russia Can Build Them
A Ukrainian ATACMS raid on Sunday reportedly struck two Russian ships in Sevastopol (The second ship was a minesweeper)
David Axe | May 21, 2024 | 06:05pm EDTThe Russian navy missile corvette Tsyklon entered service with the Black Sea Fleet in July 2023, three years after launching at Zalyv Shipbuilding Yard in Russian-occupied Crimea.
Ten months later, on Sunday, a Ukrainian strike sank the 220-foot Karakurt-class vessel in Sevastopol, in Crimea, 150 miles from the front line of Russia’s 27-month wider war on Ukraine. Satellite imagery from Monday confirmed that Tsyklon is resting on the seafloor.
Russian navy officials should be very worried about the future of the Black Sea Fleet. Ukraine is taking out the fleet’s warships faster than Russia can build or reinforce them with ships from other regional fleets.
The Black Sea Fleet is getting seven of the cruise-missile-armed Karakurts. Tsyklon was the first to commission into front-line service. Another Karakurt, the incomplete Askold, was damaged in a November Ukrainian missile raid on a shipyard in Kerch in Crimea.
Since Russia widened its war on Ukraine in February 2022, Ukrainian forces have steadily degraded the Black Sea Fleet, sinking around 15 of its pre-war force of around three dozen large warships—and damaging several others.
As long as Turkey blocks warships from passing through the Bosporus Strait connecting the Mediterranean Sea to the Black Sea, the only way for the Russians to reinforce the shrinking Black Sea Fleet is to transfer smaller vessels to the Black Sea by river—or to build them in Black Sea shipyards.
It’s not for no reason that, in April, Ukrainian commandos sabotaged the Russian missile corvette Serpukhov in Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea. The Buyan-class corvette was one of the few Russian warships small enough to travel to the Black Sea via canals, the Volga River, the Don River and then the Sea of Azov.
In addition to the damaged Askold and the wrecked Tsyklon, five more Karakurts are under construction at shipyards in Crimea or on the Volga River, which connects to the Black Sea by way of the Don River. . . .
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2024/05/21/ukrainian-missiles-are-blowing-up-the-black-sea-fleets-new-missile-corvettes-faster-than-russia-can-build-them