Ukraine hammers Russian ships in Crimea in wake of Elon Musk’s escalation fears
Joel Gehrke
Video Embed
A shipyard in Crimea erupted overnight with explosions and a blaze that appears to have caused major damage to a pair of Russian ships, including an attack submarine.
“We confirm a large landing vessel and submarine were hit,” Ukrainian military intelligence official Andriy Yusov told Reuters and other outlets on Wednesday. “Those are significant damages. We can now say that with a high probability, they are not subject to restoration.”
BIDEN ACKNOWLEDGES GAS PRICES PUTTING ‘STRAIN ON FAMILY BUDGETS’
Russian defense officials claimed that the attack was a combination of missile and drone strikes, though their account could not be verified immediately. Videos and photographs of the damage circulated around social media, including on pro-Russian platforms, enabling private Western analysts to conclude that the strike totaled a landing ship and damaged a Kilo-class submarine named “Rostov-on-Don,” in honor of the port city that hosts Russia’s southern military command.
“And while the occupiers are ‘storming’ and they are still recovering from the night cotton [Ukrainian slang for explosions] in Sevastopol, thank you to the pilots of the Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine for their excellent combat work,” Ukrainian Air Force Lieutenant-General Mykola Oleshchuk said Wednesday.
That statement dovetails with anonymous claims that the Ukrainians used a long-range Storm Shadow missile. Both the United Kingdom and France have provided the weapons, which can be fired from Ukrainian bombers.
“It’s almost like the Ukrainians planned it that way … a SOF raid to destroy radar, then a sophisticated strike on Sevastopol,” retired U.S. Army General Ben Hodges, a former commander of U.S. Army Europe, wrote on social media. “This counter-offensive is much more than a ground assault … it’s a multi-domain operation. UKR Gen Staff is running rings around the Russian Gen Staff.”
Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, when the Kremlin first initiated the war that Russian President Vladimir Putin expanded last year into a full-fledged effort to overthrow the Ukrainian government. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky launched a counter-offensive this summer that aims to cut the so-called “land bridge” that Russian forces carved out of eastern Ukraine to link Crimea to Russia’s territory.
President Joe Biden reportedly is considering arming Ukraine with ATACMS, a U.S. missile analogous to the Storm Shadows that Biden’s team has hesitated to provide, in part due to concern that Russia might deem it provocative. Moscow tried to stoke that anxiety on Wednesday.
“Washington is planning to provide its puppets with long-range ATACMS missile systems, as well as MQ-1C Grey Eagle and MQ-9 Reaper multi-purpose UAVs,” Russian envoy Konstantin Gavrilov said in Vienna, per state media. “We are warning that appropriate retaliation will not be long in coming.”
Those threats have delivered some benefits for the Kremlin. Russia’s ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Antonov, told SpaceX CEO Elon Musk that a Ukrainian strike on Crimea could lead to nuclear war, according to Musk biographer Walter Isaacson, a threat that contributed to Musk’s refusal to enable Starlink satellites needed for Ukrainian forces to conclude an attack.
“We basically figured out that this was kind of like a Pearl Harbor-type attack on Sevastopol, on the Russian fleet in Sevastopol, so they were really asking us to proactively take part in a major act of war,” Musk said this week at a public forum. “If I had received a presidential directive [from Biden] to turn it on, I would have done so … but no such request came through.”
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Zelensky’s team argued Wednesday that such attacks are an appropriate and practical response to Russia’s attacks on Ukrainian grain infrastructure and threats against civilian shipping in the area.
“The demilitarization of the Russian Black Sea fleet is a real long-term guarantee of security for regional trade routes and the ‘grain corridor,’” Zelensky adviser Mykhailo Podolyak wrote on social media. “This is the only correct response to Russia’s attempts to turn hunger into a weapon and the only way to ensure uninterrupted grain supplies to the countries of the East and Africa. The way to do this is to build up the capacity of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, including by expanding the range of weapons.”