Ukraine is cagey about the size of its navy. Which isn’t surprising. In conventional terms it hasn’t really got one. But Kyiv rules the waves in the Black Sea with its near invisible fleet.
Three years after Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, in which the bulk of Kyiv’s navy was sunk or scuppered, Russia’s Black Sea Fleet is cowed and hiding.
Described by the UK’s ministry of defence as “functionally inactive”, the sinking of Russia’s flagship vessel the Moskva by Ukrainian cruise missiles in 2022 proved a major blow for Putin’s navy.
Small wonder that the Russian president’s overtures towards a ceasefire with Ukraine focused on a call for a suspension of fighting in the Black and Azov seas. He’s lost around 30-40 per cent of his vessels here – and the rest have slunk away to hide in Russian ports such as Novorossiysk.
The crew of one of Ukraine’s few patrolling vessels, a reconditioned former US coastguard Island-class cutter, is tired. They were up all night manning the ship’s double barrelled cannon, shooting at Russian Shahed drones that swarmed the skies over Odesa.
But, as merchant ships sailed quietly into the ports along Ukraine’s southern coast, the crew was confident. They haven’t seen a Russian vessel for months.
“Maybe we get some sea drones [from the Russian side] but not often. Every day, or at least every other day, we get air attacks though from Crimea,” says Lieutenant Commander Mykhailo.
“We don’t know the destination of every Shahed [drone] that is flying overhead is – maybe we are the target,” he adds.
Russian skippers are probably more anxious.
Since 2022, Ukraine – with a navy numbering around 11,000 personnel – has sunk at least 20 Russian vessels; among them cruisers, the Moskva, several troop landing ships, and numerous smaller vessels.
These losses have all been down to a new form of naval warfare now pioneered by Ukraine’s navy because, aside from the Island-class patrol boat, and a handful of small boats in what’s known as a “mosquito force”, Ukraine isn’t bothering with ships.
Former Royal Navy mine hunters transferred to the Ukrainian navy are stuck in the UK because they cannot travel through the Bosphorus Straights. Turkey has banned military traffic through the strategic route since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
The focus instead has been to use long range rockets, cruise missiles, underwater and surface drones – almost all of them home-made in Ukraine. They’ve almost harried Moscow’s Black Sea fleet out of business.
“We don’t need a fleet to destroy the Russian fleet. We have very, very smart guys who create sea drones. Sea drones and missiles,” says the skipper.
Ukraine’s exports of grain and other products are back to pre-war levels. They had been strangled by regular Russian attacks at sea. A brief agreement to leave agricultural products to freely travel through the Black Sea collapsed in July 2023.
Ukraine’s use of sea drones, combined with an almost unlimited feed of intelligence from British and other Nato aircraft, American spy satellites, and signals intercepts, has meant that Kyiv has regained access to its waterways.
And avoided the “meat-grinder” battles that have characterised the land war.
In the early days of the renewed conflict in 2022, the skipper was in charge of a different vessel. Its whereabouts now is a military secret but it is likely to have been sunk. Probably in the engagement in which Mykhailo recalls, only in part.
He knew from his radar that two Russian missiles were heading his way.
‘One was shot down. The other one… I don’t talk about this. But I am not going to lie to you, it’s really scary when you know these missiles are coming and you might be in your last seconds of life,” he says, standing on the bridge of the surviving patrol boat he uses to prowl sea lanes so vital for Ukraine’s survival.
Lieutenant commander Cedric Dmytro Pletenchuk, spokesperson for the Ukrainian navy, explains how dominance over Russia was achieved after early setbacks.
“It happened in several important stages,” he says. “This took quite a long time. The key turning point was destroying the Moskva warship, which allowed us to liberate the north part of the Black Sea.
“After this, sea drones changed rules of the games. The Russians had to leave the west and the central part of the Black Sea.”
Crimea, captured in 2014, was once the headquarters of the Soviet Black Sea Fleet and after independence from the Soviet Union, the home of the Ukrainian navy.
Putin illegally annexed the peninsular in 2014. In 2022 his forces used it as a bridgehead to invade further into the country and as a major launching base for drones and air attacks.
“The next stage was striking the Crimean bases,” says Pletenchuk. “The Russians had to withdraw their warships from the occupied Crimea ports. After strikes on the ports in the eastern part of the Black Sea, and Azov sea east coast, the Russians had to leave the Azov sea as well.
“As of now, the Russians have to hide in the Novorossiysk naval base, where they have to move ships constantly to avoid our strikes,” he adds.
At sea, Mykhailo’s boat is lightly armed with its cannon and four 50MM heavy machine guns. It’s fast and manoeuvrable and is mainly used to escort the civilian ships along Ukraine’s trade routes.
A few days earlier, the MJ Pinar, a Barbados flagged grain cargo ship was hit and four crew, all Syrians, killed by a Russian missile while tied up in Odesa.
Russia’s assault on civilian targets is relentless on land and on the sea.
It continues to be a reason why Ukrainians universally reject a full ceasefire with Russia if it cannot be enforced. More than 80 per cent of Ukrainians believe that Russia’s ambitions do not stop with the territory Moscow has already occupied.
Ukraine’s success in the Black Sea has been another inspiration which started on day one of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.
Back then a Russian cruiser sent a radio message to Ukrainian troops guarding the isolated Snake Island off the southern coast demanding they surrender or face bombardment.
They replied: “Russian warship go fuck yourself”. That warship was the Moskva.
