In a sign that Russia’s recent retreat from occupied areas liberated by Ukrainian forces is not yet complete, nor limited to land, the Russian navy has begun shifting its battle-class submarines away from their base at Sevastopol. Navalnews reported that in recent weeks four Kilo Class submarines have left their designated berths at Russia’s naval headquarters on the illegally occupied Crimean peninsula and surfaced at Novorossiysk, a Black Sea port city on the Russian mainland between Sochi and the Kerch Bridge link to Crimea.

The precise date at which the Russian submarines, which are typically armed with Kalibr land-attack cruise missiles, left Sevastopol was not immediately clear. It appears that the movement is related to a series of successful Ukrainian drone and missile strikes on Russian military bases at Crimea in July and August. Russia seized the strategic Crimean peninsula from Ukraine in 2014 and subsequently annexed it. Ukraine’s president has said that Russia’s war on Ukraine started with its actions in Crimea and will end with its liberation. 

Russia’s naval assets at Sevastopol have never been more vulnerable than they are right now, which explains why Moscow would want to find safer shores for some of its vast fleet. The Russian guided-missile cruiser Moskva, the flagship of its Black Sea Fleet, was sunk by the Ukrainian Navy in April. According to Navalnews, Russian warships now rarely sail out of sight of the Crimean shore out of fear of being struck by American-made Harpoon missiles. The Moscow Times reported that “the Black Sea Fleet’s frailties have been brutally exposed since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in February.” 

That newspaper quoted an independent military analyst, Pavel Luzin, who said that “with the loss of the Moskva, hundreds of marines and a number of other ships, the fleet likely no longer has the combat power to support fully cutting Ukraine off from the Black Sea.” 

In the wake of the stunning Russian retreat from Kharkiv in Ukraine’s north, it is now widely assumed that, in the short term at least, any aspiration Moscow had of establishing full control over the Donbas region is now out of reach. The departure of naval vessels from occupied Crimean means that Moscow is even losing confidence in its ability to defend a part of Ukraine that, due to its historical Russian heritage, Vladimir Putin has long coveted above any other. 

With Ukraine likely to use its newfound momentum to conduct counter-offensive operations closer to the Black Sea littoral, chiefly at Kherson, there can be little doubt that expelling Russia from Crimea is likewise back on Kyiv’s to-do list. Navalnews noted that the Russian subs can still fire missiles from Novorossiysk, and at least one older submarine is berthed at Sevastopol. 

Yet none of that diminishes what amounts to a humiliating geographical pivot for a country that has long liked to think of its formidable navy as invincible, or close to it. As Kyiv and its Western allies are now surely aware, that is no longer the case.