Why is Russia’s Black Sea fleet so vulnerable?

Three landing ships hit in three days in late March, a third of Russia’s Black Sea fleet out of action and damaged, its flagship sunk, its headquarters bombed, its dry docks battered… Few would have dared, at the start of the war , to bet on the odds of a Ukrainian army virtually void of naval resources against an armada that was Moscow’s pride and joy. In the space of two years, however, it has managed to render it “functionally inactive,” in the words of British Defense Secretary Grant Shappson Sunday, March 24.

A total of 26 Russian vessels and one submarine have been hit since the start of large-scale hostilities, representing a third of the Russian Black Sea fleet, according to the Ukrainian General Staff, which does not take into account auxiliary vessels or shallow-draft patrol boats. The latest episode took place on Tuesday, March 26, with the bombardment of the Konstantin Olshansky using a Neptune missile, as was announced by Ukrainian navy spokesperson Dmytro Pletenchuk. Two days earlier, the Iamal and Azov, two other “large landing ships,” according to Russian nomenclature, were hit in Sevastopol, the home port of the Russian Black Sea Fleet.

All three belong to the Ropucha-class of landing ship, 112-meter vessels of major logistical importance that can carry ten armored vehicles and 230 men. Two others – the Tsezar Kunikov and the Novocherkassk – had already been sunk on February 14 and December 26, 2023. The Olenegorski-Gornjak and the Minsk were also damaged on August 4 and September 13, 2023. Of the 16 that were in service before the war, seven have since been sent to the bottom of the sea or at least temporarily rendered unseaworthy.

In April 2022, the Ukrainian army had already inflicted on the Black Sea Fleet its heaviest loss since the Second World War by sinking the Moskva cruiser, its flagship, with two Neptune missiles.

Humiliation

Compounding this strong humiliation was the bombing of its Sevastopol headquarters, which was struck by two cruise missiles on September 22, 2023, during a staff meeting and cost the life of its commander, Admiral Viktor Sokolov, according to Kyiv. The Russian army denied the information, but Vice Admiral Sergei Pinchuk took over in early April. Again in Sevastopol, tend days earlier, missile fire damaged two dry docks where the Minsk and the submarine Rostov-on-Don were undergoing repairs, depriving the Russian navy of both two of its vessels and an essential maintenance facility with no equivalent in the Black Sea.

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