Rostov-on-Don, a Russian Kilo-class diesel-electric submarine belonging to the Black Sea Fleet of the Russian Navy, is so unfortunate that it exploded not once, but twice. Both times, apparently, via Ukrainian cruise missiles.
On Saturday or shortly before, the 10-year-old Rostov-on-Don was in the port of Sevastopol in Russian-occupied Crimea when it was hit by a Ukrainian missile, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said.
“Good job, warriors,” the ministry added. The fish of the Black Sea will be their new home. “
Satellite photographs of Sevastopol after the alleged attack are tantalizing but inconclusive. It can constitute the damage caused by the missile attack; this may not be the case.
If larger photographs or other evidence confirm the sinking, it will be a deeply embarrassing loss for the battered Black Sea Fleet. With its three dozen giant warships, the fleet outnumbered Ukraine’s small fleet at the start of Russia’s broader war against Ukraine 29 months ago.
But even after its last large ships were sunk in the rear of the Black Sea, the Ukrainian military continued to fight, coordinating its attacks with the Ukrainian Air Force.
Attacking with drones and cruise missiles, the Ukrainians destroyed or destroyed a third of the Russian ships; its flagship, the Moskva missile cruiser, sunk by a pair of Ukrainian missiles in April 2022.
Rostov-on-Don has been a recent victim of this. On September 13, a Sukhoi Su-24 bomber of the Ukraine Air Force fired at Sevastopol what were likely British-made Storm Shadow cruise missiles, striking Rostov-on-Don and a nearby amphibious shipment while both shipments were in dry dock for maintenance.
The missile that hit Rostov-on-Don only broke the 240-foot, 3,100-ton ship. No, the missile’s two-part tandem warhead first blew a hole in the submarine and then exploded inside. Photographs taken after the attack revealed extensive internal and external damage.
Surprisingly, the Russians continued to work at Rostov-on-Don, obviously determined to return the devastated ship to the front line. Work continued even as the rest of the Black Sea Fleet withdrew from the increasingly vulnerable ports of Crimea and redeployed to southern Russian ports.
This summer, the Kilo-class submarine is almost alone in Sevastopol. With the hull repaired, she would have left drydock in June to conduct transience tests in port.
These tests were probably already underway when the Ukrainians attacked Rostov-on-Don for the second time, with some other Storm Shadow, or with a similar French-made SCALP-EG missile or a locally made Neptune missile.
The defense ministry in Kiev expressed confidence in the results. “A Russian submarine has been found at the bottom of the Black Sea,” he announces. The rest of us are waiting for hard evidence that Rostov-on-Don suffered the excessive shame of having been blown up twice in 11 months.
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