One swarm of drones surf the waves in the dead of night. The Russian military ship understands the threat and fires all its weapons on board at the approaching hulls. He destroys some of them, but is unable to stop them all: a series of explosions tear apart the sides. A few minutes and the corvette “Ivanovets” sank.
It is the news of the attack conducted last night by the special departments of Kiev’s military intelligence. An incursion that confirms that Moscow’s fleet is no longer able to control the Black Sea. According to Ukrainian propaganda, the raid took place in the waters of western Crimea: it indicated Lake Donuzlav as the location of the action, an internal basin which is been connected to the sea in Soviet times.
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If it were true, it would be a sensational circumstance. But the loss is still serious for the Russians: the sunk unit is small, about 550 tons of displacement, and was launched in 1988 but received very modern instruments, with four supersonic anti-ship missiles, an advanced radar and several batteries of anti-aircraft missiles short range.
The lesson that comes from the Black Sea, however, sends a wake-up call for all navies in the world. Without having a single ship, the Ukrainians succeeded to put a powerful fleet out of action. They have done so thanks to the growing availability of anti-ship missiles and remote-controlled boats with increasingly advanced guidance systems. This conflict saw the debut of maritime drones, never used in the past in operational activities: the former could only attack ports, with limited maneuverability.
In just over a year the development was very rapid, both in tactics and in technological equipment: in the assault on the “Ivanovets” six were used at the same time, each with three hundred kilos of explosives, and the images demonstrate how they were capable of proceed in a zigzag. Furthermore, they were extremely precise, hitting the same area of the corvette three times, until it broke in two. Ordnance costing around 100 thousand euros destroyed a ship worth just under 100 million.
In the wake of Kiev’s successes, all countries are planning means of this type: even Hamas has tried to use them to strike Israel. And it is easy to predict that soon even militias such as the Houthis will have naval drones at their disposal: these are semi-submerged raiders and therefore very difficult to detect with on-board radars. An even more insidious threat than the missiles with which Yemeni fundamentalists are blocking commercial traffic in the Red Sea. In short, a weapon has been created against which there is not yet an effective antidote.
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The operation conducted by GRU further increases the popularity of the head of military intelligence, the young general Kyrylo Budanov who is currently being indicated as a candidate to replace general Valery Zaluzhny at the top of the armed forces. The clash between President Zelensky and Zaluzhny would have reached its epilogue and many sources, including CNN, give the imminent dismissal of the officer who transformed Kiev’s forces into an efficient army with over a million soldiers. An institutional tug of war that could have serious repercussions on the future of the conflict.