Ukraine has hobbled Russia's once-feared Black Sea Fleet, turning the force into something of an afterthought in Europe’s largest war in seven decades.
Russia’s Black Sea Fleet was once considered central to Vladimir Putin’s attempted conquest of Ukraine.
While the Black Sea Fleet has been strong enough to hold the small Ukrainian navy at bay, it has never been the pride of the Russian navy. The Northern Fleet, based in Severomorsk, is by far the Kremlin’s largest and most modern force, and had sent some of its own vessels to help just before the Russian invasion.
“An hour after the cruiser was hit, I exchanged pleasantries with Oleg Korostylev, the general designer of the Ukrainian design bureau Luch,” he said in an interview from the southern frontline, where he is deployed as an officer. Korostylev was key to the Neptune program’s development. “We congratulated each other on the fact that this is a very serious result.”
Not only is the cruiser Moskva sitting at the bottom of the Black Sea, but days of Ukrainian drone and missile strikes on the Russian-occupied Snake Island in May and June damaged or destroyed several smaller landing and transport ships the Russians had docked on the strategic island 22 miles off Ukraine’s southwest coast.
One Western diplomat agreed with that assessment, telling POLITICO “the Russian Black Sea Fleet is broken, and is now only used as a defensive force with occasional cruise missile strikes.” Keeping the fleet well out at sea “severely limits Russia’s campaign options” in southern Ukraine.
The attacks and the publicity they have received in the West haven’t gone unnoticed by Putin. The replacement of the Black Sea Fleet’s top admiral was covered in Russian state media, an almost unheard-of move by a regime that prioritizes the projection of power and competence, even in the face of evidence to the contrary.
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