This was inevitable, and no doubt a concession to XI. Another step toward Russia becoming a vassal state of China.
Black Sea Fleet’s last safe haven has been penetrated by Kyiv’s forces (Sea of Azov).
Kyiv Post reports:
“On the night of June 8-9, the situation turned kinetic in those waters with Ukrainian naval drones entering Taganrog Bay, a narrow inlet abutting mainland Russia on the Azov Sea, and blowing themselves up next to a barge and a tugboat escorting it.
Neither vessel was seriously damaged, but the tugboat captain decided it was safer to return to the Russian port of Azov, the Russian news and information platform Baza reported. Russian milbloggers widely confirmed the attacks.
Ukrainian milbloggers claimed that on the same night, one of the Russian assault ships detached itself from the fleet’s main body and sailed into the Russian mainland port of Yeisk, on the other side of the Taganrog Narrows, and tied up. According to unconfirmed reports, more Ukrainian USVs attacked the warship, although the results are unclear.
The Ukrainian June 8-9 strikes around Taganrog and Yeisk most likely took place, within sighting distance of Russian warships at sea some 20-40 km away.
Hitting Russian bases more than 200 kilometers north of the Kremlin-controlled Kerch Strait, in waters the Russian navy theoretically totally owns, marked a new benchmark in the Russo-Ukrainian Naval War: The moment when the BSF’s last safe haven was penetrated by Kyiv’s forces.
Dmitro Plentenchuk, head of the Ukrainian military Center for Strategic Communications, in June 9 television comments, said that currently the only warships BSF commanders are willing to risk sending into the open waters of the Black Sea are submarines, usually two at a time from the four known to be operational.
“They go out on patrol periodically,” he said.
Andriy Yusov, a spokesman for Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate (HUR), in Friday comments to the government news agency Ukrinform, said Russian navy commanders selected the Sea of Azov for surface warship maneuvers because the open waters of the Black Sea have long been lethal for fleet operations, and that the Kremlin is attempting to “hide” ships in waters out Kyiv’s reach. Kyiv’s intention is to strike wherever the BSF retreats, and hunt down the rest, he said.
“They are trying to hide the big ships, so we are going after the smaller ones,” Yusov said. “We are going to keep hunting.”
On June 6, Ukrainian USV penetrated into Pankse Lake, an almost totally-landlocked bay on the northwestern shore of the Crimean Peninsula, rammed and destroyed a Russian naval tugboat named Saturn.
On May 30, special operations teams from Group 13, an elite Ukrainian naval strike group, used MAGURA kamikaze sea drones to run down, ram, and sink two Russian KC-701 Tunets-class patrol cutters operating near the Kerch Strait. The Russian warships’ mission had been, in part, to prevent or block Ukrainian USV attacks in the area and against targets further north...
...Ukraine has sunk roughly a third of BSF warships...
...The Russian navy for the most part abandoned Sevastopol in October (2023) – for the first time since 1941.”