Russia Pulls All Warships From Sea of Azov: Ukraine

Russia has pulled all of its warships from the Sea of Azov amid intensifying attacks from Ukraine, according to Ukraine's navy.

"There is no longer a single Russian warship in the Sea of Azov," Dmytro Pletenchuk, a Ukrainian navy spokesman, said in a statement on Facebook late on Wednesday. "It seems that they [Russians] began to suspect something."

Ukraine has ramped up its attacks on Crimea as part of a push to reclaim the Black Sea peninsula, which was annexed by Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2014.

Pletenchuk said in March that Ukraine's "ultimate goal is complete absence of military ships of the so-called Russian Federation in the Azov and Black Sea regions." Newsweek has contacted Russia's defense ministry for comment by email.

The Ukrainian navy spokesman said during a national TV broadcast on Thursday that Moscow had withdrawn its warships from the Sea of Azov after Kyiv's forces struck and damaged Russia's Slavyanin ferry in the port of Kavkaz in Russia's Krasnodar region on Tuesday.

The vessel was reportedly used by Russia to transport railway carriages, trucks and containers for military purposes.

"Another great result of the defense forces' synchronized efforts: the invaders' ferry is severely damaged in the port of Kavkaz," the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said.

The port of Kavkaz is located around 7 miles from the Kerch Bridge, which connects annexed Crimea to mainland Russia. Ukraine has pledged to destroy the structure, and has successfully struck the bridge twice since Putin's full-scale invasion of the country began in February 2022.

"They decided to leave the waters of the Sea of Azov, this was caused primarily by the damage to the railway ferry," Pletenchuk said, according to RBC. "They took a map and a compass and decided that it was probably not very safe to stay there. This is the only language our enemy understands - the language of force."

Russia has relocated many of its warships from annexed Crimea to Novorossiysk due to relentless Ukrainian attacks.

Satellite images from last October showed Russia's fleet was fleeing from Sevastopol in Crimea to Novorossiysk in Russia's Krasnodar Krai. Ships were also heading to the Russian naval port in Feodosia further east on the annexed Crimean Peninsula.

More recent satellite images from April, shared by open-source intelligence OSINT researcher MT Anderson, appeared to show that the Black Sea Fleet had largely abandoned its major Crimean naval bases.

The Russian defense ministry said Thursday that Crimea was attacked by aerial and naval drones overnight. Russian forces intercepted and destroyed four aerial drones and two sea drones heading toward the Black Sea peninsula, it said.

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