The landing ship Novocherkassk, which entered service in 1987, is one of the crown jewels of the Russian Black Sea Fleet. While in the port of Feodosia, on the Crimean peninsula, it received a Ukrainian attack yesterday morning, Tuesday. Kyiv claims it has destroyed it, but Russia says it rejected the attack and that the battle left only one dead and two wounded. In addition, the Russian Ministry of Defense yesterday called off the Ukrainian counter-offensive.
The attack came a day after Moscow announced the full capture of the Marinka stronghold in the Donbass, in what appears to be Kyiv's response to Russia's biggest victory since May, when it captured Bakhmut.
Social networks and Russian media published yesterday images of a huge explosion and a fireball in the port of Feodosia, a city of 66,000 inhabitants in the southeast of Crimea.
The head of the Ukrainian Air Force, Lt. Gen. Mikola Olestchuk, claimed responsibility for the attack on Telegram. And he assured that Novocherkassk had been destroyed. "The fleet in Russia is getting smaller and smaller!" he shouted in his message. "This time, the large landing ship Novocherkassk follows the flagship of Russia's Black Sea fleet, the Moskva, which sank in April 2022," he added.
There was already a first attack attempt against Novocherkassk, on March 24, 2022, when it was in Berdiansk, in the Zaporizhia region. "Today it has been completed", the Defense Forces of Ukraine also celebrated on Telegram.
Ukraine suspects the ship was carrying Iranian Shahed drones, which Moscow uses in the dispute. Ukrainian air force spokesman Iuri Ignat told Radio Liberty that the large explosion seen in Feodosia was due to the ship carrying ammunition and military equipment, but did not specify whether such drones were on board. "In one photo, there was only a skeleton left of this ship, everything on it was burned, even the foundations," he said.
The president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, also shared in the enthusiasm, writing on Telegram with irony: "Congratulations to our armed forces for adding another ship to the Russian submarine fleet in the Black Sea."
The Russian version is different. The Russian Ministry of Defense reported that the Novocherkassk had suffered damage during the successful repulse of an attack on Feodosia. During the battle, "air defense systems destroyed two Ukrainian Sukhoi Su-24 fighter jets" that launched guided missiles, the ministry added. Kyiv later denied that it had lost those fighters.
Sergei Aksionov, the Russian governor of Crimea, a territory that Russia annexed in 2014, said that one person was killed and two others were injured. According to him, there was damage to buildings, but the transport infrastructure was functioning normally.
The biggest blow to Russian forces in less than a week has left Kiev with strange signs of enthusiasm, whose forces are pulling back on the defensive at various points along the front after the summer's counteroffensive failed. gave the expected results.
On Monday, December 25, the Russian Minister of Defense, Sergei Shoigu, met with the head of the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin, and informed him that the Russian troops are in full control of Marinka, five kilometers from the city of Donetsk, in the east of Ukraine.
Marinka had 10,000 inhabitants before the conflict. It is now an important support point for the advance of Russian troops towards Avdivka, where the bloodiest battle of the war is currently being fought. The taking of the bastion will give "new opportunities for future actions in this direction", pointed out Xoigú.
And yesterday, in a meeting with the army's top brass, he assured that his troops have deactivated the Ukrainian counter-offensive. According to Xoigú, in 2023 one of the objectives was to "abort the much-announced counter-offensive by Ukraine and its NATO partners. The mission has been successfully accomplished", and he stated that the Russian army is making progress in all sectors of the front.
The commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian army, Valery Zalujni, acknowledged yesterday that his troops have withdrawn to the outskirts of Marinka, according to the agencies. "We protect every piece of our land, but if the enemy projectiles start to sow this narrow piece with stones, earth and with our soldiers, then the lives of our uniformed are more important. War, unfortunately, is like that," he said at a press conference in Kyiv.
