The Ukrainian Navy has described the destruction of a Russian landing ship in the occupied Crimean Peninsula as a "serious blow" to Russia's war operations against Ukraine.
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Navy spokesman Dmytro Pletenchuk told RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service on December 27 that the damage inflicted upon the Novocherkassk landing ship during an air strike on the Crimean port of Feodosia on December 26 will significantly harm Russia's logistics capabilities.
Russia confirmed the ship had been damaged, and new satellite imagery taken on December 26 by Maxar Technologies appears to show the wreckage of a sunken ship along the quay of the Feodosia port, and other damaged port equipment.
Pletenchuk also claimed that the Russian military is currently unable to use the Crimean Bridge, a key route for transporting military supplies from the Russian mainland to the Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula.
Now, with the loss of the Novocherkassk, the Russian military will only be able to use ferries to transport military cargo because it has "not been able to use large amphibious ships in the Black Sea for a long time," according to Pletenchuk.
Yuriy Ihnat, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Air Force, said that the December 26 air strikes caused an explosion that indicated that ammunition on the large landing ship had detonated.
He said the ship was used to transport equipment, weapons, and personnel to Feodosia and other Russian-occupied ports on the Ukrainian Peninsula.
In addition to the damage sustained by the Novocherkassk, the training ship UTS-150 was also damaged and partially sunk, RFE/RL's Russian Service reported on December 26.
The satellite images taken by Maxar Technologies also show a smaller ship partially submerged not far from the apparent wreckage of the Novocherkassk.
This combination of satellite images released on December 27 by Maxar Technologies and taken in the Russian-controlled eastern Crimean port of Feodosia on December 5 (top) and on December 26 (below), shows the Novocherkassk landing ship before and after the Ukrainian strike.
Pletenchuk said that successful Ukrainian attacks have seriously depleted Russia's naval forces, leaving it with only six large ships on the Black Sea and none on the Sea of Azov.
Crimea.Realities, a regional news outlet of RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service, reported that, following the December 26 attack, two Russian vessels left the port of Feodosia. It was not possible to identify the ships by name, but judging by their size the vessels were a military ship and a military boat belonging to Russia's Black Sea Fleet.
Pletenchuk said that, including the strike that hit the Novocherkassk, Ukrainian forces had disabled seven large Russian ships.
WATCH: Ukraine hit a major naval port in the city of Feodosia in Russian-occupied Crimea, and claimed a Russian naval landing ship docked there was destroyed.
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Ukraine Strikes Major Naval Port In Russian-Occupied Crimea
Following the December 26 attack, British Defense Minister Grant Shapps wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that 20 percent of Russia's Black Sea Fleet had been destroyed in the past four months.
"Russia's dominance in the Black Sea is now challenged," Shapps wrote.
The most significant loss suffered by the Russian Navy came in April 2022, when the Black Sea Fleet flagship guided-missile cruiser Moskva was sunk south of the Ukrainian port of Odesa. In September, the Rostov-On-Don diesel electric submarine was damaged while in port in Sevastopol.
The Crimean Bridge, a major transport link opened in 2018 after Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, has been heavily targeted by Ukrainian forces since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Russia's Growing List Of Naval Losses
Both the rail and the automotive sections of the bridge were heavily damaged in a truck explosion in October 2022. In July, a sea-drone attack collapsed one section of the vehicle traffic span and damaged the separate rail section.
The bridge was most recently closed to traffic following sea-drone strikes on December 21.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian Air Force said on December 27 that "waves" of Russian kamikaze drones targeted Ukrainian territory overnight, with 32 of 46 drones shot down.
The governor of the Odesa region said that a 35-year-old man was killed by debris from a downed drone in a residential area.
The Interior Ministry said four people, including a 6-year-old child, were wounded.
The air force said the drones were fired from the Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula and from Russia's southwestern Krasnodar region.
The attacks ended in the early morning hours of December 27, with some successfully striking near the front lines in Ukraine's east and west.