Drone Strike on Russian Naval HQ at Sevastopol Marks Perilous Turn in Ukraine War

Likely initiated by Ukraine, a targeted drone strike on the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea fleet at Sevastopol on Sunday reportedly injured a half-dozen people and caused the celebration of Russia’s Navy Day to be canceled. The ramifications of the attack will likely loom larger than the relatively minimal physical damage done. The strike appears to mark the first time Ukraine has targeted Crimea since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February. President Putin annexed Crimea in 2014 and Moscow has by most accounts restitched the contested territory into the administrative fabric of the Russian Federation, but Ukraine rightfully views it as Ukrainian. Ukraine’s navy was quick to accuse Russia of staging the attack; however, that is unlikely. The Moscow Times reported that one of President Zelensky’s top advisors, Mykhailo Podolyak, said of the attack, ”Russia fears holding a parade in the Black Sea, but announces a plan to dominate the high seas.” The paper said that according to Russian authorities in occupied Crimea, it was a small explosive device from a commercial drone launched nearby that struck the Russian navy command, and the Russian-installed mayor blamed “Ukrainian nationalists.”The AP reported that another advisor to Mr. Zelensky, Oleksiy Arestovich, said the reported drone attack showed the weakness of Russian air defenses. On his Telegram channel, Mr. Arestovich taunted, “Did the occupiers admit the helplessness of their air defense system? Or their helplessness in front of the Crimean partisans?” This attack was much less dramatic than Ukraine’s strike on the Russian guided-missile cruiser Moskva in April, which resulted in the sinking of the warship, but equally symbolic. Sevastopol has a long history as not only the headquarters but also the pride of the Russian fleet, and served as a major command center of the Soviet fleet prior to Ukraine’s independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. The sight of Russian navy staff ducking for cover in their historic headquarters is a moral victory for Ukraine and an abject humiliation for Mr. Putin. The attack will no doubt increase the risk of reprisals against the Ukrainian navy — which was displaced from Crimea in 2014 — and could indirectly fuel the continuation of Russian strikes against civilian targets throughout Ukraine, including against major cities like Kharkiv and Mykolaiv. Over the weekend a targeted Russian missile strike in the latter city killed a grain merchant reported to be one of the wealthiest men in Ukraine, Oleksiy Vadatursky, and his wife. The AP reported that Vadatursky’s agribusiness, Nibulon, includes a fleet of ships for sending grain abroad.Despite much emphasis on the ongoing fighting in the industrial Donbas region, there is now little doubt that the main strategic theater of the Russia-Ukraine war in the coming weeks will be the northern perimeter of the Black Sea. A battle looms at Kherson, where Ukrainian forces are gearing up to wrest control of the port city from the Russians, who seized it early on in the conflict. Odessa remains vulnerable to attack despite the presence of Ukrainian mines in its vast harbor. The Guardian reported that a spokeswoman for Ukraine’s southern command, Natalia Gumenyuk, said that Ukraine was conducting operations to liberate Russian-occupied areas by targeting Russian military facilities inside Ukraine, not Russia, and that it considered Crimea part of Ukraine. “Ukraine’s armed forces are carrying out activities to liberate our occupied territories, using the weapons models that are available for this purpose,” Ms. Gumenyuk said, adding, “our targets are exclusively the military facilities of the Russian Federation. We do not strike on the territory of the Russian Federation. Crimea is Ukraine.”Ukraine has in fact struck targets that are clearly not in Ukraine. One such attack came in April, when one or more Ukrainian helicopters struck a fuel depot at Belgorod, a Russian city on the Seversky Donets River less than 25 miles north of the border with Ukraine. There have also been reports of Ukrainian shelling of Russian targets across the border in that region. The attack at Sevastopol points to the seriousness of Ukraine’s effort, buoyed by Western weapons and intelligence sharing. That raises the stakes, of course, as Ukraine girds for the battle for its national survival. Its forces have little to lose and much to gain through more audacious attacks and counter-offensives. With Mr. Putin now openly branding American and NATO as Russia’s chief threats, though, the question is whether Washington and its partners — notably, Britain — are prepared for just how high the stakes might get outside Ukraine should Kyiv launch additional attacks on Russian military infrastructure. That’s particularly true in places like Crimea that the Russian strongman sees, however erroneously, as belonging to Moscow alone.

Drone Strike on Russian Naval HQ at Sevastopol Marks Perilous Turn in Ukraine War

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