A Russian landing ship was struck and disabled in the country’s Black Sea port of Novorossiysk by an unmanned Ukrainian boat, known as a sea drone, Kyiv said, as onboard camera footage appeared to confirm the success of the night attack.
The 112-metre Olenegorsky Gornyak from Russia’s Northern Fleet, which has been used to transport troops and military hardware into occupied Ukrainian ports, was said to have been sufficiently damaged to have been put out of combat action.
Images of a Russian warship tilting to its side emerged shortly after the strike and footage was published by the Unian news agency from the head of the marine drone appearing to show it moving stealthily across the Black Sea towards the ship and hitting it at its centre.
The agency said the drone was carrying 450kg of explosives.
Earlier, Russia’s defence ministry had claimed it had destroyed two unmanned sea boats targeting the Russian naval base overnight. A Ukrainian security source told Reuters this assertion was false.
“As a result of the attack, the Olenegorsky Gornyak received a serious breach and currently cannot conduct its combat missions,” the source said. “All the Russian statements about a ‘repelled attack’ are fake.”
Beyond the battlefield developments, diplomatic tension between Poland and Belarus escalated as Warsaw claimed that two Belarusian helicopters had violated its international airspace on 1 August.
Ukraine’s SBU security service also accused Russia of preparing to stage a “false flag” attack at the Mozyr oil refinery in Belarus in order to draw Belarus into the war in Ukraine.
Western and Ukrainian diplomats received a boost, however, following the announcement China would be represented in Jeddah in Saudi Arabia for a meeting of national security advisers seeking to agree on the main principles for a future peace settlement. Russia is not attending.
“China is willing to work with the international community to continue to play a constructive role in promoting a political solution to the crisis in Ukraine,” Wang Wenbin, a spokesperson at the Chinese ministry, said in a statement.
China had been invited to a previous round of talks in Copenhagen in late June but did not attend.
The Russian port of Novorossiysk exports grain and hosts the terminus of a pipeline that carries most Kazakh oil exports through Russia – handling 2% of the world’s oil supply.
The fuel hub’s operator, Caspian Pipeline Consortium, initially suspended operations on Friday morning but later lifted a ban on ship movements to allow oil tankers to be moored at the terminal.
The main significance of Thursday night’s attacks was the new evidence of Ukraine’s ability and willingness to strike in the Black Sea. Ukraine has carried out at least 10 attacks with drone boats, targeting military ships, the base in Sevastopol and Novorossiysk harbour.
The Olenegorsky Gornyak is a Ropucha-class project 775 large landing ship, built by the Soviet Union in the 1970s, with a capacity to carry a 450-ton cargo and 25 armoured personnel carriers.
It has a crew of about 100 and is one of three landing ships that have been permanently on the Black Sea since Russia started its full-scale war against Ukraine in February 2022.
A large Russian naval vessel could be seen being towed ashore on Friday, unable to move under its own power.
“We have open information that it is indeed damaged,” said Natalia Humeniuk, spokesperson for Ukraine’s southern military command adding that it was “absolutely legal to destroy the potential of the enemy in time of war.”
The Tass Russian state news agency said Russian air defences had downed 10 Ukrainian drones over Crimea on Friday morning and suppressed three more with electronic countermeasures.
Photographs were issued by the Kremlin of the defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, and Sergei Rudskoy, the head of the main operational directorate of the armed forces general staff, visiting frontline headquarters at an unspecified location said to be in occupied Ukraine.
Russian state media reported that Shoigu had received an update on the situation on the front and “thanked commanders and soldiers … for successful offensive operations” in Lyman in eastern Ukraine.
At the Russia-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine, the UN nuclear watchdog said it had “finally” been granted access requested a month ago and that it had found no explosives after claims of mines being planted around the infrastructure.
