Ukraine struck a large Russian landing warship in Crimea with cruise missiles in an overnight attack that killed at least one person and could hinder any Russian attempt to seize more Ukrainian territory along the Black Sea coast.
The Russian defence ministry, cited by the Interfax news agency, said Ukraine had used air-launched missiles to attack the Crimean port of Feodosia and that the Novocherkassk large landing ship had been damaged.
Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu had briefed President Vladimir Putin in detail about the attack, the Kremlin said. Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 in a move Kyiv and the West condemned as an illegal seizure.
Ukrainian Air Force Spokesperson Yuriy Ihnat said he thought it would be hard for the Novocherkassk – which can carry tanks and armoured vehicles and be used to land troops ashore – to re-enter service.
“We can see how powerful the explosion was, what the detonation was like. After that, it’s very hard for a ship to survive, because this was not a rocket, this is the detonation of munitions,” he told Radio Free Europe.
Ukraine had used cruise missiles in the attack, without specifying what kind, Ihnat said. Both Britain and France have supplied Kyiv with such missiles.
Russia has hinted it may try to seize more Ukrainian territory along the Black Sea coast. Putin earlier this month said that Odessa, the headquarters of Ukraine’s own navy, was “a Russian city.”
Footage posted on Russian news outlets on Telegram, purportedly from the port, showed powerful explosions detonating and fires burning.
Unverified social media videos purporting to capture the strike showed a vast explosion and ballooning flames lighting up the night sky. An unverified daytime photograph, which Ukrainian bloggers claimed showed the ship’s remains, depicted a charred, elongated clump of debris emerging out of the water by a dock.
Sergei Aksyonov, the Russian-installed governor of Crimea, said on Telegram that one person had been killed. The RIA news agency said four people had been injured.
Although a Ukrainian counteroffensive has made little in the way of battlefield gains and the Russian military has regained the initiative in several places, Ukraine has been able to launch a series of attacks on Crimea, the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, inflicting serious damage.
