The Ukrainian army has attacked the rescue ship Kommuna, which is part of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, the speaker of the AFU naval forces Dmytro Pletenchuk said.
“Today in Crimea, the Ukrainian Navy pulled out another ship from the Russian Black Sea Fleet Kommuna. The nature of the damage is verified. But unequivocally the ship is now unable to perform tasks”, he wrote on his Facebook page.
In turn, the VChK-OGPU telegram channel published a video showing the burning ship. On the video it is hard to understand the nature of the damage to the ship.
The head of the annexed Sevastopol Mikhail Razvozhayev said that the Russian warship repelled a missile attack.
“In the morning on one of the ships on the North side, the military repelled an attack by an anti-ship missile. From the fallen fragments there was a small fire, which was promptly extinguished”, he wrote in his Telegram channel.
“Kommuna is the oldest vessel of the Russian Navy and the oldest ship in service in the world. It was launched in 1915 in St. Petersburg. The ship has been modernized several times, most recently in 2016. The ship is a submarine salvager and is equipped with the Seaeye Panther Plus underwater robot.In 2022, the Kommuna surveyed the wreck site of the cruiser Moskva.
In total, Russia lost more than 20 warships during the two years of war, including LLSs, submarines and the flagship cruiser Moskva, Oryx calculations based on public data show. Before the invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s fleet in the Black Sea numbered more than 70 ships.
Among those damaged or sunk are 5 of the 7 LLSs that were in the fleet before the invasion of Ukraine. These are Tsezar Kunikov, Novocherkassk, Saratov, Olenegorskii Gornyak and Minsk. In early March, special forces of the Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry reported the destruction of the Black Sea Fleet’s newest patrol ship, the Sergei Kotov.
