Third of Russian Black Sea Fleet Disabled: Kyiv

One third of Russia's Black Sea Fleet has been taken out of operation due to attacks by Kyiv, according to the Ukrainian Navy, whose spokesman outlined Kyiv's success in maintaining its crucial grain exports in the face of Moscow's aggression.

During the war started by President Vladimir Putin in February 2022, Ukraine has delivered headline-grabbing blows to the fleet, such as the sinking of its flagship Moskva and repeated strikes on vessels and infrastructure, including its main Crimean base in Sevastopol, often using "sea drones" and other unmanned capabilities.

Since then, Russia has relocated vessels from occupied Crimea northeast to Novorossiysk, in Russia's Krasnodar region, as well as further afield.

Ukrainian Navy spokesman Dmytro Pletenchuk told the outlet RBC about some of the details of these successes and the strikes on Russian vessels. "A third of them are definitely out of action—destroyed and damaged," he said, according to a translation.

This figure chimes with other estimates such as by the Jamestown Foundation, a U.S. think tank, which said in March this year that sea drones and offensive measures by Kyiv in the Black Sea had allowed it to deliver grain at almost pre-war levels and concluding Moscow's attempts "to shift the balance at sea have mostly failed."

Pletenchuk said that by occupying the south of the Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk regions, Russia had tried to cut off Ukraine from the sea, but its plans to reach the city of Odesa to control the Black Sea's northern coast had failed.

Russia was pushed back in the south beyond the Dnieper River and with it, "plans for domination in the Black Sea also began to fade," as well as Moscow's ability to land an amphibious assault.

Pletenchuk said that "despite Moscow's obstacles, Ukraine managed to ensure the continuation of the grain corridor from the ports of Odesa region."

When asked how many Russian ships and missile carriers had been hit in the Black Sea, he replied, "Officially, 28. More than 10 units are under repair, but many of the ships that are now in service have also been damaged."

He said Ukraine had liberated more than 9,600 square miles of the Black Sea, in the northern, western, southwestern, and now the central part of the waters. However, he added that Russia still uses submarines in the area, four in the Azov-Black Sea region, three of which are cruise missile carriers.

Newsweek has contacted the Russian Defense Ministry for comment.

"We think of the Russian Navy as a big, powerful thing and to see that Ukraine is decimating it without really a navy and with unmanned vessels is quite significant," retired U.S. Vice Admiral Mike LeFever told Newsweek last month."

"We are learning a lot from what's happening in this battlefront, to adopt our process and procedures to do that in our training environment," he said. However, LeFever, CEO of security and risk management firm Concentric, said that as Russia's Navy continues to get pushed back, it may resort to using floating mines.

"I worry the Russians have no sense of accountability. We've seen it before where they may use floating mines in that area since they've lost the advantage and take an asymmetric approach to causing harm and disarray in the Black Sea."

Michael Kofman, senior fellow, at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a think tank, told the War on the Rocks podcast on June 14 that there is a "tacit but uncomfortable detente in the Black Sea because unrestricted naval warfare is a negative sum game."

This is because the first side that engages could see it result in horizontal escalation in which other actors get involved "and everybody loses."

"For Russians, it was more important to maintain commercial access to the Black Sea, than it was to try to deny it to Ukraine," Kofman said. "That's where Ukraine scored a big success— forcing the Russian Navy into Novorossiysk and forcing the Russian military into the fact of being unable to do much about Ukraine's economic lifeline coming out."

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