Ukraine scored a major success on Tuesday by striking a Russian warship in a Crimean port, one of the most significant attacks on Russia’s Black Sea fleet in months. But in another setback for their ground campaign, Ukrainian officials acknowledged they had all but withdrawn from the eastern town of Marinka after a months-long battle to defend it.
Both events underscored the two combatants’ divergent fortunes this winter in a war that has largely settled into a stalemate: Ukraine racks up naval successes in the Black Sea and Crimea, where it puts Russia on the defensive , and Russia continues its attack. on the battlefields in the east after stopping a Ukrainian counter-offensive.
A A day after Russia declared it had taken full control of Marinka, General Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s top military commander, spoke in sober terms about the fight, comparing it to the Battle of scorched earth for Bakhmut, the eastern city which fell to Russia in May. . Like Bakhmut, Marinka had limited strategic value, but now stands as a crumbling trophy for Moscow.
“The situation is exactly the same as in Bakhmut,” General Zaluzhny said at a press conference. “Street by street, block by block, our soldiers were targeted. And the result is what it is.
Ukrainian forces, he explained, retreated to the outskirts of the city and established positions behind it, indicating that the cost of staying and fighting was too high. Every inch of Ukrainian territory is vital, General Zaluzhny said, but “the lives of our fighters are more important to us.”
Hours earlier, the Ukrainian Air Force announced that it had destroyed the Novocherkassk, a large landing ship, in the Crimean port of Feodosia overnight. The Russian Defense Ministry told the Tass news agency that the ship was damaged in an attack using “aircraft-guided missiles” but did not say whether the ship had been permanently disabled.
Videos of the attack that appear to have been taken by locals and released by the Ukrainian Air Force show a huge explosion that produced a large fireball, followed by a giant cloud of smoke and flames. ‘rising into the night sky. The footage could not immediately be verified, but Sergei Aksyonov, the Russian-installed governor of Crimea, said the attack sparked a fire in Feodosia. One person was killed and two others injured during the assault, he said.
“The Russian fleet is getting smaller and smaller! » Mykola Oleshchuk, commander of the Ukrainian Air Force, wrote in a post on the messaging app Telegram celebrating the strike. He noted that last year, Ukrainian missiles sank the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet.
The attack on Novocherkassk followed another gain for Ukrainian forces: the military said it had shot down five Russian warplanes in three days. Analysts say the downing of bombers – one of the biggest weekly losses for the Russian air force since the start of the war – could ease pressure on Ukrainian troops operating in some of the most hot from the front line.
Ukraine’s military has long argued that the war cannot be won without targeting Russian assets and operations in Crimea, which Moscow illegally annexed in 2014. In recent months, Ukraine has sharply increased the pace of strikes on the peninsula. , which the Russian military uses as a logistical hub for its hold on southern Ukraine – storing fuel, ammunition and other supplies to transport to battlefields – and as a launching pad for attacks.
The Black Sea Fleet fired devastating precision cruise missiles at towns and villages in the heart of Ukraine. To try to reduce the threat, the Ukrainian military has targeted the fleet several times this year, damaging a warship in August and striking the fleet headquarters a month later.
The attacks were significant achievements for a country without its own warships, and rare successes in a year marked by failed efforts to break through Russian defensive lines on the battlefield.
The Battle of Marinka illustrated a defining feature of the Russian invasion, one that analysts say gives Moscow’s forces a great advantage: its willingness to send wave after wave of troops into ferocious assaults, accepting a staggering number of casualties but relying on a superior number of soldiers and ammunition to exhaust the enemy.
This is the same approach Russia has taken in the neighboring town of Avdiivka, where it has been attacking for months in the face of fierce Ukrainian resistance. The Russian assaults come as Ukraine encounters less and less support from its Western allies.
Marinka, a suburb of Donetsk, once had a population of 10,000 and its streets were lined with schools, shops and even a museum. Today, there are no civilians left and the place is reduced to ruins.
“Ukrainian forces detained Marinka for almost two years while the Russians annihilated her street by street, then house by house,” General Zaluzhny said on Tuesday.
Geotagged images show Russian forces attacked Ukrainian positions during months of battle. On Monday, Russia announced that it had taken full control of the city.
The capture of Marinka could allow Russian forces to turn towards the neighboring towns of Kurakove, Vuhledar and Pokrovsk, bringing them closer to Russia’s goal of capturing the entire Donbas region. General Zaluzhny said Ukrainian troops had “prepared a defensive line outside” Marinka, suggesting his army would try to thwart Russia’s efforts to advance further.
The Ukrainian Air Force said it used cruise missiles in the attack on the Black Sea on Tuesday, which took place around 2:30 a.m. local time. The Russian Defense Ministry told Tass that two Ukrainian Su-24 fighter jets involved in the Feodosia attack had been “destroyed”, a claim the Ukrainian military denied.
Although the extent of the damage to the ship was not immediately clear, the attack hit what appeared to be a valuable target.
The 360-foot-long Novocherkassk was capable of carrying up to 10 tanks and several hundred troops, according to Russian media, which reported that it had previously been involved in Russian military operations in Syria. In June 2022, Tass said the ship was part of a group of 12 ships “ready to carry out combat tasks in the Black Sea.”
Ukraine’s military said Tuesday it suspected the ship was carrying attack drones intended for war. Natalia Humeniuk, a spokeswoman for the Ukrainian military, told national television that “it is clear that a detonation of this magnitude was not caused solely by the fuel or ammunition of the ship itself.” even “.
Andrei Klymenko, director of the Black Sea Institute for Strategic Studies, agrees. “Judging by the video of the explosion, which was very powerful, it carried explosives: either shells, or missiles, or, as some say, drones,” he wrote in a text message.
Mr. Klymenko noted that the Feodosia port was close to Cape Chauda, which Russia has long used as a launch site for attack drones.
Data compiled by the institute shows that the Ukrainian military carried out at least 155 attacks against Crimea and the Russian Black Sea Fleet between January and October this year, an average of one attack every two days.
As part of the intensification of the campaign, Russia transferred its ships from Sevastopol, the fleet’s home port, to ports further from Ukrainian lands, including Feodosia on the eastern coast of Crimea. But Tuesday’s attack made it clear that these ports were still in danger.
The strike comes as Ukraine signals it is preparing for a protracted war against Russia. On Monday, the government presented a bill to Parliament proposing to lower the age of people who can be conscripted into the army from 27 to 25 years old.
As Ukraine’s military suffers from a shortage of troops to combat Russia’s repeated assaults, the conscription process has come under scrutiny, amid reports of erroneous conscription notices and coercive mobilization tactics .
Military officials have said in recent days that a large-scale mobilization, of up to 500,000 troops, would be necessary. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said a plan still needed to be developed before a decision could be made. Although General Zaluzhny did not specify figures on Tuesday, he called for mobilizing more troops to cover Ukrainian losses.