President Zelensky’s visit to America, during which he will address the United Nations and meet President Biden and lawmakers at Washington, comes against the backdrop of the rocket attacks by Ukraine that destroyed this week $1.5 billion worth of Russian warships and anti-aircraft systems in Crimea.

Dramatic videos of fireballs and explosions, seen around the world, are likely to boost the standing of the Ukrainian president as he comes before the General Assembly. The fireworks in Russia-controlled Crimea follow Western impatience over Ukraine’s summer-long land counteroffensive.

The campaign slowed to a crawl due to Russia’s formidable defenses: belts of landmines, zig-zag trenches, and lines of concrete anti-tank obstacles known as “Dragon’s Teeth.” This week, though, saw the largest Ukrainian strike against Russia’s navy since the sinking last year of the flagship of the Black Sea fleet, the missile cruiser Moskva.

The price tags for Russia’s military losses since Wednesday include one Ropucha-class landing ship at $180 million; two Project 22160 patrol ships, $260 million; one S-300 surface-to-air defense battery, $135 million; one S-400 “Triumf” surface-to-air defense battery, $600 million; and one improved Kilo II submarine, $325 million. It is the first time since 1945 that Moscow has lost a submarine in wartime.

“The way to victory on the battlefield is to defeat the logistics of the Russians,” a senior presidential adviser, Andriy Yermak, who is expected to accompany Mr. Zelensky to New York this weekend, said. Defeating Russia, he said, depends on denying Moscow “the opportunity to preserve the military potential for waging an aggressive war.”

Coupled with weeks of sea and air drone attacks on Sevastopol, headquarters of the Black Sea fleet, Ukraine’s campaign has confined many Russian warships to port. Britain’s defense ministry says Russia has withdrawn most of its subs to a naval base at Novorossiysk, Russia’s major oil export port on the Black Sea.

Last month, though, a Ukrainian sea drone, packed with an estimated 1,000 pounds of TNT, traveled about 500 miles to the mouth of Novorossiysk. There, it hit amidships a Russian navy landing ship with about 100 Russian servicemen on board. The warship was towed to the naval base, Reuters reported, listing seriously to port.

Highlighting today’s tensions over the Black Sea, the BBC reported yesterday that a Russian pilot tried to shoot down a RAF intelligence-gathering plane last year over the Black Sea’s international waters. According to Western defense officials who read radio intercepts of the September 29 confrontation, the pilot of a Russian SU-27 fighter jet believed his ground controller authorized him to open fire.

The pilot then fired two missiles at this RAF RC-135 Rivet Joint, which was carrying a British crew of 30. The first missile missed. The second missile fell into the sea. Despite this attempted shoot-down, Britain’s defense ministry publicly accepted Russia’s explanation that the confrontation was a “malfunction.”

Since then, RAF surveillance flights have been escorted by Typhoon fighter jets armed with air-to-air missiles. Britain is the only NATO nation conducting crewed missions over the Black Sea. In March, a Russian jet brought down a United States unmanned surveillance drone flying over the Black Sea.

One year ago, entrepreneur Elon Musk stymied an attack on Russia’s Black Sea fleet by refusing to turn on access to his company’s Starlink satellites for the area near Crimea, for fear of provoking a larger conflict with Russia, according to a new biography of Mr. Musk by Walter Isaacson. On Tuesday, Mr. Musk defended his actions, saying in a podcast uploaded to X that enabling a Ukrainian attack on the Russian fleet could have resulted in “a mass escalation of hostilities” and a “mini-Pearl Harbor.”

Brushing off Mr. Musk’s concerns, Ukraine launched its actions against the fleet this week with what first looked like a footnote. Moving last weekend in speedboats, Ukrainian special forces traveled to four offshore oil rigs occupied by Russia since the 2014 annexation of Crimea.

Clambering aboard, they captured the rigs — two floating structures and two anchored to the sea bottom. Russia had used the rigs as a forward radar picket line to track shipping from Odessa and to get early warnings of drones and cruise missiles coming from Ukraine’s mainland, 50 miles to the north.

“Russia has been deprived of the ability to fully control the waters of the Black Sea,” a narrator says on a 17-minute Ukrainian military video of the taking of the four platforms. Now, the goal of regaining Crimea is “many steps closer.”

With Russian radars unplugged, the Ukrainians fired two British-supplied Storm Shadow missiles to Russia’s main naval base at Sevastopol. In the biggest attack on Sevastopol in the 18-month war, the missiles hit the Russian navy’s dry dock, taking out the landing craft and the diesel electric Kilo-class submarine.

Videos posted on the internet show the sea port’s night sky lighting up with explosions and fires. Local authorities say the explosions killed two and injured 26. The dry dock, a major repair hub for the Russian navy, has been knocked out of service.

At an arms fair in London on Wednesday, the head of the royal navy, Admiral Sir Ben Key, was asked about the Sevastopol attack. Without talking about the Storm Shadows, he said the Ukrainians “are demonstrating what can be done through innovative thought processes and a willingness to take risk.”

The admiral applauded Ukraine’s “really significant adaptations of tactics, techniques, and capabilities in order to try and generate a capability advantage over the Russians.” Then, on Thursday morning, Ukraine used similar tactics in Yevpatoriya, 25 miles to the north of Sevastopol. A wave of drones first took out radar systems that gave eyes to the operators of the S-400 and S-300 anti-aircraft batteries.

Minutes later, Ukraine fired two Ukrainian-made Neptune cruise missiles at the batteries, destroying them. Three weeks earlier, Ukraine had used the same tactic, wiping out a S-400 and a S-300 air defense site in nearby Cape Tarkhankut. Until their destruction, both sites defended the air space over western Crimea.

“We need to open up the sky over the peninsula in order to be able to actively destroy Russian military and warehouse infrastructure,” a Ukrainian presidential advisor, Mykhailo Podolyak, said. “We need to chase away remnants of the Russian Black Sea fleet from Crimean territorial waters and beyond, and reinstate the status of the Black Sea as the sea of external jurisdiction.”

Attacks deep behind Russia’s front lines will weaken those front lines, a fellow in land warfare, Ben Barry, of the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, predicts. “Kyiv has been relentlessly pursuing attacks on a multitude of targets at distance, spanning from the Donbas to Crimea to Moscow,” Mr. Barry wrote last week.

Added he: “Ukraine is clearly aiming for the deep battle — combined with repeated attacks along the lengthy front line — to bring Russian forces to a tipping point where combat power and morale may begin to break.”

________

Correction: Wednesday was the day on which Admiral Key was asked about the Sevastopol attack. The day of the week was given incorrectly in the bulldog.